chapter 26
Decca, Samhain/Halloween
“Gus?” I shouted into the dark house.
I dropped my keys into the chipped ceramic dish, my eyes glazing over as I stared vaguely at the yellow and plum violets around the rim.
It had been a rough week and now, on my favorite night of the year, I barely had the energy to celebrate. My shoulders ached after sitting at a computer all day. I wanted to pass out right here on the floor.
“Don’t move. I’ll be right down.” Gus hollered from upstairs. There wasn’t a light on in the house. He must have been studying when the sun had set, letting the darkness settle on the floor below.
Usually, I was one with the dark. A creature born from blackness. But after the red tape I’d been dealing with at the office all week, I was looking forward to ending the day in a cozy, glowing home.
My heart sank. I thought Gus would have lit the jack-o’-lanterns by now. I’d only been talking about tonight for weeks. I had carved so many faces into the pumpkins we’d grown. I honestly thought he’d take some initiative and make it look nice in here.
Oh well. No sense dwelling on it. I was late, and it was already time to slip into full storybook witch regalia, sit outside under a Samhain moon, and cackle at kids’ scared faces as they weighed their desire for candy against the potential risk of being thrown into a boiling cauldron and devoured by the real neighborhood witch.
Granny’s house on Halloween was legendary. I hadn’t done as much as I should have this year.
“Close your eyes,” he said as he ran down the stairs.
“It’s dark enough I don’t have to.” We’d gone into Daylight-saving time only the previous week, and I still wasn’t used to the abrupt darkness. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted from the light of the porch.
“Don’t make me blindfold you.”
In my dreams.
His warm hand slid over mine, clasping my fingers, pulling me toward him. He so rarely touched me; I was hyperaware of the feel of his hand over mine.
“Follow me.” His low voice rumbled over me, kindling my senses. “Uh uh, keep them closed.”
Slowly, he guided me through the front hall, the kitchen, and into what I thought was the dining room, where we stopped. Other than Barry, my former pet skeleton, it was like most dining rooms, a rarely used space that only collected dust.
It looked brighter in here behind my eyelids. He tucked my hair behind my ear before his hands dropped. The feel of his body language gave me a bad vibe.
“I know I haven’t been a great husband to you. I haven’t really let myself give in to the idea of being your husband. Between my dad and church, your work schedule, and my…other issues, being suddenly married to you—”
“Gus, please don’t. Not tonight of all nights. I’m trying to play by the rules. I am barely holding myself together knowing the thought of having sex with me repulses you—”
“Decca, no. That’s not—”
“From everything I was told about you, it seems like you fucked everything with tits. It hurts. Being told again and again that I’m the only one… I don’t know what is such a turn off about me, that you have to—”
“Dec—” Gus’s voice was harsher this time.
“And I am so frustrated. You don’t know what you do to me, Gus. And don’t think I don’t know why you’ve been spending so much time in the shower. You…“ I pointed to his chest, “moan.”
“Open your eyes, Decca.” His tone was low. Commanding. It sent shivers up my spine, no matter how frustrated and worn-out I was.
I opened my eyes.
“Oh, shit.” I squeezed them shut again, shaking my head.
Warm hands cupped my cheeks so gently. A kiss pressed to my bangs. “Happy Halloween, Dec.” His chuckled reverberated low in his chest.
I peeked through my fingers. Familiar faces looked back at me with horrified expressions.
The dining room table was beautifully set with Granny’s finest mismatched formal dinnerware, a river of taper candles glowing in a path down its center.
And all our friends had just heard my embarrassing outburst.
Bethany’s hands were cupped over her daughter’s ears. Waylon was trying so hard not to laugh, his red cheeks looked like they were about to explode. Soula’s eyes were saucers. Her hand was paused in midair, holding a binkie in front of Athena. George was hiding a smirk behind his wineglass.
“Decca,” said a baby’s voice on a giggle.
There was a collective gasp.
“Did she... Was that her first word?” Waylon asked, bent over his baby daughter in his lap.
“Shh... Uncle Waylon,” Sofia said under her breath. “We’re supposed to be silent.”
“I don’t think it’s officially started yet,” Bethany answered, also in a whisper. “Considering if it hadn’t been for the baby interrupting the newlyweds, we’d still be listening to one pretty interesting marital squabble.”
“I’m not sure names count as first words,” Soula said. “If they do, she’s already said, Ma, so technically...“ she shrugged smugly. “I win. I’ll have to look up the research in the Journal of Childhood—”
“She did not say Ma. That was just vocalizing. Definitely not a word. Besides, she said Da on at least eight different occasions.”
Finally, my brain caught up with what was happening in the room, although I still didn’t know why my entire friend-family was seated around my dining room table.
I looked back to Gus. Sorry, sorry. I’m so sorry, I mouthed as he smiled down at me like he was proud of me. Like he ached to touch me. Making a mockery of my stupid outburst. Making my words all the more unfair.
I squeezed Gus’s hand and circled the table to take my new favorite baby niece from her daddy. “You all heard it. My name was her first word. I’m making it official. You realize this means she’s mine now, right? I’m keeping her.”
“Uh, what?” Gus’s eyes grew wide.
“Theo Gus will change all your diapers.”
“You have to make her defecate in the toilet. There’s a special way to hold her.” Soula informed her shell-shocked brother. Waylon and I exchanged a glance over his partner’s affinity for hippie baby-rearing techniques. “We’re using diapers for the next one.”
“Cloth diapers,” said Soula.
Waylon let out a tolerant sigh.
With Athena planted on my hip, I walked back to my husband. “What’s going on, anyway?”
“It’s a dumb supper. Or it’s supposed to be. Your friends aren’t supposed to talk, but I guess it hasn’t officially started yet.”
I took in a breath as the room grew quiet again. I paid more attention to the details of the dinner party setting. Each place was marked with a name card, handwritten in Gus’s neat script, but besides the guest list, there was one extra chair and place setting.
“It seemed like a nice way to celebrate your favorite holiday.” He lowered his voice as his rich brown eyes met mine again. “And pay our respects to those who’ve passed on.”
“Granny.” I almost didn’t get her name out before my breath caught in my throat. Tears threatened under the weight of grief, gratitude for my friends, and the realization that Gus planned this elaborate dinner and ritual—from research to production—as a surprise for me.
I knew he cared for me, but as a priest, it was his job to care for everyone.
This was more than an easy gesture. It was an offering. A shift in our dynamic.
Hope zinged through my body like light chasing away shadows. The air felt different tonight. The rumbles of something big starting.
I leaned in close to him. “You realize this is a pagan ritual, right?”
His eyes danced. Glittered, practically, with the candlelight flickering in his chestnut irises. The deep desire to please me reflected back. “I’m choosing to look at it through the lens of anthropology. But if you don’t mind starting with a prayer for the dead, I would appreciate it.”
“The chant I like?”
He nodded, always amused when I took a liking to some part of his faith.
“That sounds perfect.”
Gus gestured for me to take my place at the head of the table. He sat to my left. At the far end was the empty chair.
For all the dead.
For Granny.
“You want to explain this, or shall I try?” he asked.
I shook my head, too overcome with feelings to speak without my voice breaking.
He raised his glass of murky red wine. Our guests followed suit.
Ourguests. This was the first time we’d hosted anything since our awkward wedding. This felt more meaningful than our short, insignificant reception at his cousin’s restaurant. Then again, the impact of Gus perfectly planning this night was hitting me hard.
“Thank you all for coming tonight,” Gus said. ”And for George and Bethany arranging their schedules so that neither of them will get called out.”
“Mmhmm.” Bethany nodded. “And extra thanks to our apprentices for working in a mortuary on All Hallows Eve.”
“Samhain,” Sofia amended her mother’s statement.
“The most liminal time of the year,” I shivered. “Can you feel it in the air?”
Soula added, “The veil is thin,” and the whole table looked at her.
“What?” She shrugged. “You can’t have a witchy best friend for ten years and not pick up her catchphrases.”
Gus lowered his eyebrows and chuckled. “Okay, well, maybe I was the only one who’d never heard of a dumb supper, but Wikipedia tells me it’s a Victorian custom. A dinner eaten backwards—dessert to appetizers—and in total silence. In some areas, it was used to divine a future love interest. In others, it was done in remembrance of those who’ve fallen asleep, as we say in Orthodoxy. Tonight, you’ll notice there’s an empty seat and an empty place setting. That’s to represent the people who can’t be with us because they’ve already passed through that veil, waiting for us on the other side.”
“Your granny, Dec,” said Bethany.
“And your parents,” Soula added.
Hot tears spilled out onto my cheek. My throat tightened. It was perfect, the most incredible gesture from Gus and my friends.
I glanced around the table at the faces of those friends, burning this moment into memory. I couldn’t help but think of it all as fleeting. That we’re on this earth for a split second. The preciousness of our laughter, our youth, our families could be stripped away so quickly.
When my time came, and the doula sat by my bed to plan my final hours, I wanted the memory of this dinner to call out from the depths of my subconscious. Hey—look at that wonderful life you had. You were so loved.
This was it. This was the sweetest life had to offer.
“I raided your granny’s recipe tin. I hope you don’t mind.” Gus said.
I hadn’t even noticed the food. Of course. That’s why it smelled so familiar and comforting.
“Oh, my God,” I sobbed. “I can’t believe… You guys…” I couldn’t stop the tears streaming down my face. My words weren’t working. Nothing could express how full my heart felt.
I looked around at the offerings heaped on the table. Cornbread baked in the cast-iron skillet he’d seen me use every day. Biscuits that didn’t look a thing like Granny’s or mine, but I knew he probably got a recipe off an internet search, since neither of us had written our recipes down. There were bowls of condiments like jams and pickled red cabbage, bush beans with potatoes, a dutch oven full of chicken and dumplings that was still steaming. There was a ham and fried hominy.
These was all the foods that I’d been telling Gus about in the quiet evenings we’d spent in front of an unlit fire. The ham Granny had made a few Sundays a year, the biscuits she made nearly every day, the potato candy I tasted in my mind whenever I thought of my mama.
Gus locked eyes with me, his smile nervous. He was asking for my reassurance. I couldn’t give it verbally, not without breaking down and drowning the table in tears of gratitude, but I did grasp his hand. He squeezed back and, before I knew it, lifted my hand to his mouth and brushed a kiss across my knuckles, rubbing his thumb on the back.
I wiped a tear with my napkin and sniffed. “When did you make all this?”
He smiled. “I had some help.”
“I made the vinegar pie.” Sofia’s blue eyes brightened as she straightened in her chair. Her hair was a reddish chestnut, but even with Bethany’s platinum blonde bleach job, she looked more and more like her mother every day.
“I made the beans,” Bethany said. “They’re probably soggy and gross, and I had to google a recipe and blend it in with Granny’s because, God help that woman, she had terrible handwriting.”
I smiled. “She couldn’t even tell you the amounts if she tried. It was just put in enough to come up to here on the side of the bowl.”
“She’s sorry she couldn’t be here, but Ma made the apple cake and the chicken and dumplings,” George said. “She swore she didn’t add any lemon or oregano, although she did suggest it.”
“To the cake or the dumplings?” I laughed.
“Both, probably.” Gus laughed. “Waylon smoked the ham, and Soula made the chow chow.”
My eyes dropped to the relish. Soula’s best dish was barbecue takeout. The closest that woman got to a recipe was adding milk to cereal.
“Once I realized lactic fermentation was involved, I was in,” Soula said. “Especially, since all I really had to do was run vegetables through a food processor.”
After Gus and George chanted the Greek hymn in memory of the dead, everyone looked at each other. “Okay,” Gus said, “at the sound of the bell, I’m going to serve the cake, and we’ll begin the silent portion of the meal. After dessert, we’ll serve dinner, and... well, I don’t actually have an appetizer, but I have a feeling we’ll all be stuffed to the gills by then, anyway. Any final words?”
He looked around and everyone shook their heads.
He chimed a small glass dinner bell he’d procured from who knows where. Its crystalline note rang once, resounding through the otherwise silent space, marking the beginning of the dumb supper.
The dearth of dinner conversation amplified the scrape of utensils on plates and the ice clinking in our glasses. Somehow, we maintained communication anyway. Sofia fought back laughter when Athena farted really loudly, and then everyone else struggled to hold it together when Soula had to rush her diaperless baby away from the table when it turned out not to be just a fart.
I locked eyes with Gus, and his gaze lingered on mine. There was something bigger about the way he looked at me. In the little ways he kept finding to touch me until he just decided to give in and leave his hand on my upper thigh.
When the food was passed, George or Waylon offered a small symbolic portion of each dish to the plate at the empty chair. We ate with unusual reverence.
All of us were connected by our careers in deathcare. We couldn’t discuss it at this table, but I imagined, at least in part, our thoughts turned to those whom we served. George and Bethany, and the hundreds of decedents they’d interred or cremated; Soula and the bodies she’d autopsied, agonizingly chasing down leads to get the data to determine causes of death; me and the skeletal remains of long buried bones, even poor decapitated Barry, who had been temporarily laid to rest on this very table.
But two of us here tonight were more intimately connected with death than the others. Connected in ways beyond what we knew professionally.
I knew Gus had gathered us here to perform this ritual for me. So that I could once again feel Granny’s presence in this house that I’d so meticulously maintained after her passing.
But Granny didn’t come tonight.
She wasn’t the one occupying the empty chair.
Waylon had witnessed lives lost as a detective, but they’d been a professional hazard.
His sister’s was personal.
When she’d taken her life, she’d left him wracked with pain and guilt. I’d seen Waylon sometimes, in those fleeting dark moments, where the grief still threatened to stop his own heart. I’d never talked about it with him. I didn’t have to.
Sometimes, those hit the hardest by death could recognize it in others.
There was an infinitesimal shift in the air. It felt heavier. Suffocating and wet as a swamp in August, though the temperature stayed put. Maybe even growing a few degrees cooler. I tugged my sweater tighter around my shoulders.
The candles on the table seemed to dim for a moment, like a trick of the light. I glanced up abruptly, watching everyone’s faces. No one had noticed. They continued dining just as peacefully as before, if awkwardly due to the silence.
Waylon had noticed.
His head jerked up, shock registering on his face for an instant, before he covered it with his usual stoicism and a sip of wine. Cautiously, he turned his eyes to the empty chair on his left.
He stared, frozen, only his chest rising and falling in a slow cadence, as if by controlling his breathing, he could somehow control this thing he was experiencing.
His eyes glistened, unshed tears reflecting more of the candlelight. The edge of lips curled up just the tiniest bit as he looked and looked at nothing. There was nothing there. Nothing to see.
Not for the rest of us, anyway.
I watched him. Watched his eyes drop to his plate. He raised his hands from where they’d fallen into his lap moments ago, and he smiled to himself as he took his fork and speared the biggest dumpling and slid it onto the plate for the dead. A big brother, making sure his baby sister got her favorite piece.
That empty chair wasn’t empty for him.
Loretta sat there tonight.
He caught my eye across the table and did a double take. He smiled sadly, a little embarrassed, as if he didn’t quite believe, or didn’t know if he should believe it.
I nodded and wiped tears out of my own eyes. I hadn’t realized I’d been so affected by his visit. But I needed to assure him of something. Letting him know that whatever this was, it was powerful. It was real.
And this night was for him.
After dinner, Bethany was the first to break the silence. “Whew! I didn’t know how much longer I was going to last.”
George slapped some money into Waylon’s palm. And Bethany elbowed him in the ribs.
“Don’t get mad at me. My money was on Gus,” George said defensively.
Everyone helped clear the table and put the food away. I made them take most of it back home with them. After they left—it was a school night after all—I wrapped a thin woven blanket around my shoulders and headed outside.
“What’s with the shawl? I thought your people lit bonfires and danced naked around them on Samhain.” Gus’s deep voice curled around me.
“My people?”
“Witches,” he smiled.
“That sounds more like Bethany’s idea of a good time.”
“I wouldn’t be opposed to you dancing naked around here.”
“You say that now.”
I slowly turned my head, giving him a playful smirk. I’d love for him to prove me wrong.
“How’s your hand after all that cooking?”
He flexed the first three fingers of his right hand. “I hardly feel it anymore, but it’s still stiff. I can’t do my cross the right way; I look like the icons of the Saints with the hands doing the blessing… At least it’s my non-dominant hand.”
He still couldn’t bend his ring and pinky finger where his gardening knife went through his palm. It would probably take months to gain full function. In the meantime, I’d banned him from using knives. Something told me he disregarded that today.
He reached down for my wineglass—with his left hand—and put it to his own lips. His eyes burned into mine as he drank slowly and deeply. Below his beard, his Adam’s apple marked an audible swallow.
His expression was intent, almost predatory.
My eyes strayed to the unlit logs in the fire circle.
The harsh floodlight from the garage highlighted the cold emptiness I felt, even after all the joy that Gus had filled this house with just a short time ago. Maybe it was a side effect from all the people who had emptied out of it, leaving me with my memories and a husband who sometimes wanted me, but not really.
Gus’s voice was a whisper. His breath lifted the hairs around my face, making me shiver and draw my shawl tighter over my shoulders. “There’s one more thing you need to do tonight.” He pulled out a lighter and moved toward the firepit.
A jack-o’-lantern bloomed into an orange crescent moon on the ledge of the stone wall.
“Mmm. I like that one.” It was a pattern I’d carved in relief using linoleum tools.
He lit the second one. The third. He kept going until all seven of our carved pumpkins were happily flickering. Then he handed me the lighter.
“It’s time.”
He wanted me to light the bonfire.
He’d restacked the logs perfectly. It would be an inferno if it burned. A true Samhain ritual, the perfect ending to a perfect evening.
Granny’s tender, youthful face flashed before me. Her shriveled body in her wheelchair.
I blinked hard, wiping out the memory. I put my wall up. The one I used at work. To keep out the dead. To keep in the joy. If I thought about it, I might hesitate.
I touched the flame to the newspaper in the center, and watched as the fire caught, shriveling the paper until it engulfed the kindling.
It was done.
My first fire since Granny.
Gus had given me a gift tonight: the agency to change things.
Granny wasn’t in this house.
She hadn’t even been here at dinner, and it was given in her honor.
Waylon had made the connection. Maybe no one else had noticed, but I’d felt his sister through him. A small part of me was jealous. I wanted my own kin to show up. But spirit, God, the Universe, or whomever, didn’t work like that, and I’d be a bad witch if I resented Waylon for it.
I tried to be a good witch. I shared. I played nicely with the dead.
Ironically, or maybe not so much, Greek theology took a similar view of the departed. They weren’t truly separate from us. In Orthodoxy, to die was to fall asleep. It’s why they prayed for the dead and asked the dead to pray for us, the same way many people prayed for their neighbors to find the right job or cure their step-nephew’s eczema. Nothing but a gossamer veil distanced us from our deceased. I felt it in my soul.
Conceptually, anyway.
In reality, I was a fraud.
“I don’t feel her.” I said, staring into the fire, telling Gus the secret source of my shame. “Granny. I’ve never felt her presence. That’s why I kept the house the same. Why I hadn’t thrown out her old TV Guides and the old pink Oil of Olay bottles she used to hoard. I kept everything the same because I thought that would make me feel her presence, but all I felt in this house was empty. Until you.”
“Tonight, you mean?”
“No.” My eyes moved to him. “Since you moved in.”
Gus’s jaw tightened as he frowned at the kindling in his hand. He snapped the bundle of sticks in half and threw them into the fire.
My stomach sank. I’d lost him. Once again, I opened up too fast, too much, and he withdrew into himself. After he’d given me such a beautiful night, I thought he was ready for at least that much intimacy. For me to let him know how safe and comfortable I felt in his presence, without sounding like some middle-school crush.
I was never going to get my friend back after I married him. I knew that now.
I turned to go back in the house. I had a mess to clean up inside. Might as well start attacking it now, even if it was the last thing I wanted to do in the wee hours before the dawn of All Saints’ Day.
Gus’s hand caught mine from behind, pulling me back and spinning me around to face him.
“I haven’t been a good husband to you.” I smelled the full-bodied cabernet from dinner on his breath. I wanted to taste his mouth, feel his soft beard against my cheek.
“Gus, you don’t have to—” But he didn’t let go of my hand. He wove our fingers together and squeezed, silencing my placations.
“This is what I was trying to say to you... badly... before dinner. I’ve been a shit husband. I’ve actively avoided you, not sharing the same bed, escaping when our conversations grew too deep or interesting, always standing miles away from you.”
“I noticed.”
“I didn’t think I was ready. Someone as faulty, as sinful, as selfish as me couldn’t possibly give you what you needed. Not just as a sexual partner, but as a true friend. I was embarrassed you had to propose to me. Ashamed that I accepted. Furious at myself that I let you throw your life away—your chance for what I thought was a real marriage—on me, a man who became suddenly terrified of intimacy after craving it for so long.” He tugged me closer to him. “With you.”
His eyes darted frantically around my face. He breathed out with a moan and kissed my forehead. “Decca. I wasn’t prepared for how much I’d want you. How much I’d miss you every time you left the room. How many nights I’d lie awake, aching to go to your bed and curl my body around yours. How much I’d need your opinion on everything before I could make even the smallest decision.”
I blinked, gazing up into his face, not ready to believe him, or else refusing to believe that he’d said what I thought I’d heard.
That he craved intimacy with me.
Above us in the linden tree, a barn owl hooted. A cool wind picked up, giving me the same strength and ferocity of the women who’d come before me to worship and dance and just be alive on this night.
This was my night. I wasn’t going to settle for the pittance he was willing to throw my way.
He picked up my other hand, and I let him. He stood in front of me now, so guileless, but so wrong. This whole look didn’t work on his face. It wasn’t him. He might have thought himself a sinner before, but the way to handle it wasn’t retreating into this farce of giving me just enough to keep me on his hook.
“Don’t do this now. I want more from you, Gus. And I don’t think you’re ready yet. I can wait. I signed up for this, knowing I’d have to wait. But don’t string me along and spoon-feed me drops of what I want when you can’t give me everything.”
“What is everything, Decca?” His eyes darkened.
“You really need me to spell it out for you? Sex, Gus. I want sex. And love. And more nights like tonight. And romance. I want you not to flinch if I touch you, like I’m some creep you can’t stand. Because I know you want me, Gus. You have this barrier up now that you’re a priest. You can’t work those two things out in your mind. But can’t this just be the one thing you don’t think to death about before you do it? Can’t you let your impulses guide you?”
His gaze hardened into something feral. His eyes dropped to my mouth.
“Yes, Gus. Kiss me. Just—”
His mouth slammed into mine. He inhaled deeply as he began moving his lips, inching mine apart so slowly, just a taste of the delicate skin inside my lip, our mouths melting into one.
I’d lost my breath. My hands hung at my sides. This was too tender, too fragile. If I moved a muscle—if my heart so much as beat—he might remember who he was kissing. He might come back to himself too fast and shatter this wonderful illusion of romance.
It was worth it. Someone could always shock me back into cardiac rhythm.