Chapter 13
When Nora gets home, she unzips her dress and lets it fall to the floor in her bedroom. She puts on one of her dad’s old Alabama T-shirts and throws her hair into a bun on top of her head. Scrubbing the smeared makeup and maybe an extra layer of skin from her face is cathartic. She’s a professional mourner, and she knows it’s more efficient to let her true self and her feelings take over as soon as possible. Her true self drinks wine with no pants on. The feelings will follow.
Nora keeps a Sharpie and a legal pad on her coffee table for occasions such as this.
She settles into her recliner under a blanket. Her wineglass settles onto its coaster. She takes the legal pad and writes “PRO” on one side and “CON” on the other with a line down the middle. Might as well start with the main issue.
CON: More death and dying
This is the crux of it all, isn’t it? How would she feel if she were someone else? Death has taken over her life without her consent. It stole her parents. It broke her relationships. It took her job and her future. It made sure that she would spend her days and nights steeping in death itself. Death robbed her of any opportunity for a normal life. A life like everyone else gets.
How can she be with someone who helps Death do this to other people? When Garrett is traveling, and she feels the urge to dig up another garden, she’ll know that this, too, is Death. Can she keep Garrett in her life knowing that she’s adding more Death? Knowing that she’ll be spending her days at the store trying to clean up Garrett’s mess?
CON: He might be crazy.
This whole thing is the craziest idea she’s ever heard. She doesn’t know why she believes him, but she does. She’s also been wrong about people before. Is she ready to deal with that scenario? Will she need to be committed because she believes him? How much will that cost and will her insurance cover it?
If his story is true, what kind of person chooses this job? Nora was born into a family with a casket store. Garrett chose to work for Death. What kind of person willingly does that?
CON: The lying
No way around it. He didn’t tell her the truth.
CON: More lying
They’ll have to tell more lies. She’s going to have to explain to Grandpa and his friends that Garrett just happened to be passing through when both Frank and Ethan died. What if they have children? Will they lie to them, too?
CON: The travel
He’s always moving. Is she going to relocate across the country for Death? Are they going to break up anyway because she owns a store in Alabama and he needs to be elsewhere to do his job? Doesn’t she want him doing this particular job far away from everyone she knows?
CON: The work
Everyone says things are supposed to be easy with the right person. Nothing about this is easy, so how can this be the right person?
Her phone lights up, Garrett’s name on the screen. She’s debating whether or not she should read it when it lights up again.
I’m home. I love you.
I’m not going anywhere.
PRO: I’m in love with him.
This is the only one she needs to write down.
—
After a night of tossing and turning and a few too many episodes of Cheers, she decides to go for a run. Is she a runner? Not in the traditional sense. All right, not in any sense. She hasn’t done more than a leisurely stroll since college, but she needs to do something that involves movement. How hard can it be?
The layer of fog waiting outside her front door almost changes her mind. With Harry Styles blasting through her headphones, she makes it to the end of her street before she has to admit that this is a terrible idea. Maybe walking is fine. Walking is good. Walking takes place outside of her house and away from her laptop. Of course, she had googled the whole thing. She’d waited until she got into bed, which isn’t the best idea if you’re going to google things like “Death North Dakota” or “Death Dying Logistics.” She’d even found Garrett on LinkedIn and stalked some of his connections, but she hadn’t turned up anything useful. Everything about Death on the internet was either from medical journals or folklore. There wasn’t much in between.
Nora does believe Garrett. She realized this at about two a.m. : he’s telling the truth about Death and his job. She doesn’t know what it says about her that it took only a couple of hours for her to believe that the world is different than she thought it was. That she has spent so much time thinking and talking about death, and she has no idea how it really works. That there are people in the world walking around with this huge secret.
She doesn’t know if the question was ever about believing him. People lie all the time. Other people get over it. The question is if she can get past it. Can she date someone who helps take the people she loves? Can she accept that when he leaves the house every morning, he’ll be going to end the lives of real people? Or help end their lives? Does the difference matter?
She knows there are plenty of people in relationships with someone whose job they wouldn’t do themselves or don’t understand. There are people with high security clearance or doing top-secret experiments who have spouses at home. People marry soldiers, firefighters, and police officers all the time, knowing that their jobs could put them in danger. They get past it. According to Facebook, some of them embrace it. Can she do the same thing?
Nora walks through Rabbittown for a while, even though she shouldn’t. No one walks in Rabbittown. Everyone drives. The roads don’t even have sidewalks. The sun is rising over the southernmost end of the Appalachians, and she has one of those moments where she remembers that she’s lucky to be alive and to be in this place to experience it. This thing with Garrett isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to her, and she keeps coming back to that. She can get past a lot of things. She always has. But does she want to?
The church parking lot is empty, so she cuts through on her way to get some advice. She stops to say hello to her grandparents. Her mom’s parents are first, and then her dad’s mom is a few markers down. Seeing Eleanora Clanton on her nana’s tombstone had always been entertaining—freaky at first and now a little funny. Maybe she could request to be buried in the same grave to save money. Maybe they could share the same casket, too. They have a lot to catch up on.
Her parents have a nice view: they’re under a dogwood tree and next to the woods, so they’re not crowded on all sides. The dew soaks through her leggings when she sits down next to the gravestone.
“Hey, y’all,” Nora says aloud. She doesn’t know if she has to speak out loud, like in a real conversation, or if they can hear all the crazy inside her head. “I don’t know what to do.”
She wishes she could see or hear some kind of biblical miracle taking place in front of her, but she doesn’t. She’s tried it before.
She explains the situation as best she can, but surely wherever they are, they’ve been watching it play out. Have they been yelling at Nora like she yells at the TV screen when someone on The Bachelor is making a stupid decision?
“I love him,” she says, once she’s finished her summary. “You probably already know that. But what if he’s a bad person?”
She waits. She gets nothing but silence. A vehicle pulls up behind her, and she turns to see her grandpa parking his old truck in the driveway. Coffee in hand, he walks past the other cemetery residents until he gets to Nora. This isn’t the first time they’ve run into each other here, and it won’t be the last.
“You’re up early,” he says as he hugs her hello.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
He nods. “About that boy.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Always is. What do your mama and them say about it?”
“Nothing. As usual.”
“Did you ask him all your questions?”
“I did. I couldn’t wait.”
“That don’t surprise me.” He smiles. He’s wearing a windsuit jacket that he’s had since Nora was a little girl and an Alabama hat with the old logo.
“He was there with Ethan,” she says simply. She doesn’t want to try to explain everything else to someone with a heart condition. They’re already standing in a cemetery. “He didn’t want to upset me.”
Grandpa nods. “I thought that might be the case.”
“It’s not supposed to be this hard, is it? But it always is for me.”
“You’re young yet.”
“I’m thirty, Grandpa.”
“Well, you’re just settling down. You never picked a good one until now.” He tucks his hand into the front pocket of his pants like this is the simplest thing he’s ever said.
“What makes you think Garrett is a good one?”
He shrugs. “I trust you.”
She laughs. “You probably shouldn’t. I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Now, Eleanora, I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Use the sense the good Lord gave you.” He puts his hand on her shoulder. “This boy’s got you staying up all night and talking to gravestones at seven a.m. There’s something to it.”
“I’ve finally lost my mind. It’s been a long time coming.”
“You ain’t done it.”
“I’m out here asking gravestones for relationship advice. Call it what it is.”
“You’re just working yourself into a tizzy. Can’t nobody tell you what to do. Life doesn’t give yes or no answers.”
“How did you know, then? With Nana?”
He considers this for a moment, and Nora swears to give up on love if he comes back with an answer from a Nicholas Sparks book. “We didn’t know any better than you know. We were kids, but we knew we loved each other, so we just decided.”
“You’re saying I just need to decide? And that will fix everything?”
“Not until you’re ready. But marriage and all that is just deciding you’re gonna do it and then doing it every day. God’s not gonna call you on the telephone and tell you if you’re doing it right. If you want to try, then try.”
“What if I don’t think it’s right?”
“You wouldn’t be out here at seven a.m. ”
She ventures a partial truth: “I’m not sure I’m okay with his job. He’s not going to be in Alabama forever, and he’s gone all the time. I don’t think I want to move around all the time.”
“You’re putting the cart before the horse. You don’t need all these answers right now, but I’ll tell you what, you can’t hide out in Rabbittown forever.”
She rolls her eyes. “I already told you. I’m not hiding. I have a house and a job.”
“Those belong to these folks.” He gestures at the gravestones in front of them.
“They’re mine now.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not gonna tell you what to do, but you need to think about having something that’s yours. You’re just biding your time here until you won’t have any left.”
“I don’t know if you should talk about death in front of dead people.”
“What else is there to talk to them about? No new business around here.”
The early morning fog has started to lift, and the sun is taking her place in the sky. “What brought you here at seven a.m. ?” Nora asks.
“I like to come by early and check on things.”
She can’t imagine what things an eighty-five-year-old would need to check on in the cemetery, but she doesn’t ask. “I guess I can head home now, since none of you will help me.”
“I’ll give you my two cents, and I think I can speak for the others. You need to get in your car and go talk to that boy. You’re not gonna sleep until you do.”
“His name is Garrett.”
“I’ll learn it if he sticks around. Bring him to supper on Tuesday.”
“Your house?” Pearl Café hasn’t reopened since Frank died, and neither of them is ready to start a new tradition.
“Yep, I’ll cook.”
“Are we having beanie weenies?”
“I guess you’ll find out on Tuesday.”
Nora leaves her grandpa to have his own time with the family and starts her walk home. People are always talking about how a walk can cure anything, but Nora is certain they never mention the walk back. By the time she gets home, she looks like she could be next on Garrett’s list. She showers off the morning exercise, but there are no highfalutin shower products that can negate a sleepless night of crying.
As she gets dressed, Nora reminds herself of her responsibility in this whole thing. To his credit, Garrett told her something difficult that he didn’t have to share. He could have made her forget his whole existence, and he didn’t. She doesn’t need to overthink the situation. She needs to ask questions, get the answers, and decide. She needs to be logical. She needs to be kind. She needs to hear exactly what he’s saying, nothing more and nothing less.
Although a mantra or breathing technique might work for most people, the only thing that helps Nora calm down is country music, but, like, the good kind. Sometimes she wonders if country music was just a ruse to get Garth and Trisha together, because that’s about the time the wheels fell off the wagon. Nora remembers when country music used to show you your heart before stomping all over it.
Nora gets in the car, starts her 911 playlist, and is coming out of the “I Can Love You Like That” feelings when she notices she’s about to show up at Garrett’s apartment unannounced before nine a.m. She’ll feel better once they talk things out, but he could be on his own morning run, and she deserves caffeine before a serious conversation. She winds up at Jack’s instead.
Jack’s is sort of a catchall between six and eleven a.m. because they have the best fast-food breakfast in town. To be fair, Nora can’t think of another place to get breakfast in Anniston besides Cracker Barrel. A lot of people would still rather have Jack’s. It’s an Alabama institution known for chicken, biscuits, and the regular gathering of retirees having coffee as the sun comes up. The Jack’s in Tuscaloosa rescued Nora from hangovers more often than she would care to admit. This Jack’s is known for the police officer who stops by every morning to collect biscuit orders for the inmates at the city jail.
Nora places her usual order at the counter: a sausage biscuit with grape jelly, hashbrowns, sweet tea, and a black coffee with a handful of creamer packets. She requests a little plastic container of their fry seasoning salt, which she hasn’t done in years because she has been conditioned to believe that that salt is bad for your heart, and real adults worry about stuff like that. At this point, though, who cares? Dying seems unlikely if she’s dating the man in charge. How does that work, exactly? Is he immortal?
A group of retirees sit in the back of the restaurant at tables that have been pushed together and cluttered with copies of The Anniston Star and Styrofoam coffee cups. They’ve all turned to listen to a man in an Alabama baseball cap in the middle of the table tell a story about football. It must be something they’ve heard before, or maybe they were all there, because they take turns correcting the time on the clock or emphasizing details like the unbelievable size of a defensive lineman. Before long, Nora is invested in the story, too. There’s something comforting about it, about old folks reliving their glory days. Or maybe it’s just the fulfilled expectations. She knew there would be a group of old men drinking coffee in Jack’s, because this happens in every Jack’s every day. She has always hated surprises. They’re usually loud and obnoxious and require immediate and undivided enthrallment. Nora prefers the quiet peace of normalcy that settles in when no one is paying attention.
Once she finishes eating, the anticipation arrives. Maybe it’s the double dose of caffeine or the sugar in the sweet tea. But she’s nervous. She winds the straw’s paper around her finger until it holds a perfect spiral shape on its own. She knows better than to overthink a conversation. It’s impossible to account for the other person, no matter how many times you run it through in your head. She keeps reminding herself to be calm. To be patient. This is easier said than done as she sits alone in a red vinyl booth watching cars pull into the drive-thru line and pause at the speaker.
A familiar silver Mercedes drives into the lot and parks in one of the empty spaces. Sure enough, Garrett climbs out. He’s dressed in shorts and a Nike T-shirt like he’s been running. This is the main breakfast place in town, so it’s not completely out of the ordinary that they would both be here at the same time, but maybe it’s not a coincidence at all.
Garrett walks in the door and straight to the counter to order. Nora’s heart starts its fluttering as soon as she sees him. She wishes she could control it, but she can’t. He has his back to her, and she watches his hands and feet fidget like he could start running through the restaurant at any moment. She lets her mind wander to a few places it probably shouldn’t wander in Jack’s this early in the morning. How is it possible to be unsure about someone’s morality and intentions but completely sure that you’d like to get behind closed doors with them?
Nora’s mind has taken up residence with Garrett in her bedroom when he turns around with his red plastic tray full of food. He’s looking around for a table when he spots her. He hesitates, confused, but she motions him over.
“Hi,” he says, holding his tray tightly.
“Hi. Would you like to sit down?” She gestures to the empty seat across from her.
“Uh, sure.” He sits down. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“So, you’re not stalking me, then?”
He laughs. “No, I decided against it.”
“I feel like I should apologize for not waiting.” She looks down at her tray of wadded-up papers and napkins.
“That’s not necessary. What are you doing here?” He starts to unwrap and arrange his food.
“Breakfast. Same as you.”
“Don’t you have one of these closer to your house?” He squirts strawberry jelly on his bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. She doesn’t feel great about that move, but the jelly situation is a good way down the list of things that need sorting.
“I didn’t really sleep last night. I wanted to talk to you, but I realized how early it was, so I stopped here.”
He stares at her while he chews. His eyes are bright green today, like treetops in spring. “Do you really think I slept after last night?”
“You don’t usually seem to have trouble.”
“I don’t usually upset you enough to be sent away.”
“Do you really want to talk about this here?” She glances around the restaurant and realizes that no one cares what the two of them might be talking about.
He shrugs. “It might be better this way.”
She cocks her head to the side. “How so?”
He takes a drink of his coffee. “I won’t be as tempted to touch you.”
“Fair point. Do you want to start?”
“You talk. I’ll listen.”
“Okay.” She rubs her hands together to stop them from clamming up. It doesn’t work. “I’m sorry I kicked you out.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t be.”
“I needed space to think.”
“I know that,” he says with his mouth full.
“You’re supposed to be listening.”
He holds his hands up in surrender.
“I thought about it. I made a pro and con list.”
“On your legal pad?” He raises an eyebrow.
She narrows her eyes. “Yes, on my legal pad. I guess the most important thing is that I do love you. I meant it when I said it. I’m still not sure about the rest of it. Nothing about this is normal. You can talk now.”
He takes a drink of his coffee first. “I know asking you to understand it is asking a lot.”
“Does your family know?”
“It sounds like a boring job, so they’ve never really asked questions. I haven’t had to lie.”
“But I would have to lie. That’s how this would work, right?”
“No, you could say I work in logistics. That’s not a lie.”
“I’m not crazy about having to explain this to you, but yes, that is a lie. You’re misleading people on purpose.”
“Well, you’re the first person I’ve told, and look how well it’s going. This hasn’t been a problem until now.”
“Because you got caught.”
“Honestly, yes,” he says. “I would have told you, but not like this.”
“What were you waiting for? Our wedding night?”
“I thought I might do it at the altar.”
“This isn’t funny, Garrett. You’re sitting here telling me that you were planning to lie to me for as long as you could get away with it. What am I supposed to say?”
He wads up the wrapper from his biscuit until it’s a compact ball of papery foil. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I would say if our roles were reversed.”
“Well, our roles aren’t reversed. This is where we are. Discussing the future of our relationship at Jack’s.”
“Do you want to leave?” he asks.
“I want to figure this out.”
He sighs. “I don’t know what to say, Nora. I want to answer your questions, but this discussion seems to be making it worse.”
It’s her turn to sigh. “I’m really trying.”
He reaches across the table to put his greasy hand over hers.
She asks, “Would you ever quit your job?”
“Would it matter at this point if I did?”
“I don’t know.” She tries to force her scattered thoughts into coherent questions, but she can’t seem to grasp their edges and make them behave. “I think I need more time. I don’t even know where to start.”
They sit in silence, their hands still clasped in the middle of the table. She stares down at her Styrofoam cup. She can’t meet his eyes, because she isn’t sure what she’ll see. Or what she wants to see. Is this the same man she fell in love with? Or someone else entirely?
“What do you mean by ‘time’?” he asks.
“I need to process all of this.”
He takes a deep breath and shifts in the booth so that he’s sitting up straighter. “Does that mean you want to break up?”
Her heart jumps into her throat. “No. But do you want to break up?”
“No, I’m trying to understand what you’re asking.”
“I just need a couple of days. Then I’ll be ready to talk about it.” She thinks. She hopes.
“Can I see you again on Friday?”
Her heart falls, even though she’s the one asking for time. “Friday seems far away.”
He squeezes her hand. “I have to go out of town today. I get back Friday. Trust me, I would rather be with you.”
“That was the right thing to say.”
He laughs. “I finally got one right.”
“Friday works for me.”
“I promise I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“I’ll work on a list,” she says.
“Bring your legal pad.”
“Are you really making fun of me right now?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”
A child shrieks across the restaurant, and Nora and Garrett are surprised to remember they aren’t alone. There’s a crowd at the register and a line of people out the door. Everyone is trying to get breakfast before Jack’s starts serving lunch.
“We should go,” Nora says. “Someone else can use this table.”
“Yeah, I have to leave soon, and I haven’t even unpacked from the last trip.”
He follows her out of the restaurant, and they walk to her car, a few spaces over from his.
“I don’t know how I missed your car when I pulled in,” Garrett says. “Lack of sleep, I guess.”
“I was sort of hoping you were stalking me.”
“I’ll remember that for next time.” He takes both of her hands.
She might not understand how to decipher all the thoughts swirling in her head, but she recognizes the feeling in the pit of her stomach and her thundering heart. It’s fear. She’s afraid to get in the car. Afraid it will change things between them.
“Can you tell me where you’re going?” she asks.
“Near Montgomery. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
She nods.
“Am I allowed to hug you?” he asks.
“I could use it.”
Garrett pulls her close, and she wraps her arms around his waist and lays her head on his shoulder. She breathes. The pressure in her chest ceases long enough for her to remember that she was happy a few days ago, truly happy.
“I’m sorry, Nora. I wish things weren’t this way.”
“Me, too.”
He pulls back far enough to see her face.
“I’ll call you,” he says. He kisses her cheek and walks to his car without looking back.