Chapter 25 #2
in touch with a funeral director.”
“Did he?”
Christ on a pony. She was embarrassed to be related to these people. “Think back. Mary Jo called my dad because he had power of attorney, but he called you because you’re local.”
“Yes, yes he did.”
She called upon the patience of the saintliest kindergarten teacher. “And what did you do?”
“Hmm, I can’t recall.”
A whole dead person on their hands and no one thought it warranted some attention? “Did you ever meet with any funeral directors?”
“No. I figured if it was urgent they’d talk to Mary Jo. She’s better at dealing with that kind of stuff.”
Now he was making up people. She was boiling over with anger now. “Who is ‘they,’ Uncle Lou?”
“I don’t know. The morgue?”
Thora could have torn her hair out at the roots. “He never made it to the morgue, Uncle Lou.”
“What do you mean?”
Hot, angry tears spilled down her face. “George died and no one came to take his body. He was there for years. Years. It was only because Juniper burned that they found him. Reduced to a skeleton. They, by the way, were the firefighters.”
“I don’t know why you’re taking this tone with me,” her uncle Lou said.
“I’m frustrated, that’s why. Barely anyone in this family cared for him while he was alive, and literally no one cared for
him after he died. I’m shocked that it never occurred to anyone to follow up on anything regarding his death?”
“Okay, Thora, I have to go.” Lou hung up the phone without another word.
It was fitting. Ignoring problems wasn’t supposed to make them go away, but it somehow worked for most of her family.
The problems didn’t go away, of course. They literally festered. To think, if Thora had been brave enough to go in the basement even once, she would have seen George’s remains prior to the fire.
There was never any smell coming from the basement, at least not one that overpowered the ever-present smoky scent in the
house, so he was probably quite skeletal by that point. Perhaps what remained of his clothing would have made his identity
obvious to her. She tried to tell herself this story of bravery and power at Juniper, but the facts presented a different
version.
Fear kept her out of the basement. Fear made her blow up at Lee. If she couldn’t get a handle on that fear, it would be her
downfall.
She had to talk to Lee about it. He would understand her pain. Together they could make sense of it. But she felt the hot
sting of shame at being hung up on by her uncle Lou. Her first instinct was to chide herself. If only she had couched the
information more delicately, perhaps he would have been receptive and taken some accountability. Unlikely. She shouldn’t have
to perfectly craft everything she wanted to say in order for people to listen. Lee would be able to handle this rawer side
of herself. She wanted to call him.
But had she forfeited her right to talk to Lee?
She called Amethyst instead. Among the people in Thora’s life, she was probably the person most well-versed in paranormal
matters.
“How much do you know about ghosts?” she asked without preamble.
“Hello to you too,” Amethyst answered.
Thora blurted her theory out. “There was a corpse in the house with me for the past week and now I think the ghost of my great-uncle burned down Juniper.”
Silence settled over the phone line.
“I see,” Amethyst said coolly.
“That doesn’t surprise you?” Thora asked.
“Literally nothing surprises me. Professional hazard of working in a field where everyone tells me the weirdest possible shit
all day long. Yesterday, someone came into the shop wanting to know what to do about the ghost of the Victorian teenage girl
in her apartment. If she doesn’t keep the pantry stocked with Cheez-Its, the ghost stops up the sinks and turns on the taps.”
“What did you tell them?”
“To give the girl her damn Cheez-Its! Easiest fifty bucks I’ve ever made.”
“George wasn’t a hungry teenage girl. He was kind and gentle to the end. How could he end up as a firebug ghost?”
“You can’t take anything a ghost does personally.”
Thora’s empathy was being stretched unreasonably far here. “My house is gone, Amy! Burned to the ground. How can I not take
that personally?”
“You said his corpse was there?”
“In the basement. No one ever took care of his body after he died.” Thora couldn’t get out the last sentence without breaking
into a sob.
“There, there,” Amethyst cooed. “When bodies aren’t dealt with properly, the spirit can get pretty desperate. He probably
figured if he wasn’t going to get a burial, that cremation was the next best option.”
Amethyst wasn’t exactly matching Thora’s energy, but at least she had some damn answers. “Even though I was in the fucking
house?” Thora squawked.
“Do you think he was trying to get you to leave before he started the fire?”
Was it that simple? “Well shit. He could have saved us all some time if he started with the snake!” The downed trees complicated
matters, as did the dead truck. “But sometimes he trapped us there.”
“Us?” Amethyst asked.
“Me and Lee. Cody’s best friend.”
“Oh, wow,” Amethyst said too loudly. Finally, a reaction. “You two fucked.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Amethyst replied. “Boy, this ghost must have been confused. Half overjoyed you two were getting together,
so he was trying to keep it that way. Half needing to burn everything down and find peace.”
“Burning everything down did not bring peace.”
“Say that again.”
Thora dutifully repeated herself. “Burning everything down did not bring peace.”
Amethyst let Thora’s words linger the second time. She was talking about Juniper, but they applied to her and Lee as well.
How could Amethyst have possibly known she’d torched the relationship she was building with Lee? How could she have known
how much she regretted that? Maybe Thora believed in both ghosts and psychics now.
“We did fuck though. It was way too much fun.”
Amethyst’s laugh rang out like a bell and cleared the air perfectly. The two chatted about Amethyst’s daughter’s own teenage
drama for a few minutes before hanging up.
Armed with something approaching an answer, Thora could contemplate calling Lee.
During their final argument, she’d blown Lee’s disappointment with her out of proportion, mostly because he verbalized exactly what she was afraid was true about herself.
Maybe she had given up on Cody without a fight.
And maybe she was willing to give up on Juniper without much of a fight either.
She might be able to show Lee that she wasn’t going to give up on him easily.
She wasn’t going to be like her family, who took an unpleasant reality and passed it along for someone else to deal with.
Her current unpleasant reality? She didn’t know how to weather conflict in a romantic relationship. But she was willing to
learn, and that was a step further along than she had been. She told herself she wouldn’t take any more big swings without
hope of connecting. She had hope.
She girded her loins and called him up. She didn’t even text first—caught him completely off guard. He picked up almost immediately.
“Hi, Thora,” he said. There was a lightness to his tone. “Everything okay?”
“Kind of. I heard from the coroner’s office. The body in the basement was George’s.”
The line was silent for too long. “No,” he finally said, a hoarse whisper. It was the same reaction he had when she’d told
him of George’s death: denial. He didn’t dwell there long before; she trusted he wouldn’t this time either.
“He’d been down there for years. Mikey found him, but no one ever came to get him.”
“How is that even possible? Didn’t someone have to execute his will? How were you able to buy the property if he still owned
part of it? What about his book royalties?”
“The property had already been transferred to the county officially before I got it. Mack dealt with the book royalties and apparently neither set up an estate for them nor alerted anyone at his publisher that he’d died.
I don’t know. I don’t think he had a will to execute.
He had been clear that he didn’t want any kind of memorial service, and he was a cash-under-the-mattress kind of guy otherwise. ”
“RIP to that under-the-mattress cash.” He’d moved through that denial and was with her again, comforting her with a grim joke.
“No shit. I’m working on inventorying the house now, and it’s shocking how much valuable stuff there was in the Junk Room.
Maybe it’s for the best that it went up in smoke. My family only ever knew how to burn through money anyway.”
“But how are you doing?” Lee asked, his tone softer.
“I’m confused. Hurt. Sad. Mostly confused. I know this is a lot to ask, but I’d like to talk to you in person. I want to walk
through what happened at Juniper and try to make sense of it.”
His reply was immediate. “How soon can you get here?”