Chapter 11 The Meet-Ugly Trope （Hometown hero edition）
There wasn’t more than an inch or two of early snow, but it had been preceded by bouts of rain, making for poor driving conditions, especially for an LA driver.
I followed each curve in the road with bated breath and a white-knuckle grip until I saw it: a quaint wooden sign that announced, Welcome to Valentine!
“We’re here!” I called.
No response from Heaven, except for some rustling around. It seemed like she’d drifted off again. For the undead, a coffin is quite comfortable, except that the pillows are too small.
Wide-eyed, I took it in. Everything about the town was charming and quaint.
A small gazebo decorated with snow-dusted pumpkins and heaps of about-to-be-frozen mums marked the center of the town square.
The gazebo and gardens were bordered by a bakery, a bookstore, and a tavern.
Of course, here, a bar wasn’t just a bar. It was a tavern.
I wanted to touch all the books in the bookstore, admire the goodies in the pastry case of the bakery, walk into the general store looking for breath mints only to meet the love of my life when we reached for the last tin.
Or something. Not tonight, though. It was late and every store had a Closed sign.
No Patagonia-clad Vermonters trudged down the street carrying too many shopping bags and steaming hot chocolates.
There wasn’t a sled or a ski track to be found.
In my old neighborhood there would be people everywhere at this hour, making a late-night run to the store, heading to or from work, and always a guy peeing in an alley because there weren’t public restrooms.
Here, the snow was a pristine blanket, not a track in it, a world created just for me. Heaven was banging on the inside of the coffin. I called, “Just a few more minutes.”
An impulse hit—to put my tracks in the snow, to make this town mine.
I would be the Neil Armstrong of Valentine, Vermont, leaving prints from my Payless heeled boots.
Were Neil’s footprints still on the moon?
Really, NASA should be sending vampires into space.
Then they wouldn’t have to invest so much in life-support technology.
With a Christmas morning feeling I hadn’t felt for centuries, I stepped into the snow-covered square still wearing yoga pants and my Parliament of the Undead T-shirt (the Bloodthirsty Banjo tour, not the vampire council).
The snowflakes fell like kisses on my alabaster cheeks.
An eddy of flakes twirled around me like magical Disney sparkles, the kind that turn Cinderella from a pauper to a princess.
I was becoming who I was always meant to be, a small-town girl. Maybe the big city had been my problem all this time. Back when I was human, I lived in a small village. Valentine was a return to my roots.
In the back of the hearse, I found my best fur coat, the one I wore to the club during the flapper era. It had been the only thing that looked good on me in the 1920s. Flapper dresses aren’t for curvy girls. The coat smelled a little of mothballs, but it’d air out soon in the fresh Vermont air.
I knocked on the coffin. “Heaven, you’re going to love Vermont! It is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.” And I’ve been to Switzerland.
Heaven murmured something, but she didn’t sound distressed.
Before I shut the back door of the hearse, Heaven’s phone pinged again.
My official announcement that her followers should chill out had done no good.
To satisfy these followers, whoever they were, I snapped a photo of the snowy landscape.
All it needed was a caption. I tried a few pithy pieces of advice before landing on:
Get out of your own way and become who you are meant to be. If you don’t know who that is, that’s okay, at least try something. I’ve heard great things about pottery and Korean skincare seems to be a good idea. If you haven’t seen that Martha Stewart documentary, you should watch it. You do you.
Back in the car, I retyped the address of my new home into the map app, my whole being vibrating with excitement.
“Here we go.” I took Main Street out of town and turned right at an old-fashioned mill. I sat up straight, peering at every tree and rock with a wide-eyed excitement I hadn’t felt since that time I drank from some people at Woodstock. That LSD hit hard, even secondhand.
Maple Lane, my new street, was narrow and curved gently along the path of the Valentine River.
My heart and mind floated on a plane they’d never reached.
Yoga, meditation, affirmations—nothing had lifted me like Vermont on a snowy day.
When a graceful doe leapt in front of the car, I gasped.
She was so lithe and tawny, a happy little deer dotted into my world by Bob Ross.
But then she stopped and stared, a literal deer in the headlights.
“Ah, fuck! Move it, deer!” I yelled, but she was frozen, forcing me to slam on the brakes.
Instead of slowing, the wheels locked and the Happily Ever After hearse skated sideways down the road, taking up both lanes.
I screamed. Heaven, now fully awake apparently, screamed with me.
I gripped the wheel harder to no effect.
The guardrail-less drop into the Valentine River beckoned, an abrupt fall into an icy river that could kill us if we weren’t already dead.
Just when I thought it was hopeless, a crash inevitable, the car skidded to a stop peacefully on the side of the road.
No accident, nothing. It was nothing but a reminder that you needed snow tires in Vermont.
In the silence, I started laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing, at the dumb hearse, Heaven in her coffin, a falling-down bed-and-breakfast. And then a few tears welled up—relief, probably.
I don’t know. The doe who had started it all watched from the hillside, serene, graceful, completely unbothered.
“Heaven!” I called. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?
” But when I glanced in the rearview mirror, the back of the car was open and her coffin was skidding to a stop.
Apparently, she had been ejected in the chaos.
I jumped out and slipped on the icy road, almost not catching myself. Why was I wearing heels?
“Heaven!” I yelled, scrambling to my feet. “I’m coming! It’s okay!”
All I had to do was collect Heaven and get her back in the car. We were okay. I had this.
Just then, a cherry-red pickup came barreling down the lane. The lights blinded me, and I shielded my eyes. Hopefully, he would just keep driving. I didn’t need anyone to get all up in my business before I even got to the house. Please keep going. Please keep going.
No luck. The truck pulled to a stop right beside me.
And then it got worse. The side of his truck was painted with the name St. Nicholas farms in the handwriting you would expect Santa Claus to have. The pickup bed was filled with wrapped pine trees.
Fuck fuck fuck. There was no reasonable explanation for my situation. Maybe if a satanic cult pulled over, I’d be able to talk my way out of it, but this was a Christmas tree farmer.
A young Black man, tall with broad shoulders and a trim beard, stepped out of the pickup dressed for the snow.
He looked from me, to the Happily Ever After hearse, to the coffin. There was no reaction on his face, nothing. Not even surprise. In a voice like butter, he said, “Looks like you got yourself in a bit of a fix.” There was a hint of the South in his voice.
I let out a nervous laugh. “You could say that.”
He took a step closer and I caught the distinctive smell of leather work gloves, pine needles, and freshly cut wood—the kind of smell a designer would die to put in a bottle and sell as the latest scent for men.
“Do you want me to keep driving and pretend like I didn’t see this?”
I nodded. “Kind of.”
He laughed. “You know I can’t leave a damsel in distress on the side of the road.”
Damsel in distress. I could have laughed if I wasn’t so overcome by this pine-scented hero.
“How about I help you load that, er…coffin in your…uh…vehicle?”
Deadpan, I responded, “Some help would be lovely.”
“No one’s in there”—he gestured to the coffin—“right?”
“Oh, no.” I laughed gaily, as if the idea was preposterous. “I’m getting out of the mortician business, but no sense wasting a good moving box.” I laughed again to let him know this was supposed to be funny.
“Seems like an expensive moving box.”
“Oh, it is. Caskets are not cheap.”
“What do they normally run?” he asked like we were talking about the weather.
A twentysomething woman dressed for California on the road with an escaped coffin at 3 a.m. in Vermont—either he had a poker face, or no one had ever acted right around him before and he was cool with anything. Maybe he grew up in a traveling circus.
“They run from two thousand to eight thousand, for normal ones,” I said, reciting the cost of moving to Vermont. It’s not like I knew how much a casket cost. I wasn’t Dracula.
“So, the Happily Ever After Funeral Home?” He recited the name on the hearse like a question. “Is that where you worked?”
“It’s important to put a positive spin on death.” I smiled, trying to project normal and well-adjusted, not creepy. “What do you do?” I asked, desperate to change the subject to anything else.
“What it looks like.” The man jerked a thumb at the truck. “I’m a Christmas tree farmer.”
I clasped my hands together. Vermont was delivering on every level, except for the coffin-in-the-road situation.
“I hope this doesn’t bother you…too much.” I gestured to the coffin. “I almost hit a deer and…well, you can see what happened.”
“Practically self-explanatory.”
I could have swooned. A man who didn’t ask questions was my dream.
“Well, let’s get it in the car again. Can’t leave it out on the road like this. Someone else will end up in the river.”
He tested the weight of the coffin, which was substantial. This would be a four-pallbearer situation if I wasn’t a vampire.
“Do you think you can help me lift it?” he asked, eyeing my somewhat petite frame and dainty heeled boots. I still think of myself as tall because back in the day I was, but nowadays everyone is like, “Tiffany is such a cute little thing.”
“Of course.” I’m not one of those vampires with superstrength, but I’m still a vampire and it comes with some perks. The farmer gripped one end of the casket; I gripped the other.
“Lift with your legs,” he advised.
As long as he did. It would be unfortunate if this cute farmer threw out his back lifting Heaven’s coffin. It was already awkward enough, but it could get worse. It could always get worse.
Heaven must have passed out from spinning in her coffin, either that or the drop from the car. Fortunately, a little knock to the head was no biggie for a vampire. She’d be just fine.
On a normal day, I wouldn’t have powerlifted a casket in front of a guy, but he had me in a bind.
When we were done hoisting the casket into the back of the hearse, the man gave me an up-and-down look and said, “Wow. I could use your help around the farm.”
I fluffed my hair. “I’ve been doing a lot of dead lifts at the gym.”
He laughed at my accidental pun.
“Tiffenie.” I held my hand out.
He froze and gave me a closer look, searching my face in a way that made me squirm. I retracted the hand I’d offered and shoved it in a pocket.
“Tiffany Blair?” He looked as if he’d seen a ghost. “It’s me, Tyrone.”
I blinked back. “Sorry?”
“Tyrone Nicholas. I had some business with Jeff a long time ago.”
“Oh.” I smiled as if that meant something to me.
“We only met once or twice in passing a long time ago, so you might not remember me.”
Phew. But still, how small was this town anyway? Being recognized by the first person I saw was not ideal.
Standing at the back of the open hearse like we were tailgating at a homecoming game, Tyrone gave me a not-so-subtle inspection. I pulled my hat down around my ears. Tiffany had been blond.
I had been anonymous for so long; I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be known. It made me want to scuttle away sideways like a crab.
With a glance at the coffin, he said, “You know, I didn’t take you for the type to become a mortician.”
“What did you think I would be?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. The way Jeff talked about you, maybe a kindergarten teacher or a nurse.”
“Jeff clearly didn’t know me all that well.” Note to self: Find out who Jeff is, ASAP.
“So where are you staying?” he asked.
I pointed down the road. “The Valentine Bed-and-Breakfast.”
“Really?” he asked, his voice skeptical. “Have you seen a recent picture?”
I shrugged. “I’m going to fix it up.”
“Maybe it’s better on the inside than I thought.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t know if you knew, but I bought Jeff’s parents’ farm. I’m right across the road from you.”
“Looks like I won the neighbor lottery,” I said, and I meant it.
“Same,” he said, looking relieved, as if I wouldn’t be excited to see him. Who wouldn’t be excited to see a handsome Christmas tree farmer?
“Maybe I can take you out for a drink to thank you for the help,” I said with a burst of inspiration. Look at me, taking charge of my own destiny.
“Deal, but I’m buying. Now come on.” He walked back to his car and said over his shoulder, “Just follow me and you’ll end up at the house.”
I waved and got back into the hearse, all casual-like, but if my heart could beat, it would be racing. I needed to figure out who the hell Tiffany Amanda Blair was, and quick. The people in this town knew her as a person. I only knew her Social Security number.
Luckily, I had bought the identity nine years ago. That meant no one had seen her in at least that long. A lot could change in a decade.