Graveminder

Chapter 15

BYRON HAD BEEN SO FOCUSED ON WATCHING REBEKKAH THAT HE’D ASsumed that all of the mourners had left. He bit back a decidedly uncharitable remark as he saw that Cissy was marching back toward him. Behind her, the twins stood—and were apparently arguing, from the looks of it—beside the car. Liz threw her hands in the air and followed her mother. Teresa leaned on the car and watched.

Cissy had a determined look on her face, and he braced himself for her temper. However, she passed him without a glance, heading for Rebekkah.

“Cecilia!” Byron grabbed her arm. “She needs a moment.”

Cissy’s eyes widened; she moistened her lips. “But she needs to know. Someone ought to tell her about the ... what happened, and I’m Maylene’s family—”

“You needn’t worry about it,” he interrupted. He put an arm around her and steered her back toward the car. “You’ve had enough to deal with, Cissy. Let your girls take you on home. I’ll bring Rebekkah back to the house.”

Byron looked back at Cissy’s daughters. Teresa still watched from beside the car; Liz stood anxiously behind her mother. “Elizabeth, please help your mother to the car.”

Cissy glared at him. “I really should talk to Becky. She needs to know what happened, and I doubt that you’ve told her. Have you?”

“Told her ...” Byron shook his head at the unpleasant realization that of all the people in Claysville, it seemed that Cissy was the only one other than him who thought the circumstances around Maylene’s death warranted discussion. “This is not the time or place.”

“Mama,” Liz started.

Cissy stepped to the side to go around Byron. “I think Becky should hear what happened.”

At that, Liz held her hands up in defeat. She was the more reasonable of Cissy’s daughters, but she also had the sense to not want to be the object of her mother’s temper.

“I said no . Not here, not now.” Byron clamped his hand on Cissy’s elbow and steered her toward the car.

Cissy glared at her daughters—who remained motionless, one at the car, one beside her—before giving in. “Fine. I’ll see her at the house, then.” She pulled her arm out of his grasp. “You can’t keep me away from her, boy.”

Byron knew well enough that responding wasn’t going to get the result he wanted, so he forced a polite smile to his lips and stayed silent.

Liz shot a relieved look at Byron and mouthed, “Thank you.”

Byron turned his back on them and returned to the gravestone where he had been waiting before Cissy had approached. He was trying not to watch Rebekkah, but he couldn’t leave her here alone. He wished he didn’t have to tell Rebekkah about Maylene’s murder, but he wasn’t willing to let her hear it casually—or cruelly—spoken.

A black blur to his left drew his attention, but when he turned, he didn’t see anyone or anything. So he leaned on the tree beside the grave and waited.

He’d never realized that the ways of death in Claysville were peculiar. When he’d moved to Chicago, he was surprised that there was no designated final mourner. He’d decided then that it must’ve been a trait of small towns, but eighteen months later—after living in Brookside and Springfield—he’d realized that it wasn’t the size of the town. Claysville was simply unique in the way it mourned the dead. He’d watched carefully as he traveled, becoming almost a funeral-tourist of sorts for a few months. Nowhere else was like Claysville. Here, graveside services regularly had several religious representatives in attendance. Here, the graves were meticulously kept in order: graveyards and cemeteries mowed, trimmed, and planted. Here, a woman walked in funeral processions ringing a bell.

Once, as a child, he’d thought Maylene worked for Montgomery and Sons. As a teen, he simply decided that his girlfriend’s grandmother was a little odd. She had her own way of saying good-bye, and folks in town just accepted that she would be the last mourner for each and every person who passed. Now he wasn’t sure what to think, especially as Rebekkah seemed to be standing in for the last Barrow woman.

What am I missing here?

Once she stood, Rebekkah composed herself and turned to walk away. Only then did Byron step out from the shadow of the tree and move toward her.

“I didn’t know anyone was still here until”—Rebekkah motioned up the hill—“I heard the disturbance.”

He rubbed his hand over his face. “Cissy and the twins were here and ...”

“Thank you.” Rebekkah blushed. “I doubt that any conversation between us could go well just now. I was a bit less than patient with her.”

Byron hesitated. “She wanted to tell you ... to be the one to ...”

“To tell me whatever you’ve been avoiding.” She lifted her chin and looked pointedly at him. “You haven’t mentioned anything about Maylene’s being sick ... I know it was sudden. You didn’t want to tell me last night, this morning. William didn’t mention it. No one at the wake did. So, what are you not telling me?”

He’d been trying to come up with a way to tell her since it had happened. There was no nice way to say it. “She was murdered.”

Rebekkah thought she was prepared for whatever Byron said, thought that things couldn’t hurt any worse than they already did. She was wrong. Her knees gave way, and if not for Byron, she would’ve fallen to the ground.

He slid an arm around her waist and steadied her. “I’m sorry, Bek.”

“Murdered?” she repeated.

He nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“But ... she was buried already !” Rebekkah stepped away from him and waved her hand behind her where her grandmother’s body was now interred. “What about an autopsy? There’s no way to do one with her ... there. Tell me what—”

“I can’t tell you anything.” Byron raked his hair back in a familiar gesture of frustration. “I tried to get answers from Chris, but there’s nothing.”

“And you tell me this after she’s buried ?”

“It’s been forty-eight hours, Bek. If we didn’t inter her”—Byron looked past her to the freshly turned soil—“she would need to be embalmed. Do you think they’d agree to that ? It’s against the law here.”

Rebekkah brushed the graveyard dirt from her hands off on her skirt. “You know that’s fucked up, too. Nowhere else has such bizarre funeral laws. I’m not sure there are funeral laws elsewhere.”

“Oh, there are, just not like here.” He pressed his lips together in a way she remembered from the times she’d seen him force his temper away. “Here they clean up murder scenes with bleach and vinegar. Here they take the body away and work to make the house look untouched.”

“House?” She felt herself sway. “She was killed at the house ?”

He took her elbow again, steadying her. “That wasn’t a very good attempt at ‘breaking it to you gently,’ was it?”

Rebekkah sat down in the grass. “How could they not tell me? How could you not tell me?”

Byron sat down with her. His tone wasn’t cruel, but there was a bite to it as he asked, “And when should I have done that? When you were standing at the baggage carousel or when you were jet-lagged and needing to sleep or just now at the service?”

“No.” Rebekkah plucked at the grass. “I just ... why aren’t they telling me? I get the trying to be gentle. I really do. I might even appreciate it, but when someone is murdered , shouldn’t they tell me? Shouldn’t someone have called, or I don’t know, something ?”

“I don’t know.” He took a deep breath, and then he told her that he’d come into her house and tried to find a clue, a hint, something—and had no luck. Then he added, “The laws on burial make everything happen so fast, and I’m an undertaker, not a detective.”

“Right.” She wiped her hands off on her dress. “Knowing isn’t going to bring her back to me. Let me get through today first, or at least the funeral breakfast.”

He stood and helped her to her feet. Still holding her hand in his, he looked directly at her and said, “Just say the word. I’m here ... despite your insistence on trying to shove me so far away that we aren’t even friends. I promised I’d always be here, and that hasn’t changed.”

Rebekkah stopped and looked at him. He had—when Ella died. He’d held her and promised exactly that. Those first few weeks after Ella died, he’d been her lifeline, and when her mother had decided they needed to move, Rebekkah had thought that losing Byron would tear her in two.

“That was a long time ago,” she said somewhat uselessly.

He let go of her hand. “I don’t remember it having a time limit, do you?”

Whatever I need.

“Ella would’ve appreciated it, too,” she murmured. She resumed walking.

Beside her, Byron shook his head. “I’m not doing it for Ella. I’m here for you. ”

For a moment, Rebekkah felt the weight of losing his friendship. In that one day, she’d lost both of them. She hadn’t known it at the time, but losing Ella had led to losing Byron. Not long after Ella died, her mom left Jimmy, and they’d moved away. Afterward, her mother had hated it when Rebekkah talked to Byron; she’d never tried to keep Rebekkah away from Maylene, but any mention of Claysville—or anyone there—was a source of conflict.

As if none of it had ever happened.

She glanced at Byron. “We are friends . I know that. Not like we were then, but ... a lot has changed.”

“It has,” he agreed in that neutral tone he adopted when they both suspected she was about to say something that would lead to an argument.

Not this time.

Softly she admitted, “Sometimes I think about then ... about all of us ... I think Maylene knew exactly what we did every time we thought we were so smart. Your mom was just as bad.”

“They were good people, Bek. That’s how I remember Mam. If you’d have told me I’d miss the sharp side of her as much as the rest ...” He shook his head, but he was smiling now. “That’s how I cope. I don’t stop missing her, but I remember her. The good and the bad—just like I remember Ella. She wasn’t the angel you want to remember her as.”

Rebekkah stopped. “I know that. I just thought you ... I figured that’s how you still thought of her. We’re a pair, aren’t we?”

“I remember the bickering between you, and that she stole my cigarettes—and my stash—every time I left her alone in my room. That fight after school sophomore year? It was not her defending herself. I was there. She threw the first punch.” Byron laughed. “No one had a shorter temper. No one was going to outdrink, outsmoke, outcuss Ella Mae Barrow. I loved her, but I saw who she was, too. She couldn’t resist a dare, but she would refuse a party so she could plant flowers with my mother. She cussed enough that I probably blushed then, and she sang to herself, but mouthed the words in church because she wasn’t sure of her voice. There’s no sense in building a shrine, especially to an illusion.”

“She was so alive.” Rebekkah looked away, her gaze lingering on the stones that marked Ella and Jimmy’s graves. “I don’t understand how someone that alive could choose to die.”

“I don’t know either, but I do know that she—and Maylene and your dad—wouldn’t want you remembering them as anything other than who they really were.” Byron gestured for her to precede him toward the one remaining black car. “Loving someone means admitting the good and the bad.”

He opened the back door, and she slid into the car before he could see the panic in her eyes when he mentioned that topic.