For Better or Hearse: A Novel, page 2
Ash’s heart expands at the words.
Since the moment her cousin and best friend moved to Alaska two years ago, their distance has been a gaping wound in her soul. Despite what feels like an entire continent between them, the lock and key of their friendship has stayed strong. They still have their rhythm. It’s just shaken up and stirred thanks to babies and miles and that thing called life.
Though Ash is always homesick for her cousin, Tessie is where she’s supposed to be. Alaska. Getting railed daily by her bearded mountain man.
“I miss you too.” Ash takes a seat on her favorite bench. Beneath her feet, the grave of Fay Wray. “God, what I wouldn’t do to teleport you a hug right now.”
“Well?” Tessie’s eyes, now brimming with doubt, flicker to the phone. “Are you packed?”
Ash raises a hand. “Hold, please.”
Overhearing a tourist searching for the grave of Judy Garland, Ash points her in the right direction. Saturday afternoon, and the cemetery is packed with tourists studying maps in the bright sunlight and the sweltering heat.
“Do you think I’m packed?” Ash says, coming back to the conversation. “Or do you think my suitcase is lying in the bottom of my closet, filled with vintage copies of Nancy Drew and dried-up sea monkeys?”
Tessie squeals in protest. “I absolutely cannot with you right now.”
Ash, knowing last-minute packing goes against every bone in Tessie’s perfectionist body, smothers a smile.
“How can you not be packed?” Her cousin huffs. “You leave tomorrow.”
“I am a one-woman show. You know that. And I have more important things to worry about.”
“Like Augustus.”
Her heart squeezes. “Like Augustus.”
Her newest client, Augustus Fox, is a wealthy hotel magnate. He’s flying her and his family to Hawaii for one last family vacation. It’s the oddest job she’s ever had.
And Ash is the odd-job queen.
She tried. Tried hard to do the thing known as the American dream and make something of herself.
After high school, she enrolled at USC, where she did poorly. Couldn’t sit. Mind too wild. She dropped out. Meanwhile, Tessie excelled, working her ass off in school while waitressing to pay for it and eventually flourishing in her interior design career.
Ash spent most of her twenties playing Russian roulette with entry-level positions, taking the first humdrum desk job she could find, one after another. She burned through seven in her first year. And she hated them all. With the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns. The butt-in-a-chair-and-work mentality. Corporate ass-kissing. The part of life where a person is required to get a paycheck in order to live.
It was too rote. Too boring.
She longed to do something unhinged and beautiful.
Eventually, that need led her to death.
The first death that hit hard wasn’t personal. It was Princess Diana. Her mother and aunt cried. Big tears that rivaled the tears they’d shed when they watched Steel Magnolias. It confused young Ash. It fascinated her. She was glued to the TV. The funeral. That envelope sitting atop the casket. What was in it? What did it say? Would Diana ever really know? She asked Tessie what she thought happened to people when they died. Her cousin responded with a shrug and an I don’t know.
Ash didn’t know either. So she went to the library. She read book after book. Had all kinds of questions. Where do we go? Does the big man in the sky greet people with cocktails and high fives? Or is it an endless black nothing?
And then, when she and Tessie were seventeen, death hit closer to home. Her Aunt Sophie, Tessie’s mother, passed.
Core memory there, that feeling of her stomach sinking. That knowledge that nothing in the world she knew would ever be right again. The sight of Tessie collapsing to her knees in the hallway of the hospital and sobbing with her entire soul, I don’t know how to do this, and even though her words scared her so fucking badly, set a fire loose in her chest, Ash took her in her arms and swept her off to all-night movie marathon.
Her mom was sad. Her best friend was sad. She was too, but all Ash wanted to do was heal them. Help. Only, she didn’t know how.
Over the years, Ash honed her craft. Her job search skills. Off-jobs, this time. Dog walker. Art model. Say what you want about LA, but she has had one fantastic job after another. After discovering she had a talent for crying on cue, she started her own business. She became a professional funeral mourner. Then, after her botched relationship with Jakob, she expanded into professional wedding objector.
A profession she abandoned three years ago.
Nathaniel Whitford and his dagger-eyed glare haunt her nightmares. The pain on his face. What she did. Everything about it was icky. She was icky.
She didn’t like herself in that period of her life. Jakob’s betrayal launched her into her villain origin story. It changed the trajectory of her life and influenced the decisions she made. Objecting to weddings, hurting people even if they deserved it, were very bad decisions. She fumbled. Eventually, she worked to course correct.
The change began soon after the Nathaniel Whitford almost-wedding. While she was attending a funeral, working as a professional mourner, she met a woman who was a death doula. They had coffee after, and the prospect pulled her in. It felt like a hell yes. Every aspect of it—the freedom of care she could offer, the lack of strong regulations that came with working in an office, the fact that death is the most natural part of life, yet somehow generates so much fear.
Two weeks later, Ash enrolled in a death midwife certification and earned the first degree she’s ever had.
After two years, she can confidently say that her death doula gig is no longer an odd job. It’s her passion. A calling she’s honored to have found.
New leaf.
Helping, not hurting.
“Remind me again,” Tessie says, bringing her back to the conversation. “You’re gone for how many days?”
“Fourteen-ish.” Ash squints, working to recall the itinerary she’s barely scrolled through. Go-with-the-flow is more her speed. “We fly out tomorrow morning at nine and land in Honolulu.”
“God. I wish I could come and rot on a beach with you.”
“I wish you could too,” Ash says, then groans. “Why couldn’t I get a client who likes snow in the Alps?” She thrives among new people. She just doesn’t thrive in subtropical climates.
Tessie snorts. “You hate snow too.”
“True. But I could be sitting in a lodge with blankets and fuzzy hats and spiked hot chocolate.”
“Adorable fuzzy hats,” Tessie adds wistfully. Then she shoots a narrowed gaze at Ash. “Think of it as payback for ditching me on my babymoon.”
Ash rolls her eyes. “I will never hear the end of it, will I? Even if you are carrying the second of Solomon’s brawny heathen spawn.”
A low rumble of a growl. “I heard that.”
Solomon comes into view, leaning in from one side, his burly flannel-clad shoulder blocking Tessie’s face.
The way Solomon sets a plate of food in front of his wife, then sweeps a kiss over her lips, makes Ash’s cheeks warm. Her cousin looks for all the world like a lovesick teenager. It’s impressive. Clearly, Solomon Wilder has mellowed Tessie out with that extra-large dick of his.
“God, I’m such a whore for your love story,” Ash muses.
Tessie laughs. Ash smiles.
Love.
It’s all she ever wanted for her cousin.
Herself? She’ll steer clear, thank you very much.
Solomon sweeps a lock of hair behind Tessie’s ear, and that’s when she catches a glimpse of the dark circles under her cousin’s eyes.
Ash frowns, and a niggle of worry worms its way through her. “Are you sure you’re sleeping enough?” she asks, suddenly hating the distance between them. “What’s wrong?”
Scowling, Tessie presses palms to her stomach. “You’re as bad as Solomon.”
“She’s fine,” Solomon says, giving Ash a look of mutually assured overprotection.
Memories of that time, Tessie near death, always leave her feeling panicky and breathless and anxious. The closest to a breakdown she’s ever come. Her own death doesn’t scare her. But her cousin? The one person she needs in this life, the only person who’s ever understood her, who never questions her weird, who loves her fiercely even when she doesn’t love herself? Her close call almost ended Ash.
Nothing will ever happen to Tessie again. Not on her or Solomon’s watch.
Tessie smiles after her mountain man, then turns her attention back to Ash. “Are you okay?” Her voice gets hushed. Her brown eyes burn with worry. “Going to Hawaii?”
Ash’s stomach plummets, then snaps back into place. Hawaii is one of many bad callbacks to her relationship with Jakob. Do not pass go. Do not flash back. Do not let your reptilian brain run down that track.
She swallows hard.
“I’ll be fine,” she says. “Of course, I hate that we’re over the ocean. Have you seen my algorithm?”
“You almost went to Mexico,” Tessie points out.
“Mexico was different. And that was for you.”
“You’re there for your client, but you try to have fun too. Don’t reserve your amazing good moods exclusively for me. Don’t forget sugar. Find a graveyard. Oh! Better, a haunted lighthouse. And call me every day so I know you haven’t fallen into a volcano.”
Ash smiles at Tessie’s frazzled mom energy.
“Go on a date while you’re there. Have fun with a hot surf instructor.”
“I don’t have time for dates.”
Tessie wiggles her brows. “Just the dead?”
Ash looks down at the grave beneath her boots. “Something like that.”
Suitcase wheels screech across tile floor. Overhead, fluorescent terminal lights hum. The heavy carry-on and roller bag weigh Ash down like anchors.
All the sunscreen and floppy hats in the world have been successfully packed. Because Ash doesn’t tan like Tessie. She fucking crisps.
Up ahead, Augustus breezes through the Honolulu airport. In his patterned cardigan, slim-fit trousers and loafers, he looks like a member from the Rat Pack. The gold band he still wears for his late wife, Rosalea, glimmers on his ring finger. He keeps a tight hold on his carry-on with his age-spotted hand. He wouldn’t let her carry it. No matter how many times she asked. He might appear fragile, but the man’s strong like bull.
“Coming, Ash?” He glances over his shoulder at her with a chuckle. His determined yet casual stride says I am a man with money and damn good taste.
“Coming.” She tugs at her roller bag and then promptly stumbles over her boots.
Damn Tessie. She never should have let her cousin talk her into that second bag. But if she’s into blaming things, she also never should have had that second tequila on the plane.
She shakes her head, trying to catch her breath, then hustles up to Augustus, who’s clearing the space ahead of her like he’s Usain Bolt.
This is Exhibit A of her theory of why the man will truly never die. Even with a slow-growing form of brain cancer, he is a nonstop force of nature. Overseeing his boutique chain of hotels. Poker games at the legion every Sunday. He never stops.
Augustus Fox. A man larger than life. Rich. Decisive. No bullshit. He’s also the kindest and most interesting man she’s ever met. The stories he tells her about Hollywood and Vegas in the ’70s are like catnip. She’s 90 percent positive he muled for the mob. He claims to be in possession of a money clip that once belonged to mafia don Carlo Giacomo. She 98 percent believes him.
Six months into their relationship, Augustus is a part of her daily routine. They met at a funeral of an old-school Hollywood actress he swears he almost married. Ash was working part time as a mourner, and after she flung herself on the grave and was dusting off her shoes, Augustus said, “I like your style.”
Then he hired her, and that was that.
Now, on his good days, she plays chess with him in his posh Beverly Hills bungalow. She accompanies him to chemo on his bad. In a matter of weeks, he became family. This wise old man who makes tea for her, calls her dear, and has the most magnificent wine collection she’s ever seen.
Officially, Ash is his death doula. Though she likes to think of herself as a personal death bouncer. Regardless of where her clients are in the process, they don’t have to do the game of death alone. She’s there. To help plan, to advocate, to spend the last moments with those who have no one. Whatever they need. Hand massages, spiritual readings, traveling halfway around the world on a tropical vacation. It’s what she does.
Sure, it’s an unorthodox arrangement, but it is also an honor.
It doesn’t hurt that being Augustus’s death doula comes with a lifesaving amount of money. Literally. With the cost of insulin supplies astronomically high, she needs to bank every penny she can.
“Okay,” she huffs, bringing a hand to her chest. Her heart has never known this much exercise. “Debrief.”
Augustus barely turns, his lips pulling into a smile. “Debrief? We prepped on the plane.”
“Then a refresh,” she croaks. Her mouth is dry and sweet. She wishes she could stop at a bathroom to clean herself up. She doesn’t trust her fuzzy tequila-riddled memory. On the plane, Augustus gave her the lowdown on each family member who’d be joining the vacation. To be prepared. That warning had been ominous, to say the least.
His nod is brisk. “My daughter.”
“Claire. Also called Claire Bear. You love her, but you’d love her more if she hadn’t settled for, and I quote, that ‘deadbeat, dead-eyed sorry excuse for a husband.’”
“Impressive. And accurate. My son-in-law.” Augustus’s voice hardens. “Don.”
“Don,” she repeats. The name drips from her lips like poison. “Part Frankenstein, part day trader, all asshole. We couldn’t take the private jet because he called dibs first. And as you repeated numerous times on the plane, you will not save him from a shark attack, and I am banned from doing so as well, which is exactly my type of petty.”
Augustus’s bark of laughter echoes through the terminal. “Would you believe it was the tequila talking?”
Ash swats at him lightly. “Augustus, I think you’re a lying liar.”
As is her habit, she palms the bag slung around her waist. Checks to make sure she has her insulin pens. One long acting and one short acting. Another set tossed in just in case she gets stranded on a desert island.
“Tate,” she says.
“Youngest grandson. Goes by the unfortunate nickname Tater Tot. He’s using his inheritance as a podcast startup.”
In unison, she and Augustus groan.
“Horny,” Augustus continues. “Every time he crosses a state line, he sees it as an objective to get laid.”
A stranger rams into Ash’s shoulder, pulling a curse from her. She spins around to glare at the offender. Walking backward, she says, “How do you know all this? Somehow, I doubt it’s in the family manual.”
His blue eyes sparkle with a glint of mischief. “I have little birdies.”
Ash laughs. Of course he does.
The annoying chime of her phone blares from her purse. A warning from her continuous glucose monitor, or CGM, that her blood sugar is either high or low.
“Sugar, my dear?”
“Nope.” She swirls a finger. “Not yet. Keep trucking.”
They continue their trek through the terminal. Ash resumes her debrief.
“Delaney. Baby of the family. Only granddaughter. Actress of slasher films. If she offers to give me a tarot reading, I am to politely decline.” Ash rattles off the details, ingrained in memory, for this two-week vacation.
With a nod, Augustus puts a gentle hand on her elbow and stops her, pulling her into a nook near a water fountain. “Listen, Ash. I love my family. But they are like sharks. When one of them takes a bite out of you, the rest of them can smell it.”
Ash fights the swell of anxiety rising inside her. What is she walking into? God, what if they’re the Firefly family?
She shakes off the thought. It’s only two weeks. And it’s for Augustus. She can survive almost anything.
“I will be on guard,” she says. “But I will also be on my bullshit.”
Augustus cackles. “That’s why I like you, Ash. You sting.”
“Oh good,” she huffs, fighting with the strap of her carry-on. “I love being likened to a swarm of wasps.”
The older man’s expression drops into melancholy. He steps closer and grips her shoulder with a firm hand. “This is my last chance, Ash. To make sure they’re okay.” His voice softens. “Because how can I leave this earthly plane without doing everything I can to protect them?”
The words are said with such a sad caress of longing that it makes her heart ache.
She sees this a lot. The end-of-life wrap-up. It’s human nature. Fix regrets. Mend bridges. Get things in order so that the dying feel some semblance of control, no matter how small.
Which is where Hawaii comes in.
For once, Augustus has nothing on his calendar—no medical tests, procedures or treatments—and he scheduled the trip to fit between his six-week chemo appointments.
Augustus, a developer of boutique hotels studded across the West Coast, has arranged for his family, as well as Ash, to visit each of the resorts he’s built in Hawaii. One last vacation before he gets too sick to enjoy it. And she’s to act as a kind of mediator between him and his estranged family.
Augustus arches his craggy brows and sighs. “We’re loud, Ash. Loud in love, loud in anger. For the last few years, it’s been decibel levels. And not in the good way.” He looks at her, pleading. “I need to see us all together. One last time.”
A wave of softness hits her in the gut, but she refuses to get emotional. At least until the end. She takes her vibes from her clients. If they want her to rail and sob and curse the world, she will. If they need her to be a hard-ass, to be unaffected and stoic, she can do that too.
It’s why she’s good at this.
Only with Augustus, she’s not ready.
Augustus isn’t either.
