Page 11 of The Dearly Departed

I couldn’t blame him. Nobody was nice to us. Not without a price. They always needed something from us. To behave, to listen, to kneel or bend over. And that made it easy to believe that nobody was nice to anybody for no good reason.

But maybe we’d been wrong about that. Maybe there was one nice guy in the world, and he just so happened to live in this house for the dead, and we’d won the lottery by breaking through his door.

Then, before I knew what I was doing, I was tucking my knife back into my pocket and nodding, but not without a hint of reluctance.

“We’ll eat,” I said, making the decision for us all.

Shawn was exasperated, gripping his hair and throwing his head back. “Bram, are you fucking kidding me right now?!”

“We will eat. We have to eat,” I told him, turning to pin him with a glare. “Then we’ll leave.”

The old man nodded softly, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and I thought maybe that shred of happiness …

Fuck, maybe it was real.

And maybe I wanted it to be.

***

The old man introduced himself as Leonard Llewellyn, owner and head funeral director. He led the group of us through the main floor of the house, past rooms meant for viewings and funerals and closed doors, concealing secrets I was dying to unveil. The place was full of carpeting, white wainscoting, and old-looking furniture that could probably sell for quite a few bucks, but I wasn’t sure I could casually sneak a whole fucking chair out of here without Leonard noticing.

“You boys sneaked in on the perfect day,” he joked. “Place is dead right now—no pun intended.” He looked over his shoulder with an amused grin, as if he expected us to laugh with him.

We didn’t.

After clearing his throat, he went on, “Of course, that could always change, if the Grim Reaper decides it’s someone’s turn to die, but as of right now, no such luck.”

Shawn and I exchanged a quick glance, one where he silently asked, Are you sure we can trust this guy?

He often questioned things like that—and for good reason. We all did, but him especially. Trauma fucked us all up a little differently, and for him, his ability to trust that adults wouldn’t expect nefarious things of him had been shot completely to shit.

Most of the time, I couldn’t blame him. A lot of people we’d had the unfortunate experience of meeting weren’t nice, let alone trustworthy. But while I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, I knew Leonard was someone who didn’t mean us harm.

I wasn’t sure I’d felt like that about an adult before. Not ever.

Well, not counting Mom.

Ike’s and my mother had never wanted to hurt us. But she had failed to protect her children by dying in an alleyway when I was just four years old and Ike was still a baby.

Ike trailed behind, glancing at the pictures hanging on the walls. Photographs. Generic, boring landscape paintings. There were a couple of local lighthouses and one big drawing of a massive ship. Leonard smiled at him every time he glanced over his shoulder. The old guy probably thought my brother had an interest in artwork, but knowing the devious little shit, he was looking for whatever he could swipe and make a quick buck.

Leonard brought us to a door and opened it to reveal another hallway. He glanced over his shoulder with a smile.

“This is where I live,” he said.

“You live here?” Ike asked, taken aback and astounded.

Leonard nodded as he ushered us toward an open doorway. “Sure do. I’ve lived here since I was a boy, younger than the three of you. My grandfather owned the place, but when he got too old to care for himself or the business, my dad moved us in. There were more of us back then, of course. It was me, my mother, my father, and my brothers and sister—plus, of course, my grandfather. All of us, packed into this little apartment.”

He laughed in spite of himself while I noted that the little apartment he spoke of was bigger than some of the houses we’d been stuffed into with far more kids.

“Why don’t you live upstairs?” I asked.

“Because the upstairs is the showroom for caskets and coffins and storage,” he explained with a smile. “Plus, I don’t think I’d like climbing all those stairs all the time with these old bones.”

I grumbled a contemplative sound as I nodded.

The room he brought us to was a small kitchen with white cabinets and countertops and appliances. So much fucking white. I froze in the doorway, and Ike and Shawn followed suit, all of us struck with the same thought.