Sweet Tea and Sympathy Read online

  “Finding new things to deep-fry?”

  “Oh, yeah, she loves breakin’ new ground in deep-fryin’—ice cream, cookies, oatmeal. She runs a booth at the state fair every year just to show off her new discovery. This year, she’s found a way to roll up an entire Thanksgiving meal in a cornbread stuffing shell and deep-fry it. Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, the works.”

  “Wow.”

  “Maybe you can come with us this year! It’s only a few months away. And E.J.J. has been thinking about entering his church barbecue team in the cookin’ competitions.”

  “Churches have barbecue teams?”

  “Oh, sure, the elders get together and barbecue pork shoulders for fund-raisers and such. Our team calls themselves the Holy Smokes, on account of the big smokers they use.”

  She smiled and made a noncommittal noise. In a few months, she wanted to be back in a city with more than one Starbucks. Or even one. One Starbucks would be nice, since Leslie’s coffee could potentially melt her esophagus.

  “By the way, why is Tootie being chased by a pack of wild dogs?” Margot asked.

  “Tootie’s always had a bit of an issue with taking in strays,” Bob told her. “Now, don’t get me wrong. She’s not like one of those people you see on the hoarder shows. Her house is a showplace. The dogs all have their own little kennel behind her cabin and they’re all in good health. But Dougie Hazard is keeping a really close eye on her.”

  “And Dougie Hazard is?”

  “The local animal control officer, fancy name for dogcatcher. He spends most of his time gettin’ possums out of folks’ houses.” Bob turned the truck into the parking lot for the McCready Family Funeral Home and Bait Shop. Margot leaned forward, eager for her first glimpse of her new workplace. But then she slumped back, a little frown on her face. She’d expected some cross between a church and a mini-golf course, but the funeral home was, if anything, understated, a plain, cream-colored facade with brass accents. A black late-model hearse was parked off to the side, next to a brick sign displaying the business’s logo in brass letters.

  The building was open in the middle, in what she’d heard called a “dog run,” with double doors opening to the chapel on the right and business office on the left. She could see all the way through to the lake and the huge dock extending behind the funeral home. Several bass boats had already docked and Margot could see them lining up at Sarah’s Snack Shack.

  “Tootie wanted to call it a ‘marina’ to make it sound a little more dignified. But some people thought we were puttin’ on airs, so we went with ‘bait shop.’ Of course, the locals just call it the Bait and Bury,” Bob said, grinning. “But there’s not much you can do to stop that.”

  Bob pulled the truck into the staff parking lot behind the funeral home. Margot could see now that the dock was one of three, all offering slips for boats. Another neatly painted red shop—Jack’s Tackle and Stuff—took up the dock on the left. Unlike in the town proper, everything was recently painted. The landscaping was neat and the gravel was free of trash. Margot sincerely hoped keeping the gravel pristine wasn’t part of her job description.

  “So here’s the water side of things,” Bob said. “Donna, Les, and Duffy keep things running out here. Donna and Duff—and Marianne’s husband, Carl, when he has the time—they all take turns running the tackle shop, though they both hate it something awful. Dealin’ with one or two members of the public at a time in their boats, they can handle. Dealin’ with multiple random citizens at the same time? We have to reward Donna with a gift sampler from the jerky store every time she goes a month without tossin’ a customer out on his ass.”

  Bob grimaced and opened the console between them, dropping a quarter in a little plastic container labeled SWEAR JAR. “Just in case you ever tick her off, her favorite jerky is alligator. I would say it’s because she absorbs the gator’s meanness through the meat, but I wouldn’t say it to her face.”

  Margot managed not to visibly shudder and was proud of herself for it.

  “I am not ashamed to say I’m afraid of that woman,” he said. “Cousin Junior, God rest his soul, was a brave, brave man.”

  “What’s that little hut there?” Margot asked, nodding toward the third dock, where people were lining up at a kiosk covered in enlarged photos of happy tourists holding fish.

  “That’s where guests sign up to take private fishing excursions with Duffy and Donna. They’ve got a solid reputation for finding the sweet spots no one else can find, which is getting harder and harder.”

  Bob turned the ignition and the truck almost immediately got about five degrees hotter. Feeling her hair fall flat in the exponentially growing humidity, Margot opened the door and hopped out.

  “Duffy said something sort of ominous like that yesterday, but then didn’t elaborate. Which I found to be strange, and off-putting.”

  Bob opened a door labeled OFFICE and let her in first. She waved the lapels of her jacket to let the air-conditioning under her arms. “Well, I don’t know what that is, but I was referrin’ to what people around here call the water dump.”

  Margot took a moment to stare at the white-painted wood paneling decorated with various paint-by-number Jesuses. (Jesusi?) Some of the eyes stared back. And they followed her when she moved.

  “Your grandma Sarah loved her paint-by-number Jesuses,” Bob told her, smirking a little as he watched her move back and forth in front of one particularly creepy piece involving a Day-Glo crown of thorns. “She must have painted two hundred of ’em before she passed on. They gave Duffy and Marianne nightmares when they were kids, but no one has the heart to throw them out.”

  Margot shuddered. “You were saying something about a ‘water dump’?”

  “Two years ago, some dumbass—” Bob grunted as they walked into a darkened office and he dropped another quarter in another plastic jerky container marked SWEAR JAR. Bob tossed his jacket on a brass clotheshorse in the corner. “Some dummy at the Army Corps of Engineers forgot to carry the one when he was measuring the depth of the lake and overestimated by a coupl’a million gallons. So he sent a report to the guys runnin’ the dam at Sackett Point to let out about ten times the water they should have. The lake feeds the rivers, so the towns below the dam flooded. The lake dropped to record lows just as we hit a two-year drought. So we haven’t had nearly enough rain to replace the water lost. When the water dropped, we saw parts of the county nobody had seen since the Corps made the lake sixty years ago. Discovered a few people we didn’t know were missin’, but that’s beside the point.”

  Bob picked up a clipboard and walked Margot down the Jesus-lined hallway. “People were mad about it. There was a town meetin’, where people mostly made jokes at the government’s expense. The Ledger printed some pretty pointed editorial cartoons. But nobody really thought of how it was going to hit us long term. The fishing spots dried up. Boaters ran aground because they didn’t know where the shallows were. And a couple of them ran into each other because they had less space and it got crowded. And the boatin’ community is pretty small. The word spread and our tourism numbers dropped like a hot rock. It’s hurt the whole town, because the economy depends on tourist dollars. Jobs are dryin’ up. We’ve had two restaurants shut down in the last year, and a gas station. Families that have lived here for generations are movin’ away.”

  “Oh, that’s awful.”

  “It’s hurt us, here at the marina. But fortunately, funeral homes are a recession-proof business.”

  Margot nodded. “Because everybody dies.”

  “Exactly,” Bob said. “Frankie wrote that at the top of our mission statement the last time E.J.J. made us have a board meeting. He swore it was the last time he would invite her.”

  “Did the townsfolk track down the guy who messed up the water math?”

  “We tried,” Bob grumbled. “Believe me, we tried.”

  Bob showed her the reception room, a welcoming area decorated in soft green and ivory. There was a pr
ivate viewing room, four “chapels” for full visitations and funerals, a “retreat” room where bereaved families could get away from the other mourners and get something to eat. Again, it was all very comfortable and subtly furnished.

  “Embalmin’ and processin’ happen downstairs and we move the caskets with a very quiet elevator system at the end of that hallway,” Bob said. “I don’t think you’re ready to go downstairs yet.”

  “You would be correct,” she said.

  “Frankie’s down there workin’ on Mrs. Grady now, but she said she’d be upstairs to say hi later,” Bob said, opening a pair of double doors to reveal a display of several shiny caskets and a wall of burial urns. A beautiful antique cherry table was situated in the far corner, flanked by two comfortable wingback chairs.

  “This is the showroom and sales office,” he said. “You wouldn’t be able to handle that just yet because you’re not licensed, but as soon as you’re ready, I can help you through that process.”

  “Is that a dolphin urn? For ashes?” she asked, pointing at a cremation container fashioned to look like a cresting wave topped by leaping sea creatures.

  “Yeah, we ordered it when Frankie was going through her dolphin phase as a teenager. She thought it was pretty. But it’s been there for ten years, and no one has bought it.”

  “Of course not, it’s like putting an ankle tattoo on cremains,” Margot said, lifting a brow and making Bob snicker.

  “That’s a new one!” he cackled. “You’ll have to share that one with Les. Now we just use it to store extra tissues. And as a conversation piece.”

  She nodded to a door at the rear of the salesroom. “What’s back there?”

  “Oh, uh . . . that’s a sleepin’ cubby. It’s a sort of mini-apartment, a bedroom and bathroom and not much else. It’s between this room and the break room, so it’s convenient,” he said. When Margot pulled a face, he added, “Well, it’s tradition for an apprentice mortician to have an apartment on site when they’re learnin’ the ropes, so they can be on call for body pickups. With us, that’s not really necessary, since everybody lives so close. So, really, it’s just there for when we get called out late at night and don’t feel steady enough to drive back home. At least, it was until your da— Stan moved in. Pretty much full-time, since your mom left. Said it was too quiet at his place.”

  “As opposed to the hustle and bustle of a funeral home?”

  Bob’s answer was interrupted by the appearance of a pale, slender woman just a few years younger than Margot, wearing ripped jeans, purple Converse, and a bright blue shirt with van Gogh’s TARDIS spiraling across the front, under a long white lab coat. Her dark, almost black hair bore matching blue and purple highlights. “Hi, Daddy. I thought I heard you up here.”

  “And this is my Frankie,” Bob said proudly, kissing her cheek. “Frankie, darlin’, this is your cousin Margot. Margot, my daughter, Frankie.”

  “I tried to get everybody to wear name tags, but Mama said they would insult your intelligence,” Frankie told her. Unlike most of the family, Frankie extended her hand for a shake instead of wrapping Margot up in a hug. Margot decided that despite the odd clothes and neon hair, she was going to like Frankie.

  “I would be open to it,” Margot said.

  Frankie grinned. “Dad, I’ve got Miss Barbara downstairs. Uncle Stan said her sister should be comin’ in soon.”

  Bob nodded. Margot swallowed a growing lump in her throat. She tried to clear it away. “Downstairs as in . . .” Margot glanced at the floor, as if she thought it might give way and drop her into a basement filled with nightmares. She stared at Frankie’s lab coat. “So you . . .”

  “I’m the undertaker, yes,” Frankie said. “Fourth generation. And don’t worry, I wear gloves.”

  Margot’s gaze dropped. She hadn’t even realized she’d been rubbing the hand that touched Frankie’s against her slacks. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”

  “Eh, it’s less offensive than a lot of people’s reactions.”

  Margot cleared her throat again, fighting to find a way out of this awkward conversational lull. “Had Miss Barbara been ill for very long?”

  Bob blushed to the roots of his silver hair. “Oh, no. She was in her late sixties and healthy as a horse until the end. And I suppose she died the way she lived.”

  Frankie added cheekily, “Under a thirty-year-old.”

  Margot clamped her jaw to trap the guffaw that wanted to burst out of her mouth.

  “And a thirty-two-year-old,” Bob added, pursing his lips.

  Frankie snickered. “It was a real mess at the scene. Both of Miss Barbara’s companions were trying to claim next of kin, which complicated transport. So Stan was out pretty late.”

  “Sounds like Miss Barbara kept a lot of people out late,” Margot muttered.

  “See?” Bob hooted. “You’re already getting to know the community! Let’s go get you acquainted with the forms and the filing system.”

  “I’d rather make a thousand Y incisions than fill out one form. Back to the basement,” Frankie said. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything, Daddy. Nice to meet you, Cousin Margot.”

  “You too. Sorry about the hand thing.”

  “No problem. We’ll talk after your shift.” She winked at Margot and made for the stairway door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  A little fireplug-shaped woman with brassy blond hair and a bright pink leatherette Bible clutched in her hands waddled through the front door. Frankie walked that much faster to the employees-only area. Margot’s brow lifted. Did Frankie avoid customers as a rule, or this woman in particular?

  Margot watched as the easy humor seemed to slide right off Bob’s face. His back went stiff and he started tugging at his blue-and-red-striped tie.

  “M-Miss Justine,” Bob stammered. “So glad to see you. I mean, not that we’re glad that you’re here. I mean, we’re not glad that your sister died, but we’re glad that we can help.”

  “Well, my sister wouldn’t have wanted anybody else handlin’ her services,” Miss Justine said, staring at Margot through watery red eyes. A flush of unease swept through Margot’s belly, with nowhere to run from this stranger’s grief. But she plastered on her most pleasant, though not inappropriately cheerful, expression. She could do this. This was part of her job. She hadn’t blinked in the face of hostile florists or hysterical knife-wielding omelet chefs. She wouldn’t be scared off by a little old lady with a pink Bible.

  “Margot, sweetheart, this is Justine Phillips, she’s Barbara Lynn Grady’s next of kin,” Bob said. “Miss Justine, this is Margot, you remember? Stan’s girl?”

  Miss Justine’s beady brown eyes went wide and this strange, greedy sort of glow shone through that mist of tears. “Of course I remember. You were such a pretty little thing. And we all remember when your mama, bless her heart, just up and left poor Stan. We always wondered if you’d ever come back.”

  Margot’s expression went from pleasant to blank. “Um, yes, well, I’m glad to see you here. Er, not here, as in I’m happy you’ve lost a loved one, but glad to see you again.”

  Margot pinched her nose. She was off to a wonderful start.

  Miss Justine dabbed at her eyes with a lacy white handkerchief. “I just can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “At least she passed peacefully,” Bob added. Margot’s brows lifted as she remembered Frankie’s comment about Miss Barbara dying sandwiched between two thirtysomethings. Her head whipped toward Bob just as his face flushed red. “I mean, she went the way she would have wanted. I mean—”

  Uncle Bob really did say the worst possible thing when confronted with non–family members. That was even worse than Margot’s comment. Margot stared at Bob, who seemed to be at a loss for words. And whatever words he could come up with probably wouldn’t help. The silence was a palpable thing, filling the room like infernal Jell-O. Margot’s mouth seemed to flap open and shut. And for the first time in years, she couldn’t come up with something clever to say to smoot
h the awkwardness away.

  They both sagged with relief when an adorable old man in a navy suit walked through the door.

  “E.J.J.” Bob sighed. “Miss Justine is here to discuss her sister’s service.”

  “Oh, Justine, we are so sorry for your loss,” he said, his tone just the right balance of welcoming and respectful. He winked at Margot and took Miss Justine’s hands in his.

  “Miss Justine, you come on in here and we’ll get ya taken care of,” E.J.J. continued, guiding her toward the sales desk. “Bob here will bring you the paperwork your sister left behind for her preplanned service. Now, is there anything you need?”

  “Some coffee would be much appreciated,” Justine said with a sniff. “Light and sweet.”

  “I’ll get it!” Eager for any task that would remove her from the awkward scene, Margot moved toward the break room on swift, quiet feet. As she walked out, he heard Justine ask, “Barbara didn’t ask for her granddaughter to sing ‘Amazing Grace,’ now, did she? I love Carly like my own, but she couldn’t carry a tune in a brass bucket.”

  MARGOT LEARNED A lot of things about her family that first day. Uncle Bob kept swear jars stashed all over the funeral home because he had the dirtiest mouth of any family member on the premises. He’d tried to kick the habit since his daughter was a little girl, but his wife had installed the jars six months before, after he challenged her to give up biting her nails. Aunt Leslie’d had a beautiful manicure since spring, while Bob was still dropping F-bombs at the dinner table. So Leslie was using his swear jar contributions to pay for her trailer rental for the state fair this year.

  Duffy waved at her through the window of the office she would share with Bob. It was a welcome rest for eyes overworked by the tiny print on the various forms and procedure manuals. But as soon as a trio of pale men in expensive-looking fishing ensembles joined Duffy, he was all business, escorting them down the dock to their pontoon boat in manly, efficient fashion. Frankie spent most of her day in the basement but popped upstairs at lunchtime to share a sandwich with her father. They were a well-oiled machine, her family, and they were trying their hardest to make her into one of the little cogs. And Margot wasn’t sure how she felt about that yet.