Page 2 of The Fantastic Fluke

I tucked the card into my jacket pocket and took the box of ashes from him when he held it out. “Thank you. For everything.”

“It’s what we’re here for.”

He walked with me out into the central hall, where people were gathering for a different service. A real one, I supposed, where the dead person had friends and family who would miss them.

Before he turned to join the people at that service, he stopped next to me. “You were a good son.”

For the first time since my father’s cancer diagnosis, I felt my eyes prickle, hot with unshed tears. He couldn’t know that. I’d told the man I hated him at his own funeral. The closest thing my father would get to a eulogy was me whining about how I hated him, and here was this near stranger assuring me I was a good son.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said with a secretive smile. “But you paid for it. And you showed up.”

It felt like the bare minimum, but in the moment, I decided to accept it. Needed to accept it, maybe. I inclined my head to him. “Thank you.”

I turned and stepped out the front door into the chill fall wind, and any threat of tears dried.

For a moment, I stood there on the curb, eyes squeezed shut and breathing deep. The chirp of a car alarm grabbed my attention, and I opened my eyes in time to see—and dodge—the man with the key fob in his hand, looking back at his car instead of forward at me. He stopped with one foot on the curb and one in midair, comically windmilling his arms for a second before he caught his balance.

He glanced down at the box in my arms and his eyes went wide. “Oh gods, am I late? Lilly Adler?”

I shook my head and jerked a thumb in the direction of the front door. “Wrong person. They’re just gathering in there.”

He breathed a sigh of relief, then seemed to remember that the box in my hands had once been a person. He took half a step back, once again almost losing his balance and falling backward. Without another word, he ducked around me and headed for the door of the funeral home.

Tucking the box under my arm, I pulled out my phone to check the time. I was going to miss the last bus. That figured. I’d half expected it when I’d scheduled with the funeral home but after all, your father only dies once.

The walk home was only a few miles, but walking alone at night, in a badly fitting suit, carrying my dead father’s ashes... was kind of awful. I thought about downloading a rideshare app for about half a second but dismissed it. I didn’t have money to burn, and it was only a few miles.

In the dark.

At night.

Through a less than savory part of town.

If anyone attacked me, I did have a big blunt object to hit them with. No doubt Dad wouldn’t appreciate being considered a weapon, but if it came down to him or me, I was gonna pick me. I didn’t think of myself as a selfish person, but living with John Bradford had taught me that if I didn’t look out for myself, no one else was going to do it.

Less than a block later I had to stop to take off my jacket. I ran my cuff along my brow, embarrassingly damp, and took a few deep breaths. My lungs weren’t burning, and I didn’t have a stitch in my side, but I was walking, for fuck’s sake. I shouldn’t have to be breathing deep from walking a few dozen yards.

Yeah, fine, I was pretty out of shape. People thought if you didn’t have a car you were more likely to walk places and be fit, but at least for me, that just wasn’t true. I didn’t have a car, so I took the bus. Or more often, I stayed home.

Sitting at home, reading a book, eating macaroni and cheese, and going to bed early—that was the life.

The life of a constipated octogenarian, my best friend, Beez, told me regularly, not the life of a single nearly-thirty-year-old who didn’t want to die alone, covered in cheese.

That sounded pretty okay to me. Relationships were dangerous and not worth the risk. Maybe I’d get a cat someday if I decided I was willing to clean a litter box. That was more than enough company.

The shop was closer to the funeral home than my house, I thought to myself about three blocks in. I was still trying—and failing—to find a way to walk that didn’t make the ill-fitting pants slowly climb up my ass crack. Instead, I had to stop every few steps and yank the fabric down.

If I took a left on Starling Lane, I could be at the shop in ten minutes. There was a couch there that was long enough to sleep on. An old, kind of uncomfortable couch.

I glanced down at the box of... Dad... and shook my head. Nope. I wasn’t facing that tonight.

Plus sleeping on that old couch was likely to make me feel like the octogenarian Beez was always accusing me of being. I wasn’t sure thirty-year-olds were supposed to be exhausted all the time, but maybe I was just ahead of the curve on the whole aging thing.

Besides, if I slept in the store, I’d miss breakfast, since there was never any food in the shop. Lunch too, since I always packed that in the morning before—

Shit. I’d used the last of the milk on my cereal that morning. Was there bread left in the house for peanut butter and jelly? I sighed and rolled my neck, trying to release the sudden tension gathering there.

Maybe I had some ramen.

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