Page 3 of Mourner for Hire
VADA
My headnearly smacks the steering wheel as I slam on the brakes. The old highway is slick with October rain, and I half-expect my bald tires to skid—but somehow, they hold.
The highway is making an abrupt slowdown that quickly transitions into a standstill. The screen on my GPS quickly turns from green to yellow to orange to red to…
“Burgundy? That’s not good,” I mutter, thankful my meeting isn’t until tomorrow morning.
I tilt my head back on the headrest as the memory of the accident surfaces—hazy and fragmented, like emotion strung through static. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to push the visions away. If I let them in, even for a second, my brain will start digging for the rest, only to hit the same blank wall. It’s the only memory I have of my childhood.
My therapist says it’s a trauma response called dissociative amnesia, which is just a fancy word for inconvenience.
I crane my neck and see nothing but brake lights. It’s a complete standstill. It’s clear I won’t be going anywhere for a while, so I put my pretty black Volkswagen Beetle in park and take a deep breath. The truck behind me honks, and I sit on my hand so I don’t flip himthe bird.
It’s shocking how, from the heights of his suped-up truck, he still can’t see the line of cars completely stopped, nor does he have the ability to be a decent human being.
I narrow my eyes in my rearview mirror, noticing his flailing hands and self-absorbed nature.
Wonderful.
Traffic is one of the best ways to read people—it’s very telling. I love that. Not because I enjoy the adrenaline of road rage, but ever since I lost my mother in a car accident when I was eight, every accident I come across is met with unhinged empathy.
It may just be a fender bender, or it could be a little girl in the backseat who doesn’t realize her entire world is about to change. Her mother is dead, and her next of kin will be called in an hour to pick her up from the hospital. She’ll sit at the hospital for an hour with a social worker until they finally get a hold of her father in Seattle and he drives down to pick her up.
Even though up until that point, he’d been a stranger to her, he’ll raise her the best he can. Though his best only created muddled memories. She’ll grow up eating microwaved dinners for Thanksgiving without a breath uttered about family. Her dad won’t speak of her late mother, and she’ll live a lot of her life wondering. Wondering about her mother. Wondering about what could have been. Wondering why no one came to the funeral. Wondering why she couldn’t stay in this small beach town. Wondering why she can’t remember anything beyond that in her childhood.
At least, that’s what happened to me.
I was born here in Shellport but had to live with my dad after my mother died. We lived in Seattle, Portland, and Denver. Bouncing from city to city and job to job. Dad never wanted me to begin with, but he was my only next of kin and took me in with a reluctant pledge to always do the right thing. There were rumblings behind closed doors of my mother’s friends wanting to take me in, but that’s a distant memory. One I often wonder if I made up to replace everything else I’ve forgotten.
I don’t remember much from my childhood. Just fuzzy memories of the beach and a second-grade teacher named Mrs. Nettles, so returning doesn’t feel like a big deal. It isn’t profoundly emotional. It’s been over two decades since I lost her. I miss her in the sense that there are memories I should have been able to make as a child growing up. It’s as if a piece of my heart was scooped out when I was a little girl and I just learned to live with the hole.
Death is the absence of someone. But really, death is an unwelcome houseguest.
Death also pays my bills, which is exactly why I’ve returned to this town twenty years after my mother’s death.
I inhale and grip the steering wheel, watching the enraged lunatic hop out of his lifted truck to examine the long line of stopped cars from the center barrier while rain quickly soaks his gray hoodie. I wait for him to come stalking toward me.
He doesn’t, though. Thank God.
He takes in a deep breath, wipes a brow, and gets back in his truck.
As it turns out, my life won’t end in road rage today.
I exhale the tension from having an angry man just one car length away from me and check the GPS again. The minutes until I reach my destination of Rocky’s Motel are steadily climbing as daylight quickly disappears. I’ve been on the road for two hours, and I realize that’s how long it will be until I can relieve my bladder.
Shellport is only two hours from the city, but since leaving Jeremiah’s funeral, I’ve had a sixteen-ounce latte and twenty ounces of water because I am a part of the hydration generation. My bladder will not make it. The barrier between East and West traffic prevents me from flipping a U-turn, but there’s a sketchy bar perched on the hill on the right side of the road. The drab, concrete exterior makes it appear prison-like, and I snort when I read the name of the bar. Daylight.
It does not fit the bar’s aesthetic whatsoever. Small towns can be weird.
I’m sure it will be dirty and questionable, but it will at least have working plumbing. I pull onto the shoulder and drive several yards before pulling into a very empty strip of parking, leaving the traffic jam behind me.
I jump out of the car, the rain pelting my skin, and as soon as I stand, I realize how desperately I have to pee.
I start running toward the entry, fully aware I look like a kindergartener in a funeral dress running to the toilet. I follow the neon beer signs to the side of the building and through a questionable gate and slam straight into a solid wall of man.
“Oh! Sorry,” I mutter, bouncing back as he grabs me by both elbows to steady me under the awning.
“You good?” he asks, looking down at me with eyes the color of honey. Though, that is the only sweet aspect of his appearance.
