Death leaves a heartache no one can heal,
love leaves a memory no one can steal.
~ Headstone in Ireland
After witnessing Steven’s grief over his family, Brianna’s guilt took a strong choke hold. She called her parents the next day and invited them to visit for the weekend. They hadn’t been down South before, so maybe the time together would be healing for everyone.
Maybe.
They’d opted to drive, having no trust in airplanes after Declan’s crash so many years ago.
She scrubbed bathtubs and countertops Thursday night to prepare for their visit. She’d rather have been on a date with Steven. But he’d not called the entire week. She’d asked for a vacation day Friday. Edwin had been reluctant but she reminded him she’d worked on her day off.
Brianna sat on a kitchen barstool to catch her breath.
“What are you doing? The guest bedroom still needs vacuuming,” Virginia prompted. The bossy ghost was in her element: micromanager of neatness. Brianna wondered if that job came with dental.
“They’re not arriving until tomorrow. I’ll do it later.”
Virginia wrinkled her perky nose. “Come, now. You want your home to look better than usual, don’t you?” She rubbed a finger along the tabletop and frowned, seeming upset her fingers could no longer hold dust to make her point. “My fingers may not show it, but this place is a mess.”
Brianna rolled her eyes. A habit she’d developed since meeting Virginia. They’d been cooped up inside with some recent rainy days, and Virginia had quickly become an obnoxious second mother. And Brianna’s real mother arrived tomorrow.
“Don’t you go rolling your eyes at me,” Virginia said. “In the South, we make things nice for our relatives. What do you plan to do for dinner? Lord knows you can’t cook. How about I tell you how to bake one of my famous grit casseroles?”
Oh god. “Virginia?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I doubt Mom and Dad will like Southern cooking.”
“Hogwash. I’m sure they’ll give it a try.”
Amy, sitting on the stool next to Brianna, tried to help with Brianna’s point. “Mom, Brianna knows her own parents and what they like.”
“I was always the proud cook in the family,” Virginia began, her voice indignant.
“Yes, but you’re ghosts. I don’t know how my parents will feel...”
Virginia stood, mouth open, like someone had slapped her.
“You haven’t told them about us, have you?” Virginia said.
Brianna grabbed a Guinness out of the fridge.
“Do they know you drink that stuff?”
After swallowing a long, chocolate-tasting swig, she responded to Virginia’s madness. “Yes. We’re Irish. They know I drink. So do they.”
“So why haven’t you mentioned us? Are you ashamed?”
Absolutely. The last time she admitted to chatting with ghosts, she wound up in a padded cell. She wasn’t going to revisit the horrors of her past if she could help it.
“I just want a quiet weekend visit with them, Virginia.”
“In other words, make ourselves scarce,” Amy said, likely guessing her mother didn’t get the hint.
Virginia’s rotund cheeks turned hollow, like someone had let the air out of them.
“Fine,” Brianna conceded. “You can help with the cooking. But no grits, please. I’m planning on making several stew recipes. We’re going to relax and enjoy a visit. That’s all.”
James hadn’t shown himself much. Perhaps because Virginia drove him crazy too.
“Please pass the word along to James. While my parents are in town, I’m begging the three of you to lay low,” Brianna said.
“Better get to cleaning, then,” Virginia said, circling back to her original point.
* * *
Brianna’s parents always honked three times when they arrived anywhere. For the longest time, she presumed everyone did the same. Weird stares from friends had proved otherwise.
On Friday morning, three long honks announced their arrival. Brianna sprinted through her house to make sure everything was in order. All cookbooks with grits recipes were put away, the guest room was spotless, and Plato was bathed and brushed and handsome. Preventing him from absorbing outdoor smells and debris had been the hardest task.
Brianna ran outside and hugged her mom’s neck. “Mom, thanks so much for coming.”
“Good to be here, away from the snow.” Her mother walked with a careful tread in her step. Even though she was only sixty, she looked ninety.
“Hello Brianna,” her father said. She gasped for breath when she saw him. His hair had turned white, his eyes from cornflower to opaque blue, like clear water. In those eyes, she saw despair and emptiness, with no hope of anything new. He even still drove the old Chrysler LeBaron he’d bought two years before Declan had died.
“D—Dad.” She held back the tears. “Glad y’all could come.”
He picked up his suitcase, looking more like a random stranger than her father. “You doing okay?”
“Fine. Let me get you both settled in, then we’ll catch up.”
She helped them unpack in the back guest room. Upon returning to the kitchen to fix drinks, something caught her eye. On the glass table was a book: The True South: Why We Should Have Won the Civil War.
“Not funny, Virginia,” Brianna whispered, tucking the book into the closet.
Muffled ghost giggles came from the bathroom. “Still not funny,” Brianna repeated, though she couldn’t help chuckling herself.
An hour later, Brianna poured Guinness into three frosted glasses.
“Here you go.” She handed a beer to each of her parents.
“Humph,” Virginia said, shooting a judgmental glare into the den.
Leave me alone with my parents.
“How are things in Boston?” Brianna asked.
Her mother sipped her drink, cradling it in her feeble hands. “Uncle Jack broke up with Candace.”
Brianna situated herself on the recliner, offering them the couch. “How’s he holding up?”
Her mother shrugged. Every movement was in slow motion, the weariness evidently from carrying the world on her shoulders.
“He’s coping. It’s sad for us too. With her mafia connections, we never had to wait for a table. Now those perks are gone.”
Her father gulped down his pint. “Candace’s name had power to get the best seats in the house.” He said it proudly, like mob connections were an envied social status.
“I told you the damn Yankee was trouble,” Virginia said.
Brianna choked on her beer and had to clear her throat. Damn ghosts. She needed them to lay low, leave her alone. Her parents thought she was insane once. She wouldn’t put it past them to think the same again.
“What about the rest of the family?” Brianna asked, steering the conversation away from mafia princesses.
“Aunt Nadine is taking cooking classes, finally,” her mother said. “That woman could burn water.”
“You must take after her,” Virginia quipped.
Brianna glared toward the kitchen. “Enough, damn it.”
“Who are you talking to?” her mother asked.
Crap. Too much conversation with too many people.
“Nobody,” Brianna said.
If her parents heard her cursing out ghosts, they’d drag her home to Boston—and right back to her last psychiatrist.
Her father looked around the room. “Your house is cozy, and Savannah seems nice. At least here, you don’t have to shovel snow.” He swallowed hard. “Declan always said Savannah was a beautiful place.” Tears formed in her father’s eyes.
Her mom shot him a dirty look. “You promised not to bring him up.”
“I miss my son, Irene. Forgive me for having a broken heart, damn it.”
“I loved my son, too. I certainly never wanted him to join the military.”
Like a bad tennis match, Brianna watched them bicker over someone who’d been dead fifteen years.
“Let me get you another beer,” Brianna suggested, grabbing their half-full glasses.
When she returned, her parents sat on opposite ends of the couch. The two feet of cushioned space between them spoke volumes.
“We can see some sights tomorrow and catch up. I’ve missed both of you.”
She hoped her agenda would end their arguing, but it only brought an excruciating silence. Lifeless as the son they’d buried, her parents remained seated, saying nothing.
Hello? This was why she’d left Boston. She was alive, their daughter, and she was sitting right in front of them. A living, breathing person, though right now they never would have noticed.
“I’m going to put in a movie,” Brianna said. She couldn’t take the silence any longer. Two hours concentrating on an electronic box would ease the discomfort over the pink elephant sitting among them—Declan’s memory.
“I’m tired, honey. I’m going to turn in,” her mother said.
Brianna breathed a sigh of relief. If one of her parents was in another room, that would dissipate the arguing. “Night, Mom. Thanks again for coming to visit.”
“Sean, are you coming?”
“I’ll stay up with Brianna,” her dad said. “Be there soon.”
“Okay,” her mother said and went to apply her face cream, a nightly ritual since Brianna was little. Brianna knew the cold cream was terrific at removing makeup, but it didn’t make a dent in the pain.
“Anything specific you want to watch, Dad?”
He sipped his beer, smiling at a moment’s peace. “Whatever you want is fine.”
Figuring he’d hate estrogen-filled chick flicks, she chose National Treasure. For the next two hours, they let television hues wash over them, an attempt to bond while looking in the same direction, deliberately avoiding the pain injected into their lives.