The funeral home had no problem incinerating my brother’s body, but they drew the line at dividing his remains into eight equal parts.
Apparently, that’s not part of their “Your Dearly Beloved Is Dead” package.
Which leaves me with this little scoop meant for flour, this glass container meant for leftovers, and this scale meant for arrogant chefs to measure out their ingredients to a decimal of an ounce, sorting all that’s left of Josh into even sections like some corpse drug dealer in the kitchen of Dom’s childhood home.
My next shovel is slightly more aggressive.
“Careful,” a deep voice murmurs.
My body locks up, every joint frozen with offense.
“This is not the time to micromanage me.” I glare across the kitchen table into a set of unyielding brown eyes.
After our graveyard spat, I can’t even manage sarcasm. There’s too much fury coursing through me.
Eight states with Dominic Perry at my side.
Damn you, Josh Sanderson. Why must you torture me even from the afterlife?
Dom drops his gaze to the container he’s carefully applying a lid to before writing a state name across the red top. We bought the high-quality Rubbermaid on our way here. Only the best reusable storage containers for my brother.
Dom, who has shucked off the jacket of his funeral suit and rolled up the sleeves on his dress shirt, is currently handling the part of Josh that’s going to Kansas.
Kansas. What the hell are we going to do in Kansas?
I guess we’ll find out when we get to the cryptic coordinates on the envelope. It’s not enough for us to just step over the state line and toss my brother into the wind. He left specific instructions.
This is so Josh: making a game out of his final wishes. And if it were any other situation, and my partner any other person, I would be intrigued by the process of following clues and discovering the answers to his puzzles. Josh used to create scavenger hunts for me on random holidays. Valentine’s Day…St. Patrick’s Day…National Hot Dog Day…
“To get you out of the house,” he said. Admittedly, I was a homebody growing up, always worried too much pollen would set off an asthma attack. Instead of taking the risk, I would retreat to my bedroom, where Florence could easily forget I existed. There I’d curl up in my window seat with a book, reading about someone else’s adventures. Josh wanted me to have a few of my own, even if it only meant I ended up at the local Wawa where he’d be waiting with a bag of sour-cream-and-onion chips and a Dr Pepper.
I can imagine my brother sketching this all out, seeing it as another series of quests for his introverted sister.
Did Josh not trust me to go on my own? Did he think I needed Dom spurring me on to finish this final task?
I’m not that travel-averse. Josh took me on a few trips over the years. And I have a list of places I’d like to visit. Someday. In the future, when the timing makes sense.
I have the luxury of time, unlike my brother. Guilt rubs against my skin like sandpaper on a sunburn.
Josh already visited a lot of the huge tourist states like New York and California and Louisiana. But he focused most of his traveling internationally, which is why there is still a collection of states he never touched. There are a few interesting ones on the list, but others I’m not looking forward to.
Oh, wait. That’s right. I’m not looking forward to any of them.
Because at every single destination, I’ll have Mr. Responsible Asshole by my side.
“Maddie—”
“Why do you need to say my name?” I cut Dom off. “I’m the only person in this room. Who else would you be talking to? Just say what you want to say.” I’m being petty and argumentative, I know. But his face brings it out of me.
After achieving the spectacular feat of making this day even worse, Dom informed me that Josh’s ashes were at his parents’ house. Apparently, my brother arranged to have himself shipped to the Perry family rather than my mother.
Good choice.
Cecilia probably would have made Josh into diamonds or something weird she could wear in photos.
Dom said my mother never asked for them, so he didn’t feel the need to give Josh to her.
Plus, the will specified I was to spread the remains.
Me…and Dom.
Hell, I hate even thinking about us together, much less physically sitting in the same space as him.
But we need to converse to figure out next steps.
Travel plans. Traveling together.
I want this over with. I was ready to fly back to Seattle and say goodbye to the East Coast and my past forever. Too many people on this side of the country have left me. Now I’m the one determined to do the leaving.
But turns out I’m not done here yet, so instead of hiding in my hotel room with a bottle of gin until my flight tomorrow, I let Dom talk me into coming here, our old neighborhood, where his mom and my grandmother still have houses. We’re at the former because I would forever like to avoid the latter.
This kitchen holds mostly good memories. Gorging on Mrs. Perry’s pancakes every Sunday morning. Putting together LEGO sets with the twins on rainy days. Josh making us grilled cheese sandwiches as an after-school snack while Dom helped me with my homework on the days when Aunt Florence kicked us out of the house.
I shove that last recollection away. Sure, Dom was nice to me at one point in my life, back when treating me like a kid was fine.
But I grew up, and I guess that confused his cold robot brain.
His jaw tenses, then relaxes. “Fine. I think we should start with Delaware.”
“Delaware? That’s one of the states? But it’s like…next door.” We lived in Pennsylvania our whole childhood. How did Josh never pop over to Delaware? I’ve even made it down there.
Dom sets one of the envelopes between us.
Delaware
38°42’55.868” N
75°4’54.433” W
My brother’s handwriting is clear. He wants a piece of himself dropped off in the First State.
“This is Rehoboth.” Dom taps the longitude and latitude. “On the beach.”
“Isn’t looking up the coordinates cheating?”
He narrows his eyes. “How else are we supposed to find our way there?”
“Use a compass and a map?” I shrug, my eyes on the scale as I measure out another 13.25 ounces of ashes. Josh, previously an average-sized guy, now only weighs six pounds, ten ounces. Divided eight ways, that gives us roughly 13.25.
There’s nothing in his letter that stipulates his ashes be spread evenly in each state, but if this is the last task I’m going to complete for my brother, I’m not going to half-ass it.
“We’d be roaming around Alaska for the rest of our lives that way.” Dom holds up another envelope.
Alaska
62°44’9.406” N
151°16’42.517” W
The creamy parchment has an extra note the others don’t.
Save me for last.
“But if you want to use a compass,” Dom keeps speaking, “spend weeks wandering around a state with me—”
“Google works.” I cut him off and pass over the seventh section of Josh. “Rehoboth is only a couple of hours from here.” A glance toward the window shows the warm glow of early afternoon. We still have daylight, and I never made it to the funeral bar, which means I’m completely sober. “I agree. Let’s do it first. Let’s do it now.”
His hand pauses in the middle of writing, leaving the lid reading North Dak-.
“You want to go now.” Dom does this infuriating thing where he says something that should be a question, but his tone makes the phrase sound like a statement. Like a demand. Like he came up with the idea first.
Or like what you just said was so ridiculous he needs to repeat it back for you so you can hear the nonsense of your own words.
I don’t know which this is. It’s been almost a decade since I spent every moment mooning over the subtle fluctuations of Dom’s voice, picking out the thoughts hiding behind his stern gaze.
Now I don’t bother trying.
“Yes,” I deadpan. “I want to go now.” The sooner we get to those coordinates, the sooner I hear from my brother again. I agreed to play Josh’s game, but my fingers twitch knowing that his voice—even if it’s just in writing—is inches from me in the collection of envelopes.
And this way I only have to see Dom seven more times.
Less if we can lump a few states together, which I plan to.
The man watches me, and I try not to fidget under his silent scrutiny. And when I do fidget, I blame my scratchy tights and not the fact that my body always seems to want to lean toward and away from him at the same time.
Dom doesn’t answer right away, quietly finishing the process of portioning my brother. Only when we have the Rubbermaid containers stacked in a box, the table cleared, and I’m hovering by my bag, ready to escape his presence, does he finally speak.
“Okay. Let’s go now.” Dom grabs his keys, picks up the box with all that’s left of Josh, and heads toward the front door.
We’re really doing this. We’re really going to play Josh’s postmortem game.
After my mind fully grasped the wildness of the task, I half expected the responsible, no-nonsense accountant to say there was no reason to follow it to the letter. That the outlandish request was extreme, and we could find a practical solution.
When we were teenagers, Dom was always the reasonable voice in the face of Josh’s outrageous antics. He couldn’t always talk my brother down, but sometimes he managed it.
Then there were the times Josh was more persuasive, and Dom ended up playing sidekick in a senseless activity he never would’ve chosen himself.
This is one of those times.
My brother’s death must have been the ultimate debate winner because Dom is acting like Josh’s wishes make perfect sense. Here he is, ready to drive a state over to spread only a fraction of my brother’s remains with a woman who hates him.
Hell, maybe he hates me, too.
Most likely I just annoy him while also making him feel guilty, which somehow hurts worse.
Part of me is furious that Josh foisted this task on me without my say-so. That he’s using my grief to make me go along with one of his tricks.
But then there’s another open, bleeding wound in my heart that wants to do anything possible to connect with my brother again, even if it means playing his silly game.
When we get to the beach, we can open the envelope. I can read another thing he wrote.
Will the message be for me? For Dom? For both of us?
But Dom and I aren’t an us.
Maybe for a few weeks—years ago—we were.
A silly, naive bundle of days that meant too much to me and nothing to him.
While I’ve always hated the idea of being Dom’s dirty secret, I am glad that Josh never knew what happened between his best friend and me, and that he never had to choose sides. I’m not sure how I would have survived if Josh had picked someone else over me. Not after Dom already had.
Which reminds me…
As much as the words twist in my throat on their way out, I manage to ask the question that’s been quietly nagging me since the moment Dom slipped into his car at the same time as me in the funeral parking lot. When he drove away from the wake alone.
“Don’t you need to check in with Rosaline?” Even if the two are fighting or whatever, the guy should at least send her a text. “We’ll be getting back late. The missus might worry.”
But if you say your wife is coming with us on this errand, I’m out, I silently vow.
I tried to avoid them both in the weeks leading up to Josh’s death, dodging them in the hospital hallways and ducking out of my brother’s room to go work whenever one of them showed up for a visit. I thought of it as trading shifts so Josh was never alone. But really, I was being a coward, hiding from the reminders of how I wasn’t good enough.
Josh is gone now, and his final request only demanded I spend time with Dom. I refuse to suffer through this alongside the happy couple.
Dom pauses in the kitchen doorway, then slowly turns, and I watch his thick brows drop low, his expression confused.
“Didn’t anyone tell you?” His tone has a touch of incredulity.
There’s something big. Something I should know that I don’t.
Something everyone else knows.
I cross my arms over my chest and glare, not liking that I’m in the dark, even though I firmly put myself here by never wanting to hear anything about Dom when I talked to Josh.
His gaze flicks down to my brother’s ashes, and I brace for what comes out of his mouth next.
“Rosaline and I are divorced.”