betrayal of Daddy to say it, even though in all ways it’s true. “He taught me everything I know.”
“Do you remember anything now?” George asks.
“I think I’m starting to.” Only that I’m going to ruin Cleo for hurting George.
“And you really don’t know what happened to you?”
I know exactly what happened to me. I was buried alive and I’ve been squatting in a rich girl’s house for four years, completely alone in the world. And I have to figure out what you and Eli have done and make you not hate me so I can save your asses.
I shake my head. “Nope. It’s all a mystery.”
“Doesn’t it kill you not knowing what happened to your parents?” George bites into a candy bar. “If my mom disappeared, I wouldn’t stop until I had answers.”
“Yeah, well, unlike your mom, my parents aren’t exactly worth finding.” I gesture to the true-crime documentaries littering her hard-drive. “I can see you love to play detective.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” George grins. “I was the one who figured out what Eli’s dad was doing.”
“What?” I plump the pillow behind my head. “Okay, I need to hear this.”
“You know my dad died four years ago.”
“Fuck. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” Why does the world have to suck so bad for the best people?
“Yeah, me too.” George looks away. “Anyway, after Walter’s reality TV show, all the showbiz guys bought pre-paid funeral plans from Memories of the Hart. It was kind of a joke but also, it was like a cool thing to say in the industry, being able to ‘go out in style.’ Dad decided to get a plan for all of us. He got this horror package with a fake coffin that was rigged to spring open during the funeral ceremony and a skeleton pops out and starts dancing. It was so him. So, anyway, we have his body delivered to the funeral home for cremation, and as we’re making funeral plans Walter tells us there’s a backlog in the crematorium, and we might not have his ashes ready in time for the funeral.
“‘It’s no problem,’ he says, with all his Southern charm. ‘This happens all the time. What we do is give you a decorative urn to use in the ceremony, and we’ll get those ashes to you as soon as possible.’ It’s shit, but you know, that’s the price you pay for booking the most popular funeral director in the city. Dad wanted Walter Hart and we didn’t have the money to go somewhere else.
“So we have the funeral and it’s sad and for a while, I’m busy helping Mom and trying to get through school and being sad, and then one day I realize it’s been months and we haven’t heard anything about Dad’s ashes. I call Memories of the Hart and got passed around call center operators in Kazakstan. So then I go down to the funeral home to talk to someone in person, and they tell me his ashes aren’t ready. At this point I’m annoyed,” she grins. I grin back; I can’t even imagine George annoyed. “I might have suggested that I’d come back there with a police officer and fire up the oven myself, since it was clearly such a hassle. I think I frightened the secretary. She had a whispered conversation with someone over the phone, then came back and said if I returned on Friday, they’ll move them up the priority list and I’d be able to take him home.
“So I go back on Friday, and they have no idea who I am. A different secretary goes into the back room. She’s gone a long time. When she comes back, she hands me a shopping bag with a small round container inside.” George makes a circle with her fingers. “It’s about the size of a pot of hand cream.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. It’s so small I could fit a whole murdered boy band into one decorative urn. But I figure, they’re the funeral directors, they must know. I mean, heaps of stuff is different in real life than it is on TV. Maybe that’s only how many ashes you get out of a person? So I bring it home to Mom and we pop his ashes in our urn and forget about it.
“Then, one day, I’m at my aunt’s house and she’s got my grandfather’s urn on the mantel, and I decide to take a peek because…” she shrugs. The grinning skulls on her hoodie bounce.