Pretty Plastic

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I’d always been terrible at deciphering a map. It wasn’t something that had ever concerned me—there was always GPS—but now, with a numb ass and even number toes, I stood at a grave marked Stevenson.

I didn’t even know a Stevenson.

I crouched, using the stone to lean against, and slipped the map from the pocket of my coat to study it again. It didn’t help.

“I think this thing is misprinted.” I may not have been able to read a map, but I had my pride.

Jonathan snorted—as if my brother had any room to judge—and I turned to find him sprawled on the cold ground, memorial stones and statuary casting odd shadows around him in the waning afternoon light.

Despite the not particularly late hour, nerves churned my stomach. Cemeteries did that to me now. A remnant of my short, bloody acquaintance with Marcus Gråsson.

“Are you sure we’re even in the right cemetery?”

“The paper said Mount Olive.”

Jonathan sat up, batting dead grass and snow from his hair as he considered. “Who’s to say there’s only one Mount Olive?”

I was. We were talking about a cemetery, not a McDonald’s.

Pushing myself up, I walked back out to the paved road that wound through the collection of stones and markers, seemingly without much forethought, in search of the signpost that had brought us to this particular spot, and cursed myself for not waiting for a day when Vic could have come with me. But I had seen the death notice and had been compelled to search my brother down in the house.

“Mom and Dad are both dead.”

He’d looked up from a book, blinked a few times and shrugged. “May they burn in hell.”

It wasn’t the reaction I’d been expecting. It seemed harsh, even for Jonathan.

“Don’t say that.”

“And why not?” He closed his book, dropping his bare feet to the floor, and gave me a questioning look.

“Because they were our parents.”

“They were no longer my parents the day they kicked you out.” He hopped up from the couch, moving to slip whatever he’d been reading back onto one of the library shelves. “No, I take that back. They were no longer my parents the day they stopped talking to you.”

I had been sixteen.

“Come to the cemetery with me,” I said. He scowled. “Please. If I can forgive them, so can you.”

Not that I’d forgiven them. I’d only been a child when I’d come out to my family, an impulse I would have been better off ignoring. But once it was out, the damage was done and there was no going back.

No, I hadn’t forgiven them.

I found the sign just as Jonathan found me.

“I think it’s gotten turned.” He reached up, tapping the embossed metal plate, and we watched as the 1886 twirled around the pole. “Helpful.”

I looked down at the map again and, with more confidence than I felt, made a decision. “There. If that section isn’t it, it must be this one on the other side.”

We crossed the pavement and slid our way down a steep incline and a narrow strip of lawn wedged between a mostly frozen ornamental pond and a large stand of naked trees, reading stones and calling the names out to each other.

“Olsen.”

“Osbourne.”

“Glasscock.”

“Glasscock?”

Wilted Christmas decorations gave the place a more somber feel than I think it would have had otherwise. There was something inherently depressing about dead poinsettia and damp crepe-paper Santas.

Around the bend of trees, the section widened out, stretched long, and the two of us cursed in unison. Maybe coming back would be better. The weird compulsion that brought me here had drained away in the thirty minutes since we’d driven through the Mount Olive gates, and I didn’t see it getting a second wind.

“I think someone’s watching us.”

I looked around, finding a small congregation of mourners in the distance, a tent erected above a casket. I could hear the rhythmic murmuring of a voice, but I couldn’t understand what it was saying.

While our clumsy approach had certainly drawn attention, I thought my brother was being a bit dramatic.

“Not there. There. Old guy in the Stetson.” Jonathan nodded behind me, and I turned. Sure enough, a man bundled in a long, tweed coat and wearing a black cowboy hat stared at the two of us. Instead of looking away once he’d been discovered, he waved us over.

I wanted to ignore him—and not only because of the hat—but Jonathan had already started walking his way.

“Minnick,” he called out, whether because of my hesitation or some other reason, I didn’t know, but when I looked over to him again, he indicated the ground at his feet. “Your parents.”

The last words were delivered in one of those loud whispers that did no one any good, as if he’d suddenly become concerned about the mourners a few hundred yards away, but not that concerned.

With little choice, I reluctantly followed Jonathan over, the ground crunching loudly under my feet.

“You’re the Minnick boys. I can’t believe it.” He grabbed at my bare hand, shaking it with his gloved one. “Who is who? No, no...let me guess.” He stared back and forth between the two of us with intense blue eyes, eyes that looked younger than the lines on his face suggested. “My god, I remembered you boys but it’s been so long. I didn’t recall you looking so much alike. It was twins, right? Not triplets?”

“Twins.” Jonathan supplied the answer before I could, but shoved his balled-up fists in his pockets when the stranger let go of me and offered him a hand. “I’m Jonathan, he’s Christopher. And you’re Mr. Utterson.”

He had always been better with names and faces than I was.

“Yes.” He beamed at my brother. “I’m your...well, I was a friend of your parents. And their attorney.”

Mr. Utterson patted at his pockets, eventually fishing out a business card and held it out until my brother took it.

“Longman, Green and Utterson,” Jonathan read out loud, then passed the card over to me.

“I’m very sorry about your parents.” He blinked a few times, and where he’d seemed excited to see us before, he now appeared downright broken. “It was so sudden. You have my deepest sympathy for the loss.”

Neither of us said anything. What was there to say? We hadn’t spoken to either of them in more than fifteen years. It felt wrong, somehow, to take this man’s sympathy. It didn’t feel like we had any claim to it.

“Well, thank you for the assistance, Mr. Utterson.” I was ready to end the conversation, and if he wouldn’t leave, I would.

“Of course.” He straightened, morphing from mourning friend to attorney in a single sigh of breath, pulling out a second business card and handing it to my brother again. I slipped the one Jonathan had given to me into my pocket. “So, boys, since James and Patricia’s deaths, I’ve been over their papers. Things like the individual wills, last wishes—“

“There is nothing of theirs we want.” Jonathan didn’t bother to hide the anger from his tone. “Find the next asshole on your list.”

“It’s not that.” Mr. Utterson waved the anger away dismissively. “There’s nothing to leave. Less than nothing.”

Jonathan and I stole glances at each other. Nothing? Our parents had died penniless? Surely not. What about the horses? The stable? f**k, what had happened to the beach house?

“It’s taken some sorting, there’s been...confusion over...well, confusion. But I have an envelope. One addressed to you both.”

Jonathan shook his head, no. I stayed quiet.

“Think about it,” Mr. Utterson said, tugging at his gloves and rearranging his scarf. “God knows, your parents weren’t perfect. I understand that. But please, keep my cards and when you change your minds, call for an appointment.”

“We’ll think about it,” I said. Jonathan let out an exasperated sigh at my words.

“Thank you.” He stood there another moment staring between the two of us. “I’m so glad to see that you are both safe and sound.”

With that, he marched off, down a far bank and around an ugly brown sedan that idled half in and half out of the grass, to his own sleek, black coupé.

“Well, that was unexpected.”

I nodded, finally turning to study the marker pressed into the newly rolled-out sod. Their names were there, and dates.

Simple. Unassuming.

Nothing like our parents at all.

***

We were both quiet on the way home, so wrapped up in our thoughts, the miles disappeared behind us with neither of us taking much notice. We’d reached the last stretch of our trip—a curving, narrow road with forest pushing in from both sides—when Jonathan finally spoke.

“Are you going to ask Vic?”

“Ask Vic what?”

He didn’t dignify the question with an answer. We both knew what he was talking about. “He’d do it. He’d try, anyway. For you, he’d do anything.”

I thought about that, stealing a quick glance at where my brother sat in the passenger seat. He’d reclined the chair, lying back with his eyes closed, his mouth relaxed. He looked like he could have been sleeping. Or dead. But, of course, he was neither. “He probably would.”

But I had no plan to ask him.

When Vic and I had met, three years ago now, he had seen me at my worst. I’d been admitted to Lackington Hughes Memorial Hospital, a suicide thwarted by a nosey employee—bless her—after Jonathan’s death. And still, he had sought me out. Had tried to woo me.

Even after it had all fallen apart, Jonathan had been his gift to me. My brother, living and breathing, if a little worse for wear. Some men promised you the stars, mine reanimated a corpse.

God, that was hot.

“I don’t think you should.”

I reached over, touching his hand where it rested on his thigh.

“I know.” And I did. If my struggles with coming to terms with who I was, my place in the world, were difficult, Jonathan’s must be crushing. After I had died, I’d only been in the ground for six months. He had been in the ground more than two years.