Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

brAM

As soon as Aunt Kitty mentioned Lilith’s last name, I wish I could crawl under the bar top. Here I am interrogating this poor girl and her parents died less than a month ago. I only met Dorothea and Irving a few times, but the loss of them rocked our little mountain town. Dorothea Sharpe was one of my mom’s closest friends. Both Mom and Aunt Kitty attended the funeral in Maine. The diner was closed for the longest stretch of time since my grandfather opened its doors because there weren’t enough servers to keep it open.

Tourists are a drop in the bucket in Magnolia Ridge, but people carpooled and rented vans to drive up to Maine to be there for the services. Suffice to say, Dorothea and Irving left their mark on Magnolia Ridge. In the weeks that followed the tragic car accident that took both of their lives, I heard countless stories of their kindness and generosity. Mixed in with everyone’s grief was genuine concern for Lilith.

“Does my mom know you’re here?” I ask her.

“I don’t know who your mom is,” she answers. “But I doubt it. I didn’t tell very many people I was coming.”

“Clara,” I tell her. “My mom’s Clara Wilde.”

Her eyes grow wide with recognition when I drop my mother’s name. After all, it had been my childhood home they’d stayed in the first few summers they came down. Lilith Sharpe spent two weeks every summer sleeping in my bed. That is, until my parents’ divorce settlement required them to sell the house. My mom, brother, and I landed in a small two-bedroom apartment that barely contained the three of us and all our belongings. So, from that point on, the Sharpes rented one of the summer houses on the lake when they came to town.

My mother remained close to all of them over the years. My brother and I always seemed to miss them though. When we were younger it was because we spent the summers with our dad. After high school, we both enlisted in the military. While I served out my term and came back home, Cliffe decided to make a career out of it. And, now working as the overnight groundskeeper for Magnolia Ridge Cemetery, I barely see the light of day.

“Holy shit,” Lilith curses under her breath. “You’re Bram. Clara’s Bram. I’ve heard so much about you that I feel like I know you and your brother too, but obviously we’ve never met. Well, until now, of course.”

Despite the fact, as Lilith said, we’ve never met, I feel like I know her through the stories and photos my mother has shown me over the years. She didn’t have a hoop in her nose, her arms covered in tattoos, and hot pink hair in any of the photographs though. I guess that was just enough to throw me for a loop earlier.

“I like your shirt.” I nod to the Ghostface graphic tee she’s wearing.

“It was my dad’s.” She smiled. “I basically moved both of my parents’ wardrobes into my closet. I think the last time I wore something of my own was the funeral.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” I say. “I only met your parents a few times. For a long time, they were just my mom’s friends who sent the best birthday and Christmas gifts. I don’t know how they did it, but every single year, whatever they sent was always my favorite gift. Anyway, they were really good to my mom. I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but just know they made a lot of lives in Magnolia Ridge better just by being themselves.”

Lilith’s eyes are misty and I worry I might have overstepped by talking about her parents. It certainly wasn’t my intent to make her cry.

“It was actually your mom that gave me the idea to visit,” Lilith says with a small smile. She apologizes as she reaches for a napkin and wipes her eyes before continuing. “She called me yesterday to check in. Long story short, my mom’s side of the family, people who couldn’t be bothered with my parents before now, are trying to get ahold of the estate to make a profit off my dad’s name. Your mom made the comment that Magnolia Ridge would always be here to welcome me home whenever I was ready. As soon as we ended the call, I booked a flight. I need to be somewhere that doesn’t feel like a battleground. I needed to come home.”

Her words resonate with me more than she could ever know. It’s almost verbatim what my mom said to me when I was struggling with my decision to serve another term or come home. I felt selfish coming home when Cliffe was staying, but I was homesick. It took me going halfway around the world to see that Magnolia Ridge wasn’t just my hometown. It was as much a part of me as my heart and soul is.

I can’t relate to the devastating loss that led her back here, but I sure can understand needing to be back in these mountains.

“My mom’s really good at saying the right thing at the right time,” I say just as Kitty slides a bacon cheeseburger and fries in front of me.

I turn, expecting to see something off the breakfast menu on Lilith’s plate. It wouldn’t be the first time I had to explain to someone that I work while most people eat dinner and sleep. On the rare occasions I came to the diner after a shift, Aunt Kitty always bent the rules for me. Which is why I’m surprised to see a plate that could mirror my own in front of Lilith.

For the rest of our time together, we eat and exchange basic small talk. I ask her what her plans are while she’s here. (She doesn’t really have any. She just knows that she needs to go to the bookstore to see my mom and to sit by a fire and make a s’more.) She asks what I do for work. (I tell her.) Everything is very surface level. Until I, like the complete fucking idiot that I am, blurts out, “do you have a boyfriend back in Maine?”

Lilith’s cheeks flush with crimson as she shakes her head no.

“What, uh, what about you? Do you have a lady, uh, here?” She winces, shaking her head at her rebuttal. “Sorry. That was terrible. You don’t have to answer that.”

“I do not have a lady.” I chuckle. “Here or anywhere else for that matter. Well, unless you count Emily, Anne, and Charlotte.”

I expect that admission to throw her for a loop, but she just smiles.

“Your mom told me about the kittens she rescued,” she says. “And how she named each of the females after one of the Bronte sisters and the male Poe, after, well, Edgar Allen. She sure does have a thing for literary names, huh?”

“You have no idea,” I laugh. I, myself, am named after Bram Stoker. The writer of Dracula himself. My brother is Radcliffe, after Ann Radcliffe. “As I’m sure you remember, when we were younger, we had a dog named Mary Shelley.”

Her heart clutches her chest as her lips form the perfect pout. As she gushes about how “perfect” of a pup Mary Shelley was, I find myself wishing I could bite that bottom lip.

Simmer down, Bram. This girl is grieving. It is not the time or the place to be thinking thoughts like this.

Despite my conscience tugging at me, the willpower to keep my thoughts PG-13 dissipates the moment she excuses herself to use the restroom and walks past me allowing me a perfect, uninterrupted view of her full, round ass.

“Don’t even think about it.” Aunt Kitty’s tone of warning has me snapping my head back toward the front of the bar. “Lilith is a good girl, and she doesn’t need you corrupting her, Bram. Especially not now.”

I raise my arms, feigning complete innocence.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Auntie,” I say coyly as I take a sip of my lukewarm coffee. “Any chance I could get a refill on this thing?”

“I mean it, Bram,” she warns. “Leave her alone.”

Unfortunately, once I’m told something is off limits, I only want it more.