Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1)(35)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"No," I said, surprised.

"But honey, with it happening right here…" Maxine’s heavy face creased with concern.

"I have far more good memories of this kitchen than bad ones," I explained.

"Oh, what a good way to look at it," she said, surprised. "Sookie, you really are smarter than anyone gives you credit for being."

"Gosh, thanks, Mrs. Fortenberry," I said, and if she heard the dry tone in my voice she didn’t react. Maybe that was wise.

"Is your friend coming to the funeral?" The kitchen was very warm. Bulky, square Maxine was blotting her face with a dishtowel. The spot where Gran had fallen had been scrubbed by her friends, God bless them.

"My friend. Oh, Bill? No, he can’t."

She looked at me blankly.

"We’re having it in the daytime, of course."

She still didn’t comprehend.

"He can’t come out."

"Oh, of course!" She gave herself a light tap on the temple to indicate she was knocking sense into her head. "Silly me. Would he really fry?"

"Well, he says he would."

"You know, I’m so glad he gave that talk at the club, that has really made such a difference in making him part of the community."

I nodded, abstracted.

"There’s really a lot of feeling about the murders, Sookie. There’s really a lot of talk about vampires, about how they’re responsible for these deaths."

I looked at her with narrowed eyes.

"Don’t you go all mad on me, Sookie Stackhouse! Since Bill was so sweet about telling those fascinating stories at the Descendants meeting, most people don’t think he could do those awful things that were done to those women." I wondered what stories were making the rounds, and I shuddered to think. "But he’s had some visitors that people didn’t much like the looks of."

I wondered if she meant Malcolm, Liam, and Diane. I hadn’t much liked their looks either, and I resisted the automatic impulse to defend them.

"Vampires are just as different among themselves as humans are," I said.

"That’s what I told Andy Bellefleur," she said, nodding vehemently. "I said to Andy, you should go after some of those others, the ones that don’t want to learn how to live with us, not like Bill Compton, who’s really making an effort to settle in. He was telling me at the funeral home that he’d gotten his kitchen finished, finally."

I could only stare at her. I tried to think of what Bill might make in his kitchen. Why would he need one?

But none of the distractions worked, and finally I just realized that for a while I was going to be crying every whipstitch. And I did.

At the funeral Jason stood beside me, apparently over his surge of anger at me, apparently back in his right mind. He didn’t touch me or talk to me, but he didn’t hit me, either. I felt very alone. But then I realized as I looked out over the hillside that the whole town was grieving with me. There were cars as far as I could see on the narrow drives through the cemetery, there were hundreds of dark-clad folks around the funeral-home tent. Sam was there in a suit (looking quite unlike himself), and Arlene, standing by Rene, was wearing a flowered Sunday dress. Lafayette stood at the very back of the crowd, along with Terry Bellefleur and Charlsie Tooten; the bar must be closed! And all Gran’s friends, all, the ones who could still walk. Mr. Norris wept openly, a snowy white handkerchief held up to his eyes. Maxine’s heavy face was set in graven lines of sadness. While the minister said what he had to, while Jason and I sat alone in family area in the uneven folding chairs, I felt something in me detach and fly up, up into the blue brilliance: and I knew that whatever had happened to my grandmother, now she was at home.

The rest of the day went by in a blur, thank God. I didn’t want to remember it, didn’t want to even know it was happening. But one moment stood out.

Jason and I were standing by the dining room table in Gran’s house, some temporary truce between us. We greeted the mourners, most of whom did their best not to stare at the bruise on my cheek.

We glided through it, Jason thinking that he would go home and have a drink after, and he wouldn’t have to see me for a while and then it would be all right, and me thinking almost exactly the same thing. Except for the drink.

A well-meaning woman came up to us, the sort of woman who has thought over every ramification of a situation that was none of her business to start with.

"I am so sorry for you kids," she said, and I looked at her; for the life of me I couldn’t remember her name. She was a Methodist. She had three grown children. But her name ran right out the other side of my head.

"You know it was so sad seeing you two there alone today, it made me remember your mother and father so much," she said, her face creasing into a mask of sympathy that I knew was automatic. I glanced at Jason, looked back to the woman, nodded.

"Yes," I said. But I heard her thought before she spoke, and I began to blanch.

"But where was Adele’s brother today, your great uncle? Surely he’s still living?"

"We’re not in touch," I said, and my tone would have discouraged anyone more sensitive than this lady.

"But her only brother! Surely you…" and her voice died away as our combined stare finally sank home.

Several other people had commented briefly on our Uncle Bartlett’s absence, but we had given the "this is family business" signals that cut them right off. This woman – what was her name? – just hadn’t been as quick to read them. She’d brought a taco salad, and I planned to throw it right into the garbage when she’d left.

"We do have to tell him," Jason said quietly after she left. I put my guard up; I had no desire to know what he was thinking.

"You call him," I said.

"All right."

And that was all we said to each other for the rest of the day.

Chapter 6

I STAYED AT home for three days after the funeral. It was too long; I needed to go back to work. But I kept thinking of things I just had to do, or so I told myself. I cleaned out Gran’s room. Arlene happened to drop by, and I asked her for help, because I just couldn’t be in there alone with my grandmother’s things, all so familiar and imbued with her personal odor of Johnson’s baby powder and Campho-Phenique.

So my friend Arlene helped me pack everything up to take to the disaster relief agency. There’d been tornadoes in northern Arkansas the past few days, and surely some person who had lost everything could use all the clothes. Gran had been smaller and thinner than I, and besides that her tastes were very different, so I wanted nothing of hers except the jewelry. She’d never worn much, but what she wore was real and precious to me.