Goodbye for Now (16 page)

Eggnog Day was just like it sounded and did not prove to be optional. The very stocked liquor cabinet was locked, the wine and beer all pointedly
consumed by the night before. The choice was eggnog or nothing. For Sam, this was an easy decision—he was due for a dry day anyway. He was also fantasizing about salad, after all those days of snacks and cookies, and spent the afternoon chopping vegetables into tiny, gratifying pieces. It occurred to him around sunset that he hadn’t seen Meredith in more than an hour. Dash hadn’t seen her either nor had anyone else. Sam looked in their bedroom, on the deck, in the game room and library. He wandered down the beach a bit in both directions but found no sign of her. It didn’t seem like she could have gone far—in fact, it didn’t seem like she could have gone anywhere—but a cursory search and then a more thorough one and then starting to become truly alarmed yielded nothing.

He called. She didn’t answer, and he couldn’t hear her phone ringing anywhere in the house. He was just starting to panic in earnest when he got a text. In its entirety, it read, “Uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhnnnn.”

“ARE YOU OKAY???” Sam shrieked via text message.

“No.”

“Where are you, Merde?”

“Do you believe in hell?”

He could barely breathe. “Are you hurt?”

“Everywhere.”

She’d been drugged, he guessed. Or hit on the head.

“Who’s hurting you?”

“Uncle Jeff.”

Uncle Jeff was in the kitchen with everyone else, reading over Sam’s shoulder, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

“Are you alone? Is someone there with you?”

“I’m so alone.”

“Why can’t you answer your phone?” he typed.

“Not a good time to talk,” she said.

“Look around. Tell me what you see.”

“Ugly wallpaper. Filthy floor. Foul smell.”

“What do you remember about getting there? Were you …” He paused, swallowed, squeezed his eyes shut then open again and made himself finish typing, “… conscious?”

“???” she wrote.

His brain sped, a pulse racing behind his eyes, deciphering that, deciding
what it might mean and what to say next when his phone buzzed again.

“Oh Sam! I didn’t get kidnapped, you idiot.”

There were loud exhalations of held breaths from everyone in the kitchen. But Sam-confused felt more like Sam-panicked than Sam-relieved.

“What then?”

“Food poisoning, I think.”

“Food poisoning?!”

“Uncle Jeff poisoned me with eggnog.”

“WHERE ARE YOU?”

“That weird bathroom Aunt Maddie found on the fourth floor.”

“WHY??”

“Privacy.”

“I looked everywhere for you. You scared me to death.”

“Sorry. Just trying to get everything in me out of me. In peace.”

Sam tried to quiet his heart. Everyone else’s anxiety passed quickly to relief then giddiness. They adjourned to the living room and started telling embarrassing Meredith childhood stories, adding this incident to the canon. He tried lightness:

“That bathroom was really gross.”

“Not as gross as it is now,” wrote Meredith.

But he couldn’t quite shake the black panic that had so quickly engulfed everything. He went up to the third-floor landing, through the trapdoor in the ceiling, across the gapped, unfinished floorboards in the attic, into the slant-roofed crawl space, and sat with her, leaning against the doorframe while she hunkered down inside. She wouldn’t let him in, so he talked through the door. He told her jokes. He told her stories from his own embarrassing childhood. He made up parables about the hazards of raw eggs and the creatures living inside of them that there was not enough bourbon in all the world to kill. She alternately giggled and dry-heaved and moaned through the door until finally she texted, “I have shat all there is to shit. Barfed all there is to barf.”

“You sure?” he replied. “Don’t want to rush these things.” His ass had fallen asleep long ago. He suspected everyone else in the house had done the same.

“All done, I think,” she wrote. “Miss me?”

“How could I? I’ve been here all along.”

“Thanks for sitting with me, Sam.”

“Thanks for not being kidnapped.”

“Anytime. Now go wait for me downstairs. This bathroom needs to be alone for a while and think about what it’s done.”

The only good thing about the eggnog incident, apart from her not being kidnapped, was that even really pissed-off parents are unreservedly moved to take care of their sick kid. Meredith and Julia and Kyle had been awkward together all week, careful of what they said and where they looked and how they touched one another, pleasant but also trying way too hard. Now Kyle ran to the store to fetch saltines and ginger ale and egg noodles and the makings for chicken soup. Julia sat with her daughter’s head in her lap and stroked her face and hair and refused to move or let Meredith move all the next day. They camped out in the den and watched old movies. Both were delighted.

“You okay in there?” Sam texted late in the afternoon.

“Are you kidding? I’m great. It was totally worth it.”

They tried to put it off—they did put it off—but by their last night in the cabin, it was time to talk logistics. The plans for Dead Mail had gone from exciting to paralyzing as the realities came more clear. Meredith was going to have to quit her job, which terrified her. Dash was going to have to add balls to the dozens he was already juggling, which thrilled but also terrified him. Sam was going to have to work with actual humans which was most terrifying of all. Meredith was also feeling bad about lying to her parents. She knew they’d find out eventually, but she didn’t want them talking her out of it before they got started. While they hammered out details, she gave Dash then Sam then the dogs then herself blue glitter manicures (she’d gotten a nail polish sampler in her stocking, another age-old family tradition apparently). Sam thought maybe it was the only way, a balancing out. They could confront so much responsibility and tragedy only if they did it while wearing reindeer-antler headbands.

“You know we can’t keep calling this thing Dead Mail,” said Dash. “It’s unrefined.” He was stirring a double shot of peppermint schnapps into a mug of instant hot cocoa with a candy cane. Sam only raised an eyebrow at him by way of response.

“Plus you’ll never get it past marketing,” said Meredith.

“We could call it d-mail,” said Sam.

“D-mail?”

“Sure. Like e-mail. Or Gmail.”

“Only if no one asks what the D stands for,” said Meredith. “How about iMortal?”

“Steve Jobs will sue us,” said Dash.

“He’s dead,” said Meredith.

“Exactly. E-mortal? Like immortal?”

“Maybe we don’t want people associating us so much with death,” she said. Sam could only raise an eyebrow in response to that one too. “E-vive? That’s got more life in it.”

“It sounds like wash-away-the-gray shampoo,” said Dash. “Re-vive?”

“Even worse.”

“E-lan?”

“E-lide?”

“E-volve?”

“E-scape?”

“E-face? That one works on a couple of levels,” said Dash.

“E-late?” said Meredith. “That works nicely too.”

“I thought you wanted to get away from death,” said Dash. “Re-late?”

“Like, ‘Here’s my late father. I’m re-lating him’? No. Re-volve?”

“Re-vive?”

“What about re-pose?” Sam interrupted.

“Re-pose?”

“Yeah, like re-pose: to pose again. And also like repose. Like to lie in repose for viewing before burial. And also repose: to be still, calm, at rest, at peace.”

No one said anything for a moment. Then Dash threw a green Trivial Pursuit wedge at his cousin. “God, Meredith. Why does your boyfriend always have to be the smartest guy in the room?”

Just after New Year’s, Dash started flitting back and forth between Seattle and L.A., crashing at Sam and Meredith’s a couple nights a week as things
got started. He brought only a single small duffel bag of clothing, explaining that no one cared what you looked like in Seattle, so he was leaving all his “threads” in L.A. where they mattered. But in addition to the duffel, he hauled in six FedEx boxes of mats, boards, pots and bowls, cloths and colanders, thermometers, trays, measuring cups and spoons, ladles, scales, presses, molds in every shape and size, and dozens of tiny envelopes of mysterious powders and teeny bottles of mysterious liquids.

“Crystal meth,” Meredith guessed.

“Please,” said Dash.

“You’re becoming an apothecary,” Sam predicted.

“Too
Romeo and Juliet
. And look how that ended.”

“You’ve been reading too much
Harry Potter
,” said Meredith.

“No such thing.”

“You’re dating a sculptor,” Sam suggested.

“Nope. Cheese.”

“You’re dating a cheese?”

“I’m going to make cheese.”

“You don’t cook,” said Meredith.

“Correct. Because no one cooks in L.A. And certainly, no one makes cheese. Making cheese is not an L.A. thing to do. But it is a Seattle thing to do. Wear fleece. Make cheese.”

“Why?” said Sam.

“It’s chilly. And cheese is good.”

“It is.” No one had to talk Sam into cheese. “But we have stores up here, farmers’ markets, dairies even.”

“Look, if I’m going to be half a Seattleite, I need to fit in. If I’m going to be living here—”

“Who says we want you living with us?” said Meredith.

“This is Grandma’s house,” said Dash. “I’m as welcome as you are.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Call her and ask,” said Dash.

In early February, two small but adjacent apartments on the floor below them opened up simultaneously, so they jumped on the opportunity,
bought both, knocked out all the walls, and had themselves a giant showroom and a giant commitment. Meredith insisted on the former (and thus the latter) over Sam’s protestations.

“I’m unemployed,” said Sam, “and you’re about to quit your job.”

“We live here for free,” said Meredith.

“That doesn’t mean we can afford this.”

“We can, actually,” said Dash. “I figured out a way.” Dash always figured out a way.

“I won’t lie on the stand for you,” said Sam.

Dash smirked. “Grandma left me some money. She left Meredith some money. None of us have any debt. We’re all three a great credit risk.”

“We can’t possibly qualify for a business loan,” said Sam. “No bank on the planet would lend money to three people with no jobs but plans to communicate with the dead.”

“I know a guy.” Dash always knew a guy.

“This is important work,” said Meredith. “This is a service people need. A service that will bring people peace and solace. A service that will make the world a better place. A service that will make us rich enough to afford two apartments.”

“What if it doesn’t work? What if no one wants this service?”

“Everyone is going to want this service.”

“The whole point of running a company online,” Sam insisted, “is having no need for showrooms. Or interactions with humans.”

“We’re going to need a physical space,” Meredith said.

“Electronic communication is private,” Sam insisted. “Reuniting with a dead loved one is intensely private. These people are going to cry and scream and weep and tear their hair. Or they’re going to strip. Or they’re going to freak out. Whatever they’re going to do, they’re not going to want to do it with us.”