I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology (32 page)

Laura Resnick is the author of the popular Esther Diamond urban fantasy series, whose releases include
Disappearing Nightly
,
Doppelgangster
,
Unsympathetic Magic
,
Vamparazzi
,
Polterheist
, and
The Misfortune Cookie
. She has also written traditional fantasy novels such as
In Legend Born
,
The Destroyer Goddess
, and
The White Dragon
, which made multiple “Year’s Best” lists
.
She began her career as the award-winning author of fifteen romance novels, written under the pseudonym Laura Leone. An opinion columnist, frequent public speaker, and the Campbell Award-winning author of many short stories, she is on the Web at
LauraResnick.com
.

To say that I was surprised when my father popped out of his coffin would be like saying that the North Pole is chilly or the Aga Khan is well-to-do.

In fact, I yelped in frightened shock, fell over backward, and lay hyperventilating on the floor of the funeral home, convinced I was having a stroke or a seizure.

“Oh,
that’s
some welcome,” said the old man. “Thank you, Eileen.”

His tone was critical — and therefore hideously familiar to me.

All around me, I heard surprised gasps, startled exclamations, and concerned questions. One person was shrieking hysterically; even in my disoriented state, I knew that had to be my Aunt Iris, who’s notoriously high-strung.

I felt the carpeted floor of the somber reception room beneath my head. Saw the ceiling above me. Heard the gust of my panicky breaths. I pressed a hand to my pounding heart, then realized that doing so was a function of voluntary motor skills that seemed to be working just fine.

I’m no expert, but I was pretty sure that was inconsistent with a stroke or a seizure.

“Get up off the floor, Eileen,” my in Chicago or New York To fas father ordered. “You’re upsetting people.”

I’m upsetting people? Me? Who’s just been resurrected, old man?

Then my mother, who was indeed visibly upset, sank to her knees beside me and cried, “Eileen!”

“Stand back, everyone!” ordered my Aunt Louise, inadvertently kicking me in the head as she stomped around my supine body. “Let her have some space. Don’t crowd her!”

“Ow.” I winced.

My father said, “You’re making a scene.”

“Give her room!” Aunt Louise shouted, hovering over me. “Let her breathe!”

“Eileen!” My mother briefly pressed the back of her hand against my forehead and then my cheek, as if thinking that a fever might explain my keeling over in front of my father’s coffin. “Are you all right?”

Aunt Iris shrieked again. I wondered if she saw what I’d just seen — the old man rising out of his casket with the agility of a man half his age, and, more to the point, with the agility of someone still alive.

But when I looked up, I saw Aunt Iris peering down anxiously at me, as were a dozen more of my Quinn relatives. My gaze swept the crowd around me, looking for the person who couldn’t possibly be there . . . .

And, yep, there he was. My father. Fabian Quinn, a short, stout, blue-eyed, white-haired man in his late sixties, dressed in the formal black suit he would wear for eternity. He was sandwiched between two of my aunts and staring down at me with his usual look of irritable impatience. I stared back.

“Eileen, say something!” my mother implored me.

“Mom . . . I think I might be having a stroke,” I mumbled, gazing at my dad as various relatives gazed down at me.

“A stroke?” my mother repeated.

No one else was looking at the old man. Didn’t anyone but me find it a little odd that he’d just vacated his own coffin?

“Am I hallucinating?” I wondered in confusion.

“No, of course not, dear. Not at your father’s wake.” My mother said this as dismissively as if I’d asked whether we should serve food.

“Oh, just get up
,
would you?” prodded my dad.

I glanced at my mom. She evidently hadn’t heard him.

“Whoa! What’s going on?” Joe, my brother, pushed past a couple of our cousins to look down at me in alarm. “Eileen! Did you fall?”

“No, genius,” said Dad. “Your sister thought she’d lie down for a little nap.”

No one seemed to hear this, either.

“Mom,” said Joe, “is she okay?”

“She’s having a spell,” said our mother.

“Eileen doesn’t have spells,” Joe said with a frown, looking down at me. “Eye, did you trip,” said Aunt Ada.edvo? What happened? Are you all right? Should I get a doctor?”

“You wouldn’t need to
get
a doctor if you had stuck with pre-med,” our father said to him. “But
noooo . . . ”

Oh, Jesus, not
that
again
.
Joe switched majors fifteen years ago, old man. Give it a rest already.

“I
heard
that,” said Dad.

I breathed in sharply and flinched.

“Look at that convulsion!” shrieked Aunt Iris. “She
is
having a seizure!”

“That’s not a seizure,” said Joe. “I think something scared her.”

“Oh, two semesters of pre-med and your brother can diagnose seizures,” Dad said to me.

“Um, Aunt Louise, maybe you should step back,” said Joe. “You could kick Eileen in the head if you’re not careful.”

“I’m
always
careful!” Aunt Louise said, almost kicking me again in her indignation.

Dad muttered, “Too bad my son the undoctor wasn’t so helpful when I had a fatal heart attack.”

That’s not fair. I heard that the medics said your death was almost instantaneous.

“Oh, what do they know?” snapped my father. “Your brother was in the same house with me when it happened. If he’d gone to medical school, I’d still be alive now.”

You can’t be sure of that.

“Don’t argue with the dead. We know things.”

My father had died three days ago, on Easter Sunday. If you knew the old man, the imagery seemed fitting: On the anniversary of the day that the Prince of Peace rose, Fabian Quinn went under.

I had elected to skip our family’s annual Easter dinner, which was typically a Molotov cocktail of tension and temper. I live about three hours away by car from my parents’ home, and I’d made excuses to my mom about having too little time and too much work to be able to make the round trip that weekend. My mother, an understanding woman (as well as a long-suffering one), had pretended to believe my excuses. I assumed my father had made no such pretense; but since I hadn’t spoken to him, that was just an educated guess. In fact, I hadn’t spoken to him for several months now. My not having visited between Christmas and Easter was normal. My phoning my mother in recent months only when my dad was out or asleep — well, that was just good luck.

The upshot was that, when my dad — who suffered from high blood pressure, diabetes, and arterial sclerosis — succumbed to a massive coronary shortly after eating his Easter dinner, I wasn’t there with the rest of my family, and I hadn’t spoken to him since December. So on the day the old man died, I managed to be the bad daughter that he’d often accused me of being.

“Eileen,” my mother said now, as I lay on the floor in front of my father’s coffin, “can you tell us what’s wrong?”, you know.”d fas

“Um . . . ” I gestured for her to lean closer to me, since I didn’t really think I wanted to share this with the whole family. Then I whispered to her, “Don’t you hear his voice?”

“What voice?”

My father said, “Feel free to stop making a spectacle of yourself any time now, Eileen.”

“That voice,” I said in agitation. “
His
voice! Don’t you hear him?”

“His voice?” my Aunt Mary repeated. Then she gasped. “Do you mean . . .
His
voice?”

Dad rolled his eyes. “Hoo-boy. Here we go.”

“What’s this?” demanded my Aunt Ada. “Eileen’s hearing voices?”

(I have a lot of aunts. My father had six sisters, all of whom are still shuffling around this mortal coil. Only four were at the funeral, though. The other two ceased speaking to him years ago, and they declined to pretend to mourn him after we put him in his coffin with the assumption that he’d stay there.)

“Voices?” my mother said in alarm. “Are you hearing voices, Eileen?”

“No, not voices. One voice.
His
voice,” I croaked. “Mom, don’t you see — ”

“Eileen hears the voice of God!” Aunt Mary cried.

“Now you’ve done it,” my father said to me.

Aunt Mary is unhappy in the twenty-first century and says she should have been a medieval mystic. Considering that she lives on the seventeenth floor of a luxury condo overlooking Lake Michigan, I’m skeptical that the life of a twelfth century ascetic would have suited her as well as she believes; but there’s no denying that she has what might tactfully be described as a keen interest in the higher plane.

“God is speaking to our Eileen!” Aunt Mary said rapturously.

“Oh . . . not God, exactly,” I said.

Aunt Mary ignored me. “Eileen is experiencing a miraculous visitation!”

“Well, she got
that
right, at least,” said my father.

“I think I need a drink,” I said wanly.

Seven of my relatives immediately produced flasks. I accepted Joe’s.

As my mother helped me sit up, she said to the many Quinns who were by now gathered around us, “Her father’s death has been a shock to her.”

“I don’t see why,” Aunt Louise said stoutly. “My brother was a walking time bomb. Fabian paid no heed to his health! He ignored his doctor’s advice, ate like a pig, and never exercised. It was only a matter of time.”

“I never could stand that woman,” my father grumbled.

I took a nip of whiskey from Joe’s flask and then coughed. Chardonnay is more my speed.

“Why am I the only one who can hear you?” I?” she askedd fas asked.

Joe said, “Oh, I think Dad heard it, Eye. He just didn’t listen.”

“Because you’re the one who wanted to talk to me, Eileen.” My father made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the rest of the family as he added with some pique, “The
only
one, it seems.”

Since I was apparently communing with the dead, I decided that another slug of my brother’s whiskey was called for.

While the liquid fire burned its way down my throat, my dad said to me, “There I was, all set to go to my eternal rest . . . but then my only daughter stood beside my coffin and prayed, ‘If only I could see you once more. Speak to you one last time.’”

I stared at him in astonishment. I had indeed stood beside his embalmed corpse and expressed that silent wish only a few minutes ago. It’s the sort of thought that occurs at a moment like that — a moment when you naturally assume you
won’t
ever see someone again.

I asked, “You heard that?”

“Sure, I heard the warnings the doctors gave to Dad,” said Joe. “I
was
pre-med, after all. But I think we all saw the writing on the wall, didn’t we?”

My father said to me, “The dead hear all sorts of things. We hear the unspoken wishes of the heart.”

“We?” I said. “You mean you’re not alone?”

“Of course I’m not,” said my brother. “Mom, Aunt Louise, Aunt Mary . . . I think we all knew Dad was dicing with death.”

“Well, I’m alone
here,”
said my father. “No one else is being laid to rest here today. But in the greater sense . . . we’re all part of something, Eileen.”

“Good to know,” I said, taking one more hit from Joe’s flask before I handed it back to him.

“It’s still a shock, though,” said Aunt Mary.

“Yes,” Aunt Ada agreed. “Fabian is the first of the seven Quinn siblings to pass away. It’s sobering. You suddenly realize that time is running out and the Reaper is on his way, mounting his skeletal horse to come in search of you any day now.”

“Ada always was the
cheery
one,” said my father.

“I can’t believe it!” cried Aunt Iris, determined to be more shocked than anyone else. “My own brother! Dead at sixty-nine!”

“I was only sixty-eight.” Dad sounded insulted. “Eileen, tell her. I was sixty-
eight.”

“He was sixty-eight,” I said.

“Do I
look
sixty-nine?” he asked me.

“Are you still in your coffin?” I asked him.

Everyone looked at me.

Rather than explain this question to them, I decided to get up and look. I was still shaky (and who can blame me?), so my mother and brother helped me?” she askedd fas rise awkwardly to my feet. I stood there swaying uncertainly for a moment, then I stepped up to the casket and looked down. The old man was there, just as he should be. I was relieved, since I was pretty sure this meant we could go ahead with the funeral and burial, as planned. I wouldn’t have known what to do if the coffin was empty and no one but me noticed.