DECCA

Gus lingered on the stone path. He took a step, hesitating, seemingly lost in both his thoughts and the overgrown perennials I desperately need to tend once I finished my project at work.

He couldn’t see me from the shadow behind the screen door. The setting sun was still too bright, too orange, like the tissue thin petals of a California poppy, painting the corrugated tin roof and white walls in glowing watercolor.

A hand swept out, brushing the tops of the lupines that ran wild along the stone path. Cone-shaped hues of deep purples, lavenders, pinks, and blues bent inward, too heavy for their stems after a drenching rain, the colors contrasting beautifully against the last of the day’s light. His brushed the rain off his hands and my eyes tracked his over the front garden.

It was a lot, my garden. Too wild, too whimsical, and definitely too much to keep up with. To some eyes, like my own, it was a witch’s cottage dream sprung to life. To others, like my closest neighbor, it was an eyesore and the very reason she wanted me burned at the stake.

It was mine. And before it was mine, it was Granny’s. There was nothing I loved more than our garden. The one thing we’d always share. Except, seemingly, for the cat, Abigail, who was bequeathed to me along with the rest of Granny’s stuff when she died. She had to be at least fifteen and it was amazing Abigail was still hanging on. But the way she toyed with various bits and pieces of Barry, scattering them every which way off the dining room table, you’d think she was still a kitten.

Granny and I moved out of Appalachia and into this house when I was seven. The first thing she did to the property was rip out the lawn, slowly replacing the shallow-rooted, big box store fescue with native plants, stone walls, woven willow fences, and gardens. Over the years, she had created a quarter acre Eden. Berry brambles and climbing roses lined the gravel drive. Crepe Myrtles shaded the house from the midday sun, while old growth linden and maple trees shielded the property to the west like sentries.

After Granny died, everything changed.

Now, curving stone paths meandered through invasive weeds instead of indigenous meadow. I no longer had time to cultivate gardens for medicinal herbs, plants, and vegetables. Between work and more work, I barely had time to sleep.

In this soil, my hands learned the habit of cultivating the earth. My heart once beat in synch with the spirits of the plants. My body used to be governed by the cyclical nature of the seasons and their bounty. This garden was my primer to life, and I’d let it become yet another place of decay and neglect.

Now Gus was walking within its boundary and I felt exposed, naked. Something washed over me—a sense of shame or embarrassment. I almost rushed out to him, needing to explain myself, that the lemon balm wasn’t usually quite so out of control, but I’d forgotten to cut it back when it went to seed last summer and now the little seedlings were everywhere. That no matter how important dandelions were for the local bee population, they were too many for me to keep up with. And yes, I needed to prune the Wisteria, but it finally bloomed again this year and I didn’t have the heart, so now it was going to take over the garage and I’d have to be okay with that.

Maybe I should go to him, gather him up and pull him inside where I wouldn’t care as much if he found fault with the fact that the interior was still very much Grannycore, and very much not on purpose.

My fingers rubbed the the worn aluminum knob on the screen door. As I debated whether or not to turn it, he must have spotted the movement. His head jerked up. He searched for me in the darkness, then shot me his warm, good guy smile.

That smile, that warmth flooded me with an easy sense of rightness. All is well, it told me. This was Gus. My friend. No need to be nervous. No need to suddenly second guess my life choices for the past decade. No need to be anything other than who I always was when I was with him. As a friend, he brought out the me in me. Just because we were going to be spouses didn’t mean that had to change.

“Are you coming in or do you want dinner in the front yard?”

He hustled up the walk and found the creaky third step coming up the porch. He came to a stop a few feet in front of me, a smile lingering on his lips, but starting to sober into something more like awkwardness. “I didn’t know you lived so far away.”

“I considered buying a place closer to Bethany and Soula, but I work for the state government and sadly, that doesn’t make me a bajillionaire. I’d hoped we could live here. After . . . you know. Do you need to be in Franklin? Is Spring Hill a deal-breaker for you, because with my student loans, I don’t think I could swing even half a mortgage up there.”

He looked up at the corners of the porch. Haint blue, of course, because haints couldn’t cross water, or water-colored porch ceilings. Granny wouldn’t live in a house without a haint blue porch ceiling or window sashes, and I couldn’t live in a house that broke one of Granny’s most important rules.

“Decca, I live in a mortuary. This is incredible.” The way he looked down at me, it was like he’d never seen me before. He might not have expected me to propose—I wouldn’t have seen that coming either—but that didn’t make an entirely different person. Did it?

Inside, he let me give him the grand tour. It would be his house, too, in a few weeks.

It was a simple, small farmhouse built in 1904. Two bedrooms rooms upstairs— the master was Granny’s until last year, when I’d finally felt good about taking it over—kitchen, living room, and my office downstairs, which was basically all one room, plus a powder room under the stairs.

Of course, the kitchen doubled as an herbal apothecary and my office spilled out into the living room where, adding to the old-lady vibes, were the crocheted afghans in 1970s oranges and browns and a tube tv that still worked, although since I no longer subscribed to cable, it was just another thing collecting dust.

“Well?” I asked, after his silence told me nothing about what was going on inside his head. Don’t make me move. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have this place to come back to.

“To be honest, I could do without the centerpiece. Those are real, I’m guessing.”

“That’s just Barry. He’s kind of a side project.”

“We’re not even married yet and you have a side piece?” He tsked and fake frowned.”

There was the plastic folding table that was the current resting place for the two—hundred-year-old partial skeletal remains of what I had determined was a Caucasian male.

“Is he a permanent fixture?”

“Sorry. Definitely not. He shouldn’t even be here. I just felt bad for him.”

“You felt bad. For a skeleton?” I couldn’t tell from his crooked grin whether that amused him, or whether he thought I was unstable enough to break it all off now.

“Yeah. Well, look at this fracture here. All we have of the left femur is the head and a bit of the neck, which makes sense when you look at this.” I switched on the task light and beckoned Gus closer. He bent his head but stayed upright. I remembered how much he hated death.

“On the distal end of the neck, right at the fracture line . . . Can you see that spherical impression?

“Bullet?”

“Exactly!” I grinned. “Well, musket ball.”

“Is that cause of death?”

“Not the bone break. We can’t really tell if the bullet broke the head off the femur or if that happened in the grave, but if the bullet wasn’t cause of death, it certainly happened at the time of death, since there’s no evidence of bone remodeling.”

He looked at me blankly.

“The body starts healing right away. There’s no evidence of healing.”

“So he got shot in the leg in the Civil War. Why do you feel bad for him? Do you know what side he fought on?”

My smile fell. “My sympathy only extends to bones, not moral failings. Anyway, he was shot in the hip. You know what blood vessel passes over this exact spot?”

“The femoral?”

“You must pay attention to Soula.”

“I went to mortuary school, remember? I’ve paid attention to all the anatomy. I just couldn’t actually do it.”

“So we have probable cause of death. Exsanguination. He bled out.”

“Can you make a positive declaration?”

“In anthropology, yes. That’s where we differ from what your sister does. The stakes are lower, so we can use the narrative to shape our analysis.”

“The narrative?”

“The objects buried with him. The dating, and so on. Although no one cares about Barry enough to date him.”

“Except you.” The words lingered in the air, his faint smile was entrancing. My cheeks grew hotter the longer he looked into my eyes.

“Except me.” I ignored my attraction. It was there, of course. I haven’t been able to keep it at bay since I saw for the first time in his high-necked, floor-length black robe he’d worn to the hospital after his dad had been diagnosed.

We’d all been huddled in one of the waiting rooms. All the Smythes and soon-to-be Smythes. And me. Unaffiliated but inserting myself anyway. I was framily. That counted.

Bethany and I had snuck away to the nurses’ station when Gus swept down the hall in his cassock and I was struck dumb by his appearance. Like some Old Testament prophet. Except my eyes hadn’t encountered God or one of their angels, but a lowly servant of the Lord. Suddenly, I understood Mary Magdalene’s desire to wash Jesus’ feet. Although she probably didn’t have the same instinct to crawl into Jesus’s lap and perform explicit acts.

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Now Gus wore jeans and an olive plaid shirt, and though the green flannel didn’t quite elicit the same shameful desire as the sober black crepe, but it did bring out the rings of honey around his pupil and the chestnut tones in his hair and beard.

It was hard to pull myself away from those eyes, but if I didn’t, I’d never be able to get through tonight, let alone the rest of our marriage.

I turned my attention back to Barry, who’d been patiently waiting. “I’m still examining the fragments for any signs of disease or injury. After that, I’ll box him up, take him to the office, and leave him on a shelf where his bones would sit for eternity in a one foot by one foot cube. At least here he has a little breathing room before spending eternity in a box in a basement.”

“He can’t be buried?”

“No one’s claimed him and I haven’t been able to identify him.”

“It’s actually better than what I grew up with. I much prefer old bones to fresh bodies any day. And it’s not like there’s a skull staring at us.”

“Yeah, no. I wish we had the skull, but what can you do?”

“Right.” He nodded and put his hands in his pockets. We both stood still, waiting for the other to talk. God, this was awkward. We were never awkward as friends.

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“I hope wine’s okay?” I opened the door to a fridge that only contained the ingredients I’d overbought for tonight’s dinner. “I’m not home for long stretches so it doesn’t make sense to buy food only to let it rot in the crisper. I have flour, salt, and butter on hand at all times for biscuits. Cornmeal and dehydrated buttermilk in the pantry. If I’m home for more than a day, I’ll fix a mess of soup beans with a frozen ham hock and dried pinto beans.”

Gus stepped behind me and peered into the fridge over my shoulder, smiling at my obviously frazzled attempt to explain something so trivial.

“How about this? Tell me where the glasses are. Might as well start getting the lay of the land, right?”

I pointed to an upper cabinet. The kitchen was small, its footprint taken up with additional cupboards and bookshelves that housed dusty jars of Granny’s homegrown herbs, and home-brewed remedies: oils and salves, poultice blends and tinctures. Most of which were so old, they needed to be thrown out, but like everything else in this house, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

He swallowed the distance in three steps.

“Thanks, Dec. This means a a lot.”

“It does. For me, too. I guess I should probably give you an explanation. I had one prepared that night I came to see you, but I don’t know if I should . . . nothing makes any logical sense in our age anyway. Maybe it comes form my anthro training. My undergrad was in cultural anthropology, which examines needs and rituals of people groups and civilizations, and that includes how they dealt with marriage and the family unit.”

“Dec—”

“And sure, throughout history, most humans were not conceived inside of a loving marriage, and I’ve very strongly considered that remaining single might be the primary way current society progresses, but I don’t like that . . . for me.”

“Decca—”

“And then I think of my own parents, and my grandparents, who had somewhat unorthodox marriages, sure, but they were also traditional in their own way. And its not like marriage didn’t exist outside Judaism, even in the Patriarchal era, not that Jewish archeology is anywhere near my field. Look at the rest of Mesopotamia. They signified marriage with a legal written contract, and I do very much value the ethos of rule-abiding. The Code of Hammurabi—"

“Decca.”

“I’m babbling. I know. I’m nervous and I don’t know where to start now that we’ve made such a monumental decision.”

Gus put his wine on the counter and closed his hands around mine. I hadn’t realized I’d been talking and talking and just filling up the space between us with words. I was so nervous. But his face was earnest and warm.

“I meant the dinner. It smells fantastic and I appreciate that you put so much effort into it. It means a lot and I appreciate it.”

“Oh.” Yeah, not the proposal. I’d totally jumped the gun on that.

“But about the marriage . . . I still haven’t figured out a way to show you what it means to me that you’d do this. Give up your freedom. Let me move in your cozy little cottage and alter your whole world. For me. I’ll find some way to repay you, but . . .” The corner of his lip quirked in a coy half-smile. “I’m pretty sure I’ll find a better way to say thank you.”

I ignored the flirtation in his deepened voice. The eyes that kept flickering with inadequately expressed thanks. “Gus, I’m not giving anything up. I don’t see it like that and I’m sorry you do. I have my reasons. Many even selfish reasons for asking you.”

His mouth parted. He started to shake his head no, but he stopped himself, looking down at my lips for the barest of an instant, as if he wanted to kiss me. I wished he would. Not out of gratitude, but desire. “What reasons? Selfish?” He glanced at my lips again before realizing how close were and leaning back. Did he desire me, even a little bit, or was he being gaslit by his own relief and happiness that I’d swooped in and fulfilled his dreams for him?

I pulled away from him and attended to dinner. “You’ll have to trust me. But Gus, if this is going to work, you can’t be thanking me all the time. You have to trust that I know what I’m doing. Let’s just go back to being friends. You’re my best friend. Well, I have a lot of best friends but they’re all partnered up now. You’re now my best single friend. So, just be my friend and we’ll have fun with this. Maybe it turns into something more down the road. Maybe, down a different road, we hate each other and have to live in separate houses, but be my friend?”

He leaned back against counter and folded his arms across his chest, looking at me, deciding if I was telling the truth. His studying gaze made me want to shrink within myself, or fold my tiny body into an even tinier compartment.

“Okay, then. Opening presents on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve?”

“Presents?”

“That was a trick question anyway. We do gifts on December 6th. St. Nicholas’s Day. Joint financials or every person for him or herself?”

“Does it matter? We both have a ton of debt and get paid nothing. Joint. Share the poverty.” I shrugged.

“Kids?” He asked. His tone was different. I gave him the only answer I could: the truth.

I grimaced, knowing he wasn’t going to like my answer, but it was best to spit it straight out. “I got my tubes tied in grad school. I’m sorry if that’s a deal-breaker, but I’ve never wanted kids and even if I did, I’d rather just foster or something. I understand—”

“I got a vasectomy. Just don’t tell the church, we’re supposed to be fruitful and all that.”

“Still? That’s surprisingly Catholic of them.”

“How dare they?” He said drily. A moment passed between us where neither of us looked away, though the timing was too long.

“Love language?”

He laughed and looked at his crossed feet. He looked so at ease in my kitchen—our kitchen. This wouldn’t be easy to go from zero to one hundred, mashing our lives together into something resembling a sustainable marriage, but there would be a lot of lovely moments. Like watching this big, stoic man get boyish and embarrassed. “Physical touch. Yours?”

“I don’t know. They all sound nice.”

His brow crinkled in the center and he angled his body toward the stove, where I was sautéing the shrimp. “I can do all of them. And we can explore what works for you if you truly don’t know.”

“I don’t expect you to love me, okay? Especially not enough to put the work into what exactly makes me feel loved. You’re not the only one with a past, Gus. And I don’t feel like talking about mine yet. Or ever.” It came out with more heat than usual. I flipped a shrimp too hard and it flipped right out of the pan and skidded under the burner.

“Hey, I . . .” He pulled the spatula out of my grasp and flicked the burner off before pulling me into his arms. It was the first time we’d hugged since the proposal and I’d forgotten how much I’d missed being in his arms. There was something too easy about him. He already felt like home.

He didn’t finish what he started to say. He just held me against his body, wrapping his arms tightly across my back, his height curving around me, shielding me from what he didn’t know, allowing me to melt against him. And melt I did. I nestled my head under his chin and laid my cheek against his chest. His heartbeat rocked me and our breaths synched.

“This. This must be my love language. Your hugs.”

He chuckled low. I felt it inside my body.

“I think we both needed this.” He said. It was warm in his arms. Like standing in front of an oven on a cold winter’s day. Safe enough I could let go of all the tension I carried from job to job, it wasn’t just me.

“Do you always wear that perfume?” He asked.

“No. It depends on the season. This one has soil and petrichor and oak moss. You like it? I’ve never met anyone who actually likes it besides me.”

“I hate it.”

I pulled back from him and held him at arm’s length. We stared at each other for several seconds before he cracked a smile and we both laughed.

“It was a gift from Bethany. Actually, all my fragrances are. It’s her go-to gift. She replenishes my favorites or we try something new. I’d never drop hundreds of dollars on niche fragrance, but that’s what she likes to geek out on, since she can’t drink the candy-colored embalming fluid, she says.”

He nodded, “She bought me a very expensive-looking bottle of something for Christmas last year.”

“Is that what you’re wearing now?”

“Yeah.” He blushed. Or at least I imagined he blushed under his

“I like it. It smells like actually being out in the woods, rather than in-your-face cologne.”

“To me, it smells like church.”

I closed my arms around his waist again as I looked up. “Okay, change of tack; dream vacation?”

He let out an audible breath, “somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. In one of those huts built right over the lagoon. My tiny wife in a tiny bikini.” He looked down. “I’m allowed to say that now, right? We are engaged.”

I started to break the hug, but he held tighter. Our eyes met. Instead of shrinking into myself, like I usually did whenever an attractive man looked at me, he made me brave. Or I decided to be brave. I wasn’t sure which was which yet. It was entirely possible I’d never had anyone—romantic anyway—encourage me to be myself in a relationship. That’s why I didn’t have them. Before now, they were a waste of time, a way to take my eyes off my goals in life. A way to ensure I didn’t have a life. That one day, I might as well be a pile of bones, lying on a dining room table in some researcher’s house.

“As long as my bikini is black.”

He considered for a moment. “You look good in black. Shows off that blindingly white skin of yours. I bet you glow under moonlight.”

“You’ll find out tonight.”

“What’s tonight?” His eyes darkened.

“Technically Litha, the Summer Solstice, but I’m just building us a fire on the patio out back. There’s a half moon though.”

He nodded, slowly, a smile creeping across his face. “Sex?”

“What?” I really did break the hug this time. He let me, dropping his arms too, to stir the pasta. He didn’t elaborate. He just fished the stray piece of shrimp off the stove and popped it into his mouth, chewing at me questioningly with raised eyebrows. “After the wedding,” he said around his mouthful of shrimp. “Are we?”

“Oh, after! . . .” God, I hoped my relief wasn’t that obvious. I hadn’t shaved, hadn’t even showered since yesterday morning, since it would’ve been stupid to shower before a bonfire. Even if I had, “Uh, yeah. Well, I assumed we’d have to consummate the marriage.”

He shook his head. “Greeks don’t really do that. In fact, if you even break a betrothal, you’re required to get a divorce in the church. Nowadays, they’ve incorporated that into marriage ceremony to prevent the need for betrothal divorces. I just mean, I don’t expect you to feel comfortable, or want to right away. But eventually . . . .” He smiled, but not at me, at the pot of linguine. “Yeah. We’ll get there.”

“It sounds as though you’re already there.”

“Decca.” He turned to me, giving me a look I couldn’t identify. He took a step forward, I took a step back. It was predatory in the best way. He took another step, I did the same until my lower back hit the countertop. He moved in closer, pressing his body against mine. He didn’t move to do anything, he didn’t touch me or kiss me. He just looked down at me, his arms hanging at his sides, his legs pressed against mine. Pressing more and more and . . . oh. Okay. That was what he was . . . yeah, I felt it. The hardness between his legs, pressing into my belly. I couldn’t help but look down and he was definitely already there.

He nodded slightly and I knew he was telling me this was okay.

“Every time I hug you.”

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Somehow we managed to eat. Through lingering eye contact that left me squirming on my seat and pressing my thighs together, I’d managed to down two glasses of wine and forced myself to observe him under this fresh guise. I told myself I wouldn’t shy away any longer. He was to be my husband, not the handsomest boy in school who’d be appalled to learn I had the biggest crush on him.

Gus let me watch him. Both of us taking turns. I watched the way his chestnut eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed at me telling him about the time I had to crawl into an excavator bucket ten feet in the air to identify whether a partial set of remains was human or not. (It was papier-mâché.)

I watched, entranced by the movement of his jaw, somehow still square through his short, thick beard. I took note of the intentional rounding of his shoulders as he leaned closer to me, as if in trying to make himself smaller less intimidating, it only served to heighten his commanding presence. Only a great person, meant for a great life would consciously diminish his physical presence to attempt balance. An outward sign of his deepest capacity for empathy.

I gnawed off a piece of garlic bread swallowed painfully, the bread sticking in my throat as a thought formed in my head.

I was in imminent danger of falling in love with my fiancé.