Page 4 of For Better or Hearse
“What about…” Tessie makes jazz hands. “Tallulah?”
Ash makes a face. “Absolutely not.” After her mother saddled her with the absolute worst name in the world, Ash refuses to let Tessie do the same to her child.
Tessie sighs and waves a hand around her belly. “It’s the hormones. I swear I like the strangest things these days. Ask me about my obsession with bee pollen.”
Tessie’s two-year-old son, Wilder, toddles in the background. “Aunt Bash, Aunt Bash, Aunt Bash,” he chants, making Ash sound like a destructive video game villain.
She leans into the screen, wishing she could reach in, grab her cousin and squeeze. “How is my favorite tiny human?”
Tessie laughs. “Which one?” she asks, palming her belly. “Bear or…”
“The barely formed.” Ash pokes a finger at the screen. At Tessie’s round belly.
“She is currently the size of a banana and subjecting my bladder to a myriad of spectacular sucker punches.”
Ash tosses her head back and hoots. “Solomon’s mountain man sperm really claiming that uterus.”
At a large kitchen table covered in design boards and Pantone chips, Tessie grips her belly and lowers herself into a chair. Even five-months pregnant, she’s the epitome of Vogue perfection. Glossy blond hair, bright brown eyes, tan skin with a sprinkling of freckles over the bridge of her nose.
Ash is her opposite: dark, moody and pale as hell.
As kids, their mothers called them white swan and black swan cousins.
Not only because of their looks.
Late, Ash.
Early, Tessie.
Chaos and confusion, Ash.
Calm and order, Tessie.
They could have taken lessons from each other; instead, they egged each other on in all the best ways.
“I miss you,” Tessie says, her brown eyes suddenly full of a soft sadness.
Ash’s heart expands at the words.
Since the moment her cousin and best friend moved to Alaska two years ago, their distance has been a gaping wound in her soul. Despite what feels like an entire continent between them, the lock and key of their friendship has stayed strong. They still have their rhythm. It’s just shaken up and stirred thanks to babies and miles and that thing called life.
Though Ash is always homesick for her cousin, Tessie is where she’s supposed to be. Alaska. Getting railed daily by her bearded mountain man.
“I miss you too.” Ash takes a seat on her favorite bench. Beneath her feet, the grave of Fay Wray. “God, what I wouldn’t do to teleport you a hug right now.”
“Well?” Tessie’s eyes, now brimming with doubt, flicker to the phone. “Are you packed?”
Ash raises a hand. “Hold, please.”
Overhearing a tourist searching for the grave of Judy Garland, Ash points her in the right direction. Saturday afternoon, and the cemetery is packed with tourists studying maps in the bright sunlight and the sweltering heat.
“Do you think I’m packed?” Ash says, coming back to the conversation. “Or do you think my suitcase is lying in the bottom of my closet, filled with vintage copies of Nancy Drew and dried-up sea monkeys?”
Tessie squeals in protest. “I absolutely cannotwith you right now.”
Ash, knowing last-minute packing goes against every bone in Tessie’s perfectionist body, smothers a smile.
“How can you not be packed?” Her cousin huffs. “You leave tomorrow.”