Well, it doesn’t help at all.
It’s just me, Doris, and Colonel, who is decidedly not a shrieking woman.
Doris is struggling in the water, flapping her wings, her puffy feathers waterlogged.
“Come here, fool,” I tell her, scooping her up and holding her to my chest.
“I don’t know what the hell happened,” the strange voice continues, sounding panicked and annoyed, “but you’d better put me down.” It sounds like an elderly woman, but there are no women in the area, and Colonel isn’t reacting to the voice at all.
“I say, Miss Wolfe, are you all right?” he calls from his perch at the edge of the pool. “That looked like quite a tumble.”
“Well, for future reference, there’s no cavern behind the falls,” I tell him, sloshing toward land. “Just solid rock. Was my grandmother a practical joker?”
“I would not say that she was. Maybe you need to try a different part of the falls?”
I look back at the pounding water doubtfully.
“Tell him the ashes hit the falls, so it counts,” the voice says.
I reckon I might be losing my mind—maybe the waterfall gave me a concussion, or I inhaled too many cremains—but the voice is making as much sense as anything else right now.
“The ashes got behind the falls. That’s what the will said, right? That they had to go behind the falls?”
Doris tries to fluff herself, but I’m holding her tight as a football as I watch Colonel’s nose scrunch up.
“Well, now, that is true. I suppose there are definitely ashes behind the falls.” He looks down at the murky, gray-coated water with immense distaste. “The ashes are everywhere. I certainly do hope the sheriff doesn’t show up. I wasn’t expecting such a mess.”
“Me neither,” I say.
Satisfied that I’ve done my duty, I carefully step up on the shore. My jeans and shirt are soaked—every bit of me is soaked—and I’m quickly learning that wet cremains would never work as a beauty treatment. Maybe I should be more grossed out, but honestly, what’s the point? Running wild in the neighborhood with my sisters, I learned long ago that dirt and blood both wash off. This is just a temporary state, and at least I’ve already booked a room at the Magnolia Inn, a local B&B with great reviews. Although…
“Now that we’re done here, can I sign the papers and take possession of that apartment?” I ask. “And does it have a washer and dryer?”
Colonel’s nostrils flare as he takes a step away from me. “You certainly can, and I would hope it does.” He points back at the pool. “You’ll want to collect that urn, though. Definitely not biodegradable.”
The urn is bobbing around not too far away, so I place Doris back in the backpack and zip it up, knowing full well she’ll make a mess. Then again, that’s one of the only absolute truths about cockatoos—all pet birds, really.
Once she’s secure, I wade back into the pool and toward the waterfall, dodging the floaty bits of gray. Now that I know what to expect, I use the flowing water to rinse off the cremains as well as I can. I’m aware that I look like a goth shampoo commercial as I dip my head backward in the falls and shake out my hair. Soaked but no longer a walking biohazard, I scoop up the urn and its top. “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but a big goddamn mess,” I murmur. Doris chuckles and shakes her wet feathers. The tuft on her head is all spiky with water, like a tiny pink mohawk.
“I do still have a three o’clock, so we should hurry,” Colonel reminds me. “There’s a yoga mat in the back of the car, if you wouldn’t mind sitting on that?”
Soon we’re zooming back toward town, Colonel’s bright blue yoga mat uncomfortably squeaky under my wet jeans. Doris is quiet in her backpack, which is unusual but not unwelcome. I pull down my mirror and grimace. Despite my attempt to clean up and wind my hair in a tidy bun, I look like a swamp monster.
“This is not how things usually go when people pass,” Colonel says, possibly more to himself than to me. “Spread my ashes in the ocean, they say. Put me on the mantel. But of course ol’ Maggie would want to be deposited behind a waterfall.”
“I thought you said she wasn’t a jokester.”
He shakes his head. “She wasn’t. But she wanted things done her way. A very stubborn woman. That’s why—”
He breaks off and gives a huffy little sigh, and Doris flaps her wings in her bag and screeches, “Bullshit!”
“I thought you said she didn’t curse,” Colonel says, primly.
I look down into her brightly blinking red eyes. “She never has before. But that was probably a little traumatizing, what happened back there. I may need to get her into cockatoo therapy or something.” I silently try to find a pun based onpsittacosisandpsychiatryand fail.
Back at Colonel’s office, once I’m sitting on a towel, I’m allowed to read through the trust. It’s strange but straightforward. Everything was supposed to go to her best friend, Diana McGowan, who was a few years younger and in excellent health, then the next of kin, with no mention of my mother or me or my sisters. Although the paperwork I sign is very official, the original trust is handwritten and witnessed by Colonel himself. With both Maggie and Diana dead in the same car accident, everything is left to me. Abraham will have a job and be paid minimum wage for thirty hours per week until he’s dead. And most annoyingly, I can’t use the reasonable-but-not-life-changing money in my grandmother’s trust for anything other than paying him or improving the properties on the downtown square. Colonel is the executor and I’m the trustee, which means I can’t just withdraw all the cash and run.
“Aren’t wills supposed to just—give you stuff?” I ask. My folks’ will was easy, even if probate was a pain; they just downloaded it off the internet and filled in the blank spaces.
