For all the Rabbittowns

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—

—EMILY DICKINSON

A PLAYLIST OF SPOOKY LOVE SONGS

FOR WHEN YOUR LOVE STORY IS ONE OF A KIND

“Magic Man” by Heart

“Love Potion Number Nine” by The Searchers

“If You Ever Did Believe” by Stevie Nicks

“Crystal” by Stevie Nicks

“I Put a Spell on You” by Nina Simone

“Witchcraft” by Frank Sinatra

“Black Magic Woman” by Santana

“Gloomy Sunday” by Billie Holiday

“I’m Your Boogie Man” by KC and the Sunshine Band

“Spooky” by Classics IV

“Dancing in the Moonlight” by Olive Klug

TODAY

“Thank you for calling Death,” a perky voice announces through the car’s speakers. “If you know your party’s extension, you may dial it at any time, followed by the pound key. For Accounting, press one—”

Garrett presses 1214# on his iPhone’s keypad and waits as his call is connected.

“Garrett,” Janine answers. “What can I do for you?”

“You can stop sending me to places called ‘Rabbittown.’”

“It’s your region. Why are you calling? I see an appointment on your calendar.”

“Yes, I have an appointment, and the address in the file doesn’t come up on Google Maps. A little help here?”

“I don’t know what you think I can do if Google Maps can’t find it.”

Garrett sighs and pulls his car into an open parking spot across from what looks to be a coffee shop. This has been the first semblance of civilization in miles. “You don’t see anything in the file?”

“You have the address. That’s it.”

He leans his head back against the seat. He has never missed an appointment before. He doesn’t intend to start today. “I guess I’ll ask for directions.”

“Thank you for coming to that on your own.”

The line clicks, and the screen on his dash changes back to the radio menu. He checks his watch. He doesn’t have much time.

As he gets out of the car, he takes a moment to stretch his legs and assess his options. The coffee shop looks busy, and he doesn’t have time to worry about bystanders. He glances over his car to the business on the other side of the street.

The old wooden sign hanging over the door says “Rabbittown Casket Company.” He tilts his head, considering. A casket company shouldn’t have too many bystanders. Not live ones anyway.

Chapter

1

The bell over the door tolls for Mrs. Atkins, Nora’s first customer of the day. She marches through the showroom, past the dusty model merchandise dying for her attention, for her affection, for the sinking weight of a decaying body.

Mrs. Atkins hefts her designer handbag onto the counter, ready to be assisted. “Lord, Eleanora, you look just like your mother standing back there.”

To be fair, Nora’s mother did spend a lot of time behind that counter. She had helped Nora’s father paint and install the counter after they found it at a yard sale, freshly ripped from someone else’s kitchen to make room for the new and improved. That was the year they painted the walls a blue-tinged eggshell and installed the track lighting to properly show off their new caskets.

“No one wants to buy them if they can’t see them,” Billy Clanton had said.

Anita Clanton wanted to tell her husband that the models were a bad idea, that this was one of the few retail situations where customers did not want to be near the merchandise. She told him the same thing when he brought in urns and cremation jewelry to display.

Nora Clanton doesn’t have an opinion. Not yet anyway.

“How can I help you?” She tries to use her best salesperson tone, but some people don’t have one of those.

“I went to Jim Anderson’s funeral last week,” Mrs. Atkins begins. “And his daughter-in-law, bless her heart, had picked out the ugliest gold casket I’ve ever seen. When I saw it, I knew I had to pick out my own for when the time comes.”

Most customers can describe caskets only in subjective terms. They want it to feel peaceful. They want it to match a personality. They’re worried it will clash with a certain outfit. Jim Anderson’s daughter-in-law thought the gold was a classy touch.

Marilyn Atkins sings soprano in the choir at the First Baptist Church and never misses a Sunday. She’s also healthy as a horse. Some customers are so bothered by the macabre that they choose a casket in the first ten minutes, but not Mrs. Atkins. Nora spends a hefty chunk of her day (one hour and seventeen minutes) pointing out the most tasteful options and listening to Mrs. Atkins’s gold bracelets clang against the counter as she finds something wrong with all of them.

“Something like this,” Mrs. Atkins says, shoving a stack of printouts in front of Nora’s face. The first page has a casket circled in red.

Nora releases a breath from her body, and she wishes she could go with it. “That’s mahogany. Just like this one.” She flips wearily to the very first casket she showed Mrs. Atkins, back when she still had an ounce of patience.

“Is that one mahogany, too?” Mrs. Atkins squints at both pictures.

“It’s the same model. See?” Nora points out the number on both caskets.

“Well, I’m glad I brought these pictures. Otherwise, we never would have found it.”

Nora considers the model caskets lining the showroom and if crawling into one might allow her into another world or dimension or place that is not here. But she needs Mrs. Atkins’s business, so she leaves that adventure for another day while she finishes the sale.

As she signs her name to the paperwork for a solid mahogany casket with cream satin lining, Mrs. Atkins asks, “Are you still living in that house?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Her parents’ house has been in Nora’s family for a couple of generations.

Mrs. Atkins’s family would never be on that side of Rabbittown, but she hears things like everybody else. “It must feel so empty! That house is meant for a family.” She slides the paperwork across the counter and gathers her purse to leave. “You haven’t found any nice men since you’ve been back?”

“None that stick.” She can’t be sure what Mrs. Atkins will say next, but she knows it will be one of the three types of responses everyone says to single women over thirty:

You’re lucky. Husbands are the worst.

It will happen when you least expect it.

Don’t forget your biological clock.

“It will happen when you least expect it,” Mrs. Atkins says. “That’s how these things go.”

“So I’ve been told.” She stacks the paperwork together with a touch of aggression and attempts to smile in Mrs. Atkins’s direction.

Mrs. Atkins doesn’t notice; she hasn’t noticed other people in years. “You aren’t getting any younger,” she says, wagging her finger as if scolding a child.

“Thank you for coming in,” Nora says, making her way around the counter to shoo Mrs. Atkins out the door. “See you at church.”

Mrs. Atkins walks toward the door but stops short in front of the light blue casket at the front of the showroom to run her finger across the top. “You might have a word with your cleaning staff, Eleanora. There’s an inch of dust on this one.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll be sure to do that.”

“You know, I went to a visitation at one of those Prestige Funeral Homes up in Huntsville, and you might want to stop by one of them.” She glances around the showroom, which hasn’t changed much since it was first built. “You could use some updating. I’d never buy from a company like that after knowing your mama for my whole life, but it wouldn’t hurt to borrow an idea or two from them.”

Nora stares at the blue casket as hard as she can to keep from rolling her eyes. Prestige has made a fortune buying up funeral homes and related suppliers in the area. They convince the small businesses that they have their best interests in mind, taking over the “boring” parts of running a business so that the staff can do more to serve customers. In reality, once the sale goes through, Prestige fires most of the staff. Pooling resources is great for the business and not so great for the family who just sold their life’s work to someone who turned around and axed them.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Mrs. Atkins nods briskly, and the bell tolls again as she marches out onto the sidewalk.

The administrative part of running Rabbittown Casket Company takes about ten minutes as long as Nora is caught up, and Nora doesn’t have much else to do, so she’s always caught up. Customers rarely come in without warning, except for the occasional high school kid on a dare.

The store used to be open six days a week, so her parents had mounted a television to the wall to watch Alabama football. Once Nora left for college, her parents decided they might like to have a social life, so they stopped opening on Saturdays, but the television stayed. That television is the reason Nora is now addicted to General Hospital.

Nora is sitting with her legs propped up on the desk, watching Carly yell at Sonny for what has to be the millionth time, when a tall man in a suit appears in front of the counter. She jumps, and not gracefully.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” the stranger says.

“I should have been paying more attention.” Nora’s bare feet fumble around underneath the desk to find the shoes they’d ditched. She sinks lower in the chair until her toes hit the fake leather. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Whatever you’re watching must be good.”

Nora starts to apologize more thoroughly, but he stops her with something close to a smile. Nora notices that his nose is a little crooked, and he has a faded scar on one cheek. “I get sucked into these shows.”

“My grandmother used to record them on VHS in case she missed anything.” He gestures to Sonny Corinthos on the screen. “He looks exactly the same.”

A mobster points a gun at Sonny, and Carly screams, but Sonny doesn’t flinch. Nora hits the power button on the remote.

“You don’t have to turn it off on my account.”

“I can watch it later. Besides, Sonny will never die.”

“Everyone dies. I would think you know that better than most.”

Nora is about to ask how he knows about her family, but then she remembers they’re standing in her casket store. “I’m sure you didn’t come in here to talk about General Hospital. May I help you with something?”

“I’m not really a customer. I’m looking for Pearl Drive, and Google Maps brought me here.” He holds his phone out to Nora, but she doesn’t need it.

“You’re close,” Nora says, as she walks around the desk and takes in his height and his expensive suit. She can’t decide if he’s actually handsome or if it’s been too long since she’s seen a breathing man in a tailored suit. “It’s more of a driveway than a road, though. Are you sure you have the right address?”

“I’m looking for Pearl Café.”

“Come on, I’ll show you.” Nora leads him outside into the clear summer day, to the old gravel road that separates the casket store from the fabric store next door, past the silver Mercedes parked on the street that must belong to him. Plenty of folks in Rabbittown have money, but no one would waste it on a fancy car when you could get a truck that requires two parking spots.

“It’s right there.” Nora points up the hill to an old wooden building just visible through the trees. “The road’s not great, so most people walk. Are you here for the food?”

Nora tries to imagine what obscure website or podcast would know about Frank’s secret fried chicken recipe. Frank inherited the building from his parents, who ran a general store, but Frank loved to cook, so he and his sister, Ms. Annie, did some remodeling to turn the place into a restaurant. The story is worth telling, but Frank would be too bashful to tell it.

“I’m just here to see the owner. Is the food any good?”

People don’t just come to Rabbittown. It’s about as far east as you can get in Alabama without hitting the Georgia line. Thirty minutes from Anniston, the closest city of any size, which no one outside of Alabama would recognize. An hour and a half from Birmingham. Something must be going on for a person in a Mercedes to wind up at the Pearl Café.

“You should try the cornbread, if you get a chance.”

“I like cornbread. I’m Garrett, by the way. Garrett Bishop.”

“Nora Clanton,” she says, shaking his hand. His eyes had seemed brown at first, but in the sunlight, they’re the color of the leaves on the magnolia tree behind her house. She stares a moment too long, but Garrett stares back with no regard for the silence between them.

Unable to think of anything else, Nora musters, “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, thanks for your help,” he says, still not breaking eye contact.

“It’s no problem.” They continue to stare, but neither of them can come up with anything reasonable to say.

“Well, I’ll let you get to it,” Nora says, choosing this moment to quote her father, certain she’ll never see Garrett’s face again.

She watches him walk cautiously up the hill in his pristine leather shoes. Nora doesn’t know anything about him, including what brought him to Rabbittown, but something tells her she will get the details soon enough. Nothing stays secret for very long, especially when it involves one of Rabbittown’s main gossip hubs. The fastest way to spread any news is to make it known at Pearl Café or the First Baptist Church, and the townsfolk know how to take it from there.

Nora stares into space until she can finally close the store and walk up the gravel road to Pearl Café. Nora’s grandpa sits at their usual Tuesday night table, facing the front door so he can talk to everyone who comes in for dinner. Frank’s sister, Ms. Annie, the waitress/cashier/sweet tea maker/only other employee of Pearl Café, sits at the next table telling what looks to be an exciting story. Nothing happens in Rabbittown without Ms. Annie knowing about it.

When Grandpa sees Nora, he stands in that old-people way that makes you think he might not make it out of the chair.

“Hey, girlie,” he says with his trademark toothy grin. All the men in the Clanton family have the same one, and Nora is reminded of her dad.

“Hey, Grandpa. How are things?” She takes her usual seat next to the window.

“Good. I spent most of the day tending to the garden. We’re gonna have a lot of squash this year.”

“Should you be doing that by yourself?” Nora knows what his answer will be, but he had one of his knees replaced last year, and he needs reminding. “I manage.”

“Stubborn as ever,” Ms. Annie says.

“How are you, Ms. Annie?” Nora asks.

“Better now. We’ve been slow today.” Ms. Annie wears the same blue-and-white ruffled apron every day, with her gray hair smoothed back into a bun. The deacons from the Baptist church also meet here on Tuesday nights. She nods to the table of middle-aged men in the back of the restaurant. “They can’t talk about anything but high school football.” Ms. Annie prefers gossip over sports.

“Speaking of,” Nora says, “I went to see Mrs. Dooley yesterday. She says we’re going all the way.” Mrs. Dooley used to teach third grade, and now she’s the bossiest resident at the Rabbittown Senior Center.

“Mrs. Dooley has always had more faith than the rest of us,” Grandpa says. “Where’s Frank tonight?” Frank usually waits until the banana pudding course before joining them to push Grandpa’s buttons about something in the news. Grandpa knows he’s going to do it, but he still gives Frank the reaction he wants.

“He wasn’t feeling well, so I sent him up early. Hardly anyone here.”

“Hey, we keep this place in business,” Grandpa protests.

The whole town keeps it in business, really. It helps that the food is good and that there aren’t many other restaurant options without driving thirty minutes into the city. There’s also something comforting about the floral wallpaper and spongy blue carpet and the collection of mismatched dining room table sets, which can be pushed together for big celebrations or pulled apart for date night.

A shadow passes the window, and Nora recognizes Garrett Bishop walking back down the driveway toward his silver Mercedes that had still been parked in front of the store when Nora left. “Have you ever seen that guy around here?”

“I don’t reckon,” Grandpa says, leaning over to get a better look. “He must be passing through with that getup.”

“I think he looks nice,” Nora says.

“I’ll tell him to wait!” Ms. Annie says, moving toward the door like a flash.

“No! I was just saying the suit is nice.”

“You sure? Doesn’t look like he’s wearing a ring.”

“I met him earlier,” Nora says. “He was looking for Frank, so I gave him directions.”

“What’d he want?” Ms. Annie asks.

“No idea,” Nora says, knowing Ms. Annie will find out before she goes to bed.

“You’re stuck at that store too much. You should take a vacation.”

“You could sell the place,” Grandpa says.

“Then what would I do?” Nora takes her time unrolling her silverware and placing the paper napkin in her lap, so she doesn’t have to look at either of them.

“Go back to your old job,” he says. “I’m sure they’ll take you.”

“I like being my own boss. I’m an entrepreneur.” Besides, her old job stopped calling her a couple of months ago.

“You do what you want,” he says. “But your mama and daddy didn’t want you to spend your life in that store. You should get out and do something once in a while.”

“I’m doing something right now.”

“Let me set you up!” Ms. Annie says. “Jeff Wilson has a nephew who just got divorced. No kids. Can’t remember his name, but I’ll call right now.”

Thinking of the Wilsons makes Nora think of her parents, so she tries to shut it down quickly. “Adam? We went out in high school. Not a match.”

“It’s not always about a match,” she says. “Let him buy you dinner.”

“I would rather buy my own dinner.”

Nora used to be a person with a plan. Her parents had raised her that way.

Finish high school.

Go to college.

Find a job that doesn’t involve late nights, weekends, or death.

Meet a nice man with a job that doesn’t involve late nights, weekends, or death.

Buy a house with a nice lawn in a nice suburb.

Have nice children.

Have nice grandchildren.

Retire.

Rest in peace in a nice casket.

Nora had done what she was supposed to do. She had crossed off one step at a time. She had found a nine-to-five job that paid her rent and then some. She’d had nice friends and a nice boyfriend. She’d had a favorite place for happy hour and tickets to concerts, and Charlie had booked a hotel room in New York City for their anniversary.

Then her parents died.

In other stories like this, an uncle or aunt might step in. But Nora was an adult, so her dad’s brother had gone home to Tennessee after the funeral. Her grandparents on the Moore side had died when Nora was a baby, leaving Nora’s mother the store. With her mother gone, she was the only one left. She was George Bailey running the Building and Loan, but without hope of anyone else tagging in to give her a break. People in her life had been there for her, especially at first, but no one could fully share the burden of figuring out what comes next. All of the decisions had to be Nora’s.

Nora had never thought about the future of the store. Her parents had wanted it that way. She would live her own life. They would take care of everything in Rabbittown. To say she had no desire to run a business would be an understatement. She had never thought of it. No one had ever mentioned it. She wanted to be a basketball player and then president of the United States and then a teacher and then an accountant, and no one ever pushed her otherwise.

So, Nora had to come up with a new plan: handle whatever needed handling in Rabbittown and then to go back to her life. Her normal routine would distract from that lump in her throat and the hollow feeling in her chest. She would jump right back into the regularly scheduled programming.

When it came time to make arrangements to close the store, Nora couldn’t do it. Her parents had met on the sidewalk out front. She had learned her multiplication tables in the back room. The store had bought her first car. It had sent her to college. She couldn’t sell the house, either. Just the thought of cleaning out everything her parents had owned and loved paralyzed her. How could she stuff her parents’ life and work into a storage unit, knowing she would eventually have to throw it all away? So, she sat on it. She told the real estate agent, her bosses, and her boyfriend that she needed time. In a few weeks, she would be ready. She would know what to do.

Then one of her neighbors died from cancer. Her parents had helped the family arrange everything in advance, so Nora opened the store to help her neighbor’s son sort through those details. Once he left, she walked the perimeter of the showroom, flipping the same light switches she’d flipped as a child when her parents had signaled it was time to go home for the night. She hadn’t left home in days, but now she was thinking about going for a drive or stopping for coffee or taking a walk around the Square. She felt light. She felt useful. She felt she had done something right.

She knows death. It’s in her blood. Now more than ever.

Over the past few months, Nora has taken on her dad’s morning routine. She scrambles eggs in her great-grandmother’s skillet and makes sourdough toast from the loaves her Uncle Ralph brings to the store every few weeks. She was a teenager before she realized that Uncle Ralph wasn’t really her uncle. Besides Grandpa, kinda uncles and maybe cousins make up most of her social life. Her friends have a hard time knowing what to say, since the only life she can talk about revolves around her dead family or a casket store, so she’s been letting most of their texts go unanswered to spare them the effort. It’s a lot to understand, and they shouldn’t have to try so hard.

She kept her family’s subscription to The Anniston Star, and she reads it at breakfast like her dad always did. Her dad used to say the obituary section was good for business. It’s like a list of every casket sold in the area, and her dad loved figuring out who they bought from if it wasn’t from him. Her mom liked the gossip of it all. If you read enough obituaries, you start to notice the nuanced phrasing of estrangement or peculiar names added to the lists of survivors.

Nora works at the store during the day. She scrolls social media. She watches soap operas. On Tuesdays, she has dinner with Grandpa. On Sundays, she goes to church. There’s no Sunday school class for unmarried women over twenty-five, and the lessons in the ladies’ class usually involve submitting or mothering or wife-ing, so she’s taken up residence in the men’s class with Grandpa.

She spends most nights with her TV. Nora tried watching TV right after the accident, but TV families made her sick to her stomach, so she gave it up. Though because she never canceled her parents’ cable subscription, it was always there waiting for her. After a few months, she started using it for background noise to avoid the silence. She caught a few minutes of General Hospital and decided it wasn’t so bad. Those people didn’t look or sound like her family. One day, she read an article in the paper about a guy from a neighboring town who played for the Braves, so she turned on the game. She realized she could bear sports, so she started watching anything she could find. She signed up for extra streaming services, so she could have even more options.

After dinner with Grandpa and Ms. Annie, Nora sticks to her usual Tuesday night habits. When she gets home, she pours a glass of the third-cheapest red wine from Rabbittown Grocery into the Crimson Tide glass her dad always used on game days. She knows she should fold the laundry piled on the two easy chairs in the living room, but she doesn’t actually care about the laundry or the easy chairs.

She tries to get into a hockey game, but she doesn’t understand the rules, so after scrolling Instagram for an hour, she abandons her makeshift wineglass on the coffee table and moves from the couch to watch Cheers in her bed. She turns it up a hair too loud to distract herself, because she still hasn’t gotten used to sleeping in a silent house. It’s like the depression knows she doesn’t have her mom to check for monsters anymore. The monster waits until midnight to crawl into bed next to her like a drunk ex-boyfriend, and it’s hard to move him once he’s comfortable.