The Truth About Keeping Secrets by Savannah Brown

The women Mom knew from the gym, from her Tupperware parties, who said things like ‘It was his time’ over and over again. (‘Your hair’s so long now, wow, strawberry blond, you have your mom’s freckles, wow, junior year already? Wow, wow, wow.’) Teachers I’d had who felt some sense of obligation to me. Our family was small – Dad’s parents had died young and Mom wasn’t close to hers – so the people who started to trickle in were only faintly familiar. Dad was the only therapist in Pleasant Hills, and I bet that, collectively, he and Rick Crawford knew most of the place’s dirty secrets, living and dead.

Especially not here, since I was sure he would have recognized at least half the people he had to drag on to the slab every morning. Anyway, it couldn’t have been an easy job. I wondered if he grew into the death or the death grew into him. The Crawfords had owned the place for generations, and the guy looked like he hadn’t been born, but had just crawled out of a vat of formaldehyde. He was the undertaker, well-groomed and stout, and spoke with a drawl. That might’ve been the intention, though – to make you feel like you were the one about to be buried.īut Rick Crawford seemed right at home. I wasn’t claustrophobic often, but in here, each breath felt itchy and earned. The paintings were the only indication that a world existed outside that place there were windows, but they were the approximate size and shape of a keyhole, and something about the awful baroque pattern on the walls made it seem like they were slowly closing in on you.

It was a sickly yellow, leaking on to stiff-looking armchairs and fake potted plants and paintings of places more beautiful than here. Mom was about to protest but seemed to be informed by Dad’s ghost that she should drop it, and walked off alone, the ugly carpet dulling the tap of her stilettos to a thud.Ĭrawford Funeral Home was completely depressing. Savannah Brown, author of The Truth About Keeping Secrets

The Truth About Keeping Secrets by Savannah Brown