The Urn Carrier

The
Urn Carrier

Chris
Convissor

© 2016 Chris Convissor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced or transmitted in any means,

electronic or mechanical, without permission in

writing from the publisher.

978-1-943837-38-0 paperback

978-1-943837-39-7 epub

978-1-943837-89-2 mobi

Cover Design

by

Bink Books

a division of

Bedazzled Ink Publishing, LLC

Fairfield, California

http://www.bedazzledink.com

Nineteen-year-old
Tessa is suddenly tasked with spreading her great aunt’s ashes all over the US
and Canada so the rest of her relatives can receive their inheritance. After
her initial dismay, she finds the road trip full of mystery and surprises. Old
family secrets, girlfriend problems and beautiful sunsets accompany her as she
honors her aunt’s wishes.

To all my ancestors, my relatives, my siblings and most es
pecially my
mother, Margaret and my father, Larry.

Without
you, I would not be me.

To
a certain nineteen-year old: Thank you so much for your
integrity, honesty and unflinching courage. I love you with
out c
ondition. None of this would have happened

without your wis
dom, drive and generosity.

Acknowledgments

My
gratitude to Claudia Wilde and C.A. Casey for taking a chance on me. Casey,
your editing is invaluable. Thank you.

Lynn
Starner, thank you for your stunning cover design. Elizabeth Price of Priceless
Photography for the Author head shot, you are terrific and we always laugh!

My
appreciation and love to:

Holly
Bender

My
Family

Carolyn
Schwab

Jackie
and Nancy Ferguson

The
Tally Hoes: Jen, Carolyn, Linda, Kathy, Beth, Renee, you women rock!

My
Golden Crown Academy classmates, faculty, and staff. Additionally, my
appreciation to Ali Sandler, Braxton Busser, Linda Kay Silva, Amanda Kyle
Williams, Doug Stanton.

Lee
Lynch and Ann McMan, thank you so much for your mentorship through the Academy.
You are two of the most incredibly warm and generous people I know.

 “No
matter where I am, and even if I have no clear idea where I am, and no matter
how much trouble I may be in, I can achieve a blank and shining serenity if
only I can reach the very edge of a natural body of water. The very edge of
anything from a rivulet to an ocean says to me;’ Now you know where you are.
Now you know which way to go. You will soon be home now.”

                           
—Kurt Vonnegut

“If
I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Sea,
even then Thine hand would lead me and Thy right hand envelope me.”

                     
—Psalm
139

Prologue

TESSA HAD DONE a face plant in snow. She couldn’t move. She felt
the cold snow on the left side of her face and neck. The heat from her jugular
pounded a space with every heartbeat between her skin and the snow. She counted
her heartbeats—one, two, three, four.

Someone else was breathing in her ear.

“Tessa!” Her twin brother, Eli, was bending over her. “Please. Get
up. Don’t be dead.”

Dead? A rocketing explosion in her head, and in her gut, propelled
her to twist and look up, but her eyes wouldn’t focus, so she had this blurry
thing going on, like she had put on some old person’s thick glasses. She
squeezed her eyes as tight as she could and counted one, two, three, four
before letting them open again. Bare tree limbs high up seemed to be clearer.

“Oh God, Tessa.” Eli pulled her to her knees and held her. Her
face was matted with something. Gooey, warm, mud? She tasted blood in her
mouth.

Eli was sobbing like a little boy, not an almost man.

He was clutching her so hard his fingers were digging into her
spine through her wool jacket. She was frightened by his sobs rocketing off the
hills in these remote woods and she wondered why were they kneeling on this
incline and why her stomach and head hurt so much? In the distance she heard a
truck lumbering, wheeling, and whining down the old two-track. Forward it drove
and then reversed. The engine plunged and shifted and roared, ramming and
pushing through the thick snow on the Rayle road. Even though the hills were
thawing, the snowmobilers had padded down a track on the seasonal road all
winter long. It was very near impossible to get through.

In fact, her dad and Eli and she had snowshoed in on the road from
669. Her dad.

She doubled over, her insides cramping. A three-pronged bird claw
twisting inside her.

“Oh fuck, Eli, what’s going on?”

She felt like her insides were tumbling out.
Because they were.

Chapter 1

Three Years Later

AS ASHES GO, Aunt Sadie hardly amounted to two cottage cheese
containers. Tessa’s neighbors’ St. Bernard had required a shoebox.

The gold filigree vase, Aunt Sadie’s last container, sits on a
beautiful dark, delicate mahogany wood table. The urn is perfectly centered on
a small veil of Hungarian lace in a circle just like the tabletop. Various
relatives mill around, scarcely giving the urn or the table a glance as they
look at other furniture, dishes, ornaments, silverware, glassware, the
keepsakes, the things on the wall, all to be divided. Aunt Sadie never had any
kids of her own.

Tessa lounges against the wall, her brown-and-pink hair, with a
shock of blonde in the middle, draped over one eye. Although Tessa probably
hadn’t met Great Aunt Sadie more than two or three times, she’d been totally
enamored by her.

At family gatherings, Great Aunt Sadie hung out with all the kids.
She didn’t stand much taller than their eight-, nine-, ten-year-old selves. She
always wore brightly colored pantsuits, like sunflower yellows and fuchsia
pinks and eye-popping lime greens. She wore gold jangly things around her waist
and would gyrate impressively, the bells and clangy things making tinkling
water noises. Sort of like when the snow would melt off the roof and run into
the gutters. Aunt Sadie claimed she was a belly dancer.

Uncle Percy, her husband, had been just the opposite of Sadie. He
had been super tall. He never said much. Everyone said he was Canadian. Tessa
figured that meant Canadians didn’t talk much.

He’d stand, leaning one shoulder against the wall, impressive with
his shock of white, thick, well-groomed hair, smiling. His bright turquoise
blue eyes grinned when he watched his wife belly dance—holding her hands out to
the children, engaging them in dancing with her, encouraging them to mimic her
moves, fluttering around like a happy sparrow in spring. Diminutive sprite fit
her perfectly. Uncle Percy would watch with a big grin. The smile they shared
in their eyes as they’d wink at each other would provoke Aunt Sadie to say,
“He’s my forever love!”

Tessa wanted a love like Uncle Percy and Aunt Sadie’s.

Aunt Sadie never talked down to the children. Even though she was
old and wrinkly, she’d sit at the kids’ table during meals and share secret
jokes about all the adults. Aunt Deidre positively hated it when Aunt Sadie
would sit with the kids.

Most of the time, Sadie and Percy lived in Florida. The last time
Tessa saw Great Aunt Sadie, Percy had died the year before. But instead of
being all sad and gloomy, Sadie enthralled the kids at dinner with ghost
stories about how Percy returned the day Aunt Deidre came over to this very
country house.

“She was telling me I had to move in with her and Chuck,” Aunt
Sadie whispered as they sat at the kids table. “No offense to you two.” She
motioned to Jill and Joe, Deidre and Chuck’s kids, before continuing her
dramatic replay. “Well. Percy was having none of that. The garage door started
going up and down. It did it four times. All by itself.”

“Maybe a plane flew over and set it off?” Eli suggested.

“Four times?” Aunt Sadie asked. “Then, when
she told me I had to sell the house, well, that did it. The lights started
coming on and off. She had the nerve to ask
me
what was wrong. I just
said, plain and simple, ‘Percy doesn’t like you.’ But do you think that stopped
her?” Aunt Sadie’s fork was midair.

She waited for all the kids to shake their heads.

“No. She followed me into the kitchen. And when she bent over to
look at what I was cooking in the oven, well,” Sadie paused for effect, “don’t you
know that refrigerator door flies open and smacks her right in the ass.”

The kids’ eyes widened, and they all laughed so hard, Eli’s milk
came out his nose. Then they all laughed together about that. No one said swear
words in conversational tone to them but Aunt Sadie.

“That’s when I said, ‘I think Percy is telling you to leave.’ ”

All the kids shivered and agreed: it had to be Uncle Percy. Aunt
Sadie wasn’t done. In a stage whisper loud enough for all the adults at the
grown-up table in the next room to hear she said, “She’s just after my money.
She’s got a loooooooooooooong wait coming.”

Aunt Sadie was like a kid but a lot older.

“Why do you sit with us?” Tessa asked. “When you can sit at the
big table?”

“Well, sweetie, it’s like this. At these family gatherings, I much
prefer your company.”

That was twelve years ago. Aunt Sadie never did sell the country
house, but she got as far away from Aunt Deidre and Uncle Chuck as she could.
She remained in Florida.

Tessa finds it odd the dining room table has been moved to the
living room. All that remains in the dining room are the tiny table and the
vase. She watches all the adults and some of the cousins printing their
initials on little labels and sticking them on all the material things they
want. She sighs and wanders into the large old farm kitchen. She hops onto one
of the counters and scrounges a chocolate chip cookie from a nearby platter
before Jill unceremoniously pushes open the heavy swinging kitchen door.

“Thought I’d find you here.” Jill smirks, her forearm deep into
the potato chip bag. She munches like a cow grazing in a field, her eyes
scanning the shelves for anything of value. The same zombie look everyone has
outside the kitchen. Jill wanders over to the oven and looks inside.

Tessa watches the refrigerator door, and by the fourth count, it
doesn’t even hint at moving. She glances out the large window behind her.
Murphy, the black, flat-coat retriever, is sniffing in the melting snow,
wandering from fence side to fence side. Tessa wonders if he knows his owner is
in the vase.

“This is so lame.” Jill is trying to engage Tessa in camaraderie
talk, like they are the cool ones of the group and everyone else just side
characters. “How long do you think it’s going to take?”

Tessa shrugs, keeping her silence. She doesn’t dislike Jill, she
just doesn’t get her. Jill makes her uncomfortable. She is classically pretty,
with large almond eyes and dark hair, a bit heavy, with an attitude a mile
long. She is loud, assumptive, and sometimes shares too much information, like
now.

“That date I went on last night? Totally a waste. The guy didn’t
even try to kiss me. Just wanted me to blow him. Like, really? Are you serious,
dude?” Jill half laughs.

Ewwww. Tessa tries to not focus on the potato chip remnants hanging
from the corner of Jill’s mouth, but it’s kinda hard to look away. Jill’s
presence demands you pay attention to her before she can . . .
uh oh.

“That guy you were chatting up at the bar seemed pretty cool.”

Yup. Jill was that intrusive. They haven’t seen each other in five
years, and now here they are, at Aunt Sadie’s wake, and all of a sudden they
are supposed to share their deepest, darkest secrets.

Tessa just shakes her head.

“I mean, how does that work anyway?”

“Tessa!” Her mom’s voice from the dining room rescues her.

Tessa scoots off the counter. She starts to toss the half a
chocolate chip cookie in the waste basket, and Jill’s hand intercedes.

“If you’re not going to eat that, I will,” Jill says. “May as well
not go to waste. You don’t have any infectious diseases, right? I’m just
kidding, man. Geez, don’t look like death just walked in.”

Tessa hands over the last half of the cookie as her mom pushes
open the door, revealing a crowd in the dining room.

“We need you.” The lines between her mom’s eyes seem deeper than
normal and the dark circles under her eyes even darker.

Tessa follows her mom into the dining room and all the relatives
are looking at her. An old man she has never seen before, appraises her
carefully from head to toe. He has large round glasses, and his crinkly wrinkly
eyes are an unreadable watery blue. He looks stern. Even though he is old,
something about him makes Tessa’s skin crawl. It’s
almost as if he knows everything about her, about Eli, about
. .
.

“Well, Beth, tell her.” Aunt Deidre’s voice kills her thoughts.

Her mom’s nervous tic, a quick head shake, jumps through Tessa’s
energy. Her mom is really upset, but trying to keep it together.

“I don’t know how to say this Tessa . . .” Her mom looks at the
old man.

The old man clears his throat. “Tessa, is it?” He waits for her to
acknowledge him with a nod.

“I am Dan Forsythe, your Great Aunt Sadie’s lawyer. Her will is
very specific. Before any of her monies, trust, and personal belongings are disbursed,
her ashes must be spread in various locations, on a specific route.”

His cough rattles shallowly from his throat, and not from his
chest. To Tessa, his throat resembles a turkey’s waddle. Why she is so fixated
on people’s appearances today mystifies her. Maybe she always notices these
things, but today, for some reason, she is acutely aware of them. She realizes
he’s been speaking and catches up with his words.

“And in accordance with her wishes someone must scatter these
ashes in a certain order. It’s not a difficult task. It seems like no one has
an open schedule but you.”

Tessa opens her mouth and then closes it. Her
mom stands next to her, not looking at her but at the floor, and touches her
forearm.

“I told them that just because you are in between jobs and are
unsure if you’re going to return to school next semester, didn’t mean you were
available,” she says, her quiet voice painfully etching out her words. “In
fact, I said you were unavailable.”

“Whoa, dude,” Jill says from behind her, catching the drift far
faster than Tessa. “I can’t do it. I’m in pre-med.”

“That’s what I told them.” Aunt Deidre’s exasperation annunciated
through her arms flinging out to the side.

Fourteen relatives shift on their feet uncomfortably as they
looked expectantly at Tessa. Uncle Chuck, front and center, crosses his arms
across his large, girthy belly. He looks like a horse that swallowed a hippo.

“You don’t have a job. Well, you do now.”

He starts to light the half stale, stinky
cigar he has in his hand.

The lawyer glares at him. “There’ll be none of that.”

Everyone looks at him, but the lawyer is unmistakably speaking to
Chuck.

“Not in the house.” The lawyer’s stare lasers into Chuck so hard
the energy in the room vibrates. The static is palatable.

Chuck scowls, releasing the flame on the lighter. He jams the
unlit cigar in his mouth. He chomps on it as if he is chewing steel. His eyes
narrow, exposing a molten anger beneath Chuck’s otherwise fluffy exterior.

Tessa looks at the urn. What the hell?

“Before anything is removed from the house,” the creepy dude says
to Tessa in a much calmer voice, “before monies are . . .”

She holds up her hand. She gets it. She looks at him directly.
“What about Murphy?”

A slight upturn on the old guy’s thin blue lips, reveals his
amusement.

“The dog?” Aunt Deidre asks. “You’re worried about the dog? Isn’t
he like, a hundred years old?”

“Excellent question.” The lawyer looks at his papers. “Your Aunt
Sadie wants Murphy to go along.”

“That cinches it,” Jill says. “I’m allergic to dogs.”

More like allergic to doing anything for anybody else.

Tessa laughs, and then frowns. She knows she heard a voice, but
apparently no one else has. It’s unlike her to be that sarcastic.

“Something funny?” the lawyer asks.

No. I’m sorry. I—”

“You don’t have to apologize,” her mom says. “This is ridiculous.
She’s been put on the spot by all of you. Wanting things.”

Her mom despises greed. She told Tessa she was dreading seeing the
relatives today, fussing over Aunt Sadie’s things. The only reason Tessa agreed
to come was because she could see how upset her mom was. And her mom always
stood by her. It was the least she could do.

“Mom. Let me think a moment. I’m not sure I
understand everything.”

“Why don’t you all get refreshments?” the lawyer says to everyone
else. “While Tessa and her mom and I find a quiet room to discuss the details.”

“Wow, better you than me,” Jill whispers to Tessa, before
returning to the kitchen.

Once the lawyer details everything, Tessa fully understands why no
one else is willing to undertake the task.

“So let me get this straight.” Tessa is sitting on the edge of the
comfortable bed. It’s a bright room, with older dark furniture and light
flowing in through airy windows. Light walls. Old-fashioned. Her mom sits
beside her. Murphy at her feet.

“Aunt Sadie wants some ashes in Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and
then I start driving to various places across the US and Canada and spill some
of her ashes out? Then I call you each time, check in, and when all her ashes
are gone, I return? And it’s all paid for? Do we know how long it might take?”