PRELUDE
THE DO'S & DON'TS OF DEATH

           𝓓eep into the dreary pits of a November afternoon, Richard North was laid to rest.

The sky was gray, not stormy, with just enough cloud-cover to suck even the very last drops of happiness from the North residence and all its guests. The air had cooled from the day's heat, replacing the sun-parched lawn with a bright, yet bitter wind that stirred the dead leaves into a frenzy. Inside, the wake was in full swing– well, as "full swing" as a wake could be, if you meant completely and utterly soul-sucking. This exact thought swept through Jamie North's mind as she sat on the back deck, a dying cigarette clutched between her fingers.

A thin line of smoke curled into the air before Jamie's eyes. All she'd managed was a weak puff as she contemplated the absolute bore her father's funeral had been. Richard himself would have laughed himself to piss at the sight of all this moping and crying, especially with how dull the atmosphere had become. As far as the funeral-goers were concerned, Richard "Storm Rider" North was anything but boring, and Jamie would damn everyone to hell if they thought this was giving him the "proper" service. He would have gone out his own way too, if that old shit-eating heart of his hadn't gotten to him first.

Jamie watched a smear of ash fall from her fingertips. She herself was not the most avid smoker, but such an occasion had stirred up an ancient craving from her teen years– she'd stolen the cigarette from a carton in her dad's bureau. It wasn't as if he was in rush to use them up. The bitter thought subsided with another drawn out drag, her mind easing as she rocked back onto the heel of her free hand. It wasn't as if she meant to speak ill of the dead– especially not with her daddy being so freshly buried– however, the swell of anger rising in her gut was too irrepressible to fully ignore. A week and a half ago, her father had been alive and kicking, and now he was buried in a small town graveyard in northern Texas. Jamie's poor mother barely anytime to design an epitaph, much less mourn her own husband.

Her annoyance wasn't with her father, not really, however, she couldn't say the same about the heart-attack that had taken him at a young fifty-six years old. The man had practically lived and breathed his work, so it had been much more of a shock when "natural causes" had gotten him before any tornado had.
To make matters worse, he'd left this world without so much of a goodbye, the bastard.

"Thought I'd find you out here." A cool voice said from behind Jamie, shattering the silence with the slam of a storm door. Jamie's head made a quick pivot in the direction of her company, not particularly surprised to see her older sister, Libby, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. Libby's dark eyes raked over the scene at hand, flaying Jamie open in a way only an elder sister could do. "You slipped away. Thought maybe the wind swept you back out to Oklahoma."

"If "by slipped away" you mean "escaped Auntie Sharon and her soggy tissues", then sure." Smoke expelled from Jamie's mouth as she spoke. She watched it rise, and dissipate into the colorless sky. "And believe me, I'm not sure Oklahoma is the lesser evil right now. Same sob story, different day."

Libby's laugh was melodic but brief, as she stood just out of Jamie's peripheral. Jamie could envision her standing there even without seeing her: her black hair twisted back from her face to reveal that soft, yet captious stare of hers that she'd been using to pierce Jamie with all afternoon.
"Uh-oh, trouble in paradise?" She quipped, crossing the deck to her sister's side, the worn wood paneling creaking beneath her feet. "Boy wonder not all he cracks out to be?"

Jamie's gaze fell on the phone balanced on her knees, the screen dark as lay face up to her.
"He's not so much the problem." She mumbled. Needing to shift the conversation, she pivoted to Libby's earlier comment– awkwardly fumbling through wanting to return to the topic of her father's death. "Pretty gloomy in there, huh? You would've thought–"

"Someone died?" Libby finished, disregarding her sister's moodiness as she eventually took a seat and folded her legs beneath her in a simultaneous, smooth movement.

A sharp scowl tugged at Jamie's features. She speared Libby with a hot glare, but was unable to hide even her own chagrin over her choice of words.
"No– someone pissed in their cheerios." Jamie shot back, fighting the blush that crept up her neck. Even in the worst of times, Libby always had the right words, whereas Jamie always came up short– or in this case, fucked herself over with her own ramblings . "I ain't that heartless, Lib."

If Libby heard, she didn't show it. Instead, she hummed, and laid her flat palm out for Jamie's cigarette. Begrudgingly, the cigarette was passed between hands, and a long silence sprawled out before them, like a lazy cat in a warm patch of sun. Libby took a few drags on the stolen smoke, while Jamie picked at the peeling paint on the deck below her feet. At twenty-nine, Elizabeth North was everything Jamie wasn't– she was short, barely scraping 5', with the same dark hair and deep brown eyes passed from their mother, and the kindest smile north of Dallas. Libby had inherited their father's good looks and humor, but not he and Jamie's insatiable need for disorder. Between her level-headedness and painful, sisterly remarks, Libby always seemed to be... exactly where she needed to be.

Especially when everyone needed her.

Jamie broke the quiet first, blowing out a long breath that sent her bangs fluttering over her forehead.
"I do care, you know." She sighed, her gaze flickering to the glowing end of the cigarette amongst Libby's fingers. Her sister hummed again, in apparent comprehension; so Jamie continued on.
"It's just... I don't know, none of this–" She gestured towards the house, where relatives and friends of the family milled about, dressed in all black– even Jamie sat in her darkest outfit, a simple black dressed sucked dry of her usual color. Richard North would have wanted singing, dancing, shots taken of his favorite bourbon out in the barn. "None of it feels like him."

Libby scoffed, finally speaking.
"Well, what did you expect?." She said with an affably ragging tone. "We weren't exactly going to have his coffin busting confetti, were we? You know Mama... quiet, traditional..."

"Daddy wanted to be cremated." Jamie said, shortly. The words felt too big for her mouth, like a stone from the garden sitting on her tongue. Libby flicked ashes onto the laminate, and Jamie felt herself wince deep inside.
Not helping.

"And I suppose you would have tossed him into a tornado?" Libby's eyes were luminous, even in the gloomy gray of the Texan afternoon. In turn, she then swept out her hand, and smushed the cigarette against the deck. A dying wisp of smoke escaped from beneath her finger tips. Jamie frowned, her purloined prize now an ashy pockmark against the graying wood paneling. Cutting her shoulder against the wind, and Libby, she set her stare out on the lawn– and her father's old pickup truck a few yards down the driveway.

Libby continued,
"Maybe scatter him across Tornado Alley?" She quipped. "Come on, Jamie. We could barely afford the funeral as is."

Jamie's lips parted in a sharp rebuttal, but the words died a spectacular, bitter death as she mourned the loss of her cigarette. Out in the yard, the blue and white rusted out paneling of the Ford F150 winked at her from the awning of the garage. The thing had been born in the 90s and still ran, as painfully stubborn as its previous owner. The engine groaned like it was on fire when it ran, and the front passenger-side tire perpetually bled air from slow leak– one that Richard had meant to fix the week before he'd passed. He'd driven that truck through twenty years of monster storms and tornados, through floods and high wind– and yet somehow it had still outlived him. She supposed that was the beauty of the 90s; or really, the beauty of her father and his dedication to what he loved. Like that damned car of his.

Libby's warm hand graced Jamie's, a tentative pressure that slid from her elbow down to her limp hand.
"Listen. I know what you two shared, Jay. I don't pretend to understand him any better than you did." Libby said, softly. She breathed, a beat, then added: "Sometimes it's best to do... what's best for everyone."

"It's his funeral." The words in Jamie's brain felt strong and fortified when she'd thought them, but the moment they left her lips, her voice shook under their weight. A stray tear dashed down her cheek before she had the chance to wipe it away.

"I know."

A cluster of leaves rustled over the deck. There came a beat of silence, or really, an angry tension as Jamie tried to dig herself out of her emotions back to return to her backyard-brooding– of which she'd been doing successfully before she'd been interrupted. The wind picked up, ripping at both girls' hair, before fading back into the lifeless sky. Libby, still quiet, jostled her shoulder playfully into Jamie's.

Breathing in sharply, Jamie raised a shaky hand and rubbed her face, likely smearing salty tears into her mascara.
"Damn you, Libby North." She joked, her voice weak. "Can't have you and Daddy both making me cry."

Libby smiled back, a bit sadly, clenching her hand around Jamie's in a supportive effort. For a brief instance, Jamie could feel her own childhood close to the surface, like they were two little girls again sitting on the back porch. Like their daddy wasn't dead in a casket inside, and life was still made up of sunshine and never-ending summers. Jamie wanted the warmth of the moment to last, to spread over the cold, unfeeling pit in her chest and thaw the ice in her veins– even if it were for only a second.
But then Libby's expression changed. And the grayness of the lifeless evening enveloped them both again.

"I need you ask you something." Libby said, still smiling in the slightly woeful way.

The tug of Jamie's brow grew taught as she narrowed her eyes at her sister, as if squinting might help her understand Libby's change in dynamic. The sorrow was still there, yes, painted across Libby's dulcet features, however, it felt as if Libby had cleaved her own sadness in two, as if it wounded her greatly to even to pivot her dejection to some other painful topic. Her suspicion growing greater, Libby toed the waters with a tentative:

"What?"

Libby's full lips pursed into a thin line, and she glanced back over her shoulder to the side of the house. The bay windows of the dining room paralleled the deck, the outer wing of glass angled perfectly enough so that the girls could view the guests inside– but not necessarily the other way around. Jamie followed her sister's gaze to where a dark-haired woman– their mother, Elaine– stood in profile to them, her back facing the yard. Even from this distance, Jamie could see the red puffiness that encapsulated her mother's eyes, and the dreadful, empty expression she wore. Funeral-goers passed her from the living where Richard's coffin lay, some pausing to perhaps whisper words of condolences– however, if her mother heard, she didn't show it. She just continued to stare off, silently, into the dining room.

Libby breathed then, suddenly, sucking the air through her teeth.
"I need to you stay here." She whispered, cutting her glance from the window back to Jamie. She winced, like the words hurt her, physically. "On the farm, with Mama."

"What?" Jamie said again, this time her tone far more incredulous than confused. She snatched her hand free from Libby's with obvious reproach.

At that exact moment, the phone in Jamie's lap lit up, vibrating against her knee in what would have been the tune of Cowboy, Take Me Away. Jamie silenced the call before the Dixie Chicks could finish the rendition, but not before the screen alit with the picture of a smiling blonde man in a white rancher's hat. The name read "Baby" with a pink heart, the picture fading to darkness as she clicked the power button and reeled back on Libby.

"I know, I know." Libby started, flickering a glance between Jamie's face, and the phone between them. "It wouldn't be for long– just until I get things figured out. Mama can't be on her own, not on this big old farm. Daddy did everything–"

"Libby, I can't!" Jamie fumed, half exasperated, half furious. "Not with–"

"I get it. You've got your thing and Tyler and whatever–" Libby pressed on, like a steam engine barreling on over a track. Jamie felt as if she was strapped to one now, watching the oncoming freight as it rushed down a path to cut her in half. "But she needs us Jay, you know that. I'm sure Tyler will understand."

"Understand? Lib, I can't just uproot my life to come and stay with you and Mama. Besides, Tyler's got his whole channel thing going on and..." Jamie trailed off, catching a thin look of unease in Libby's face. "Libby...?"

"I can't stay."

"Libby–!"

She cut off Jamie's furious yell before it could amount to anything worse, holding her hands up in what was supposed to be a gesture of surrender. However, personally, it seemed closer to an act of war than a means of forfeit. Jamie's frown was deep enough to carve lines into her face, a wrinkle forming between her brows as Libby sighed, heavily, and wiped her hands over her face; disregarding the makeup she'd applied so delicately earlier this morning. "It's all so complicated, Jay. Ruby's still in kindergarten, and Ryan's having a hard time finding a good job near Dallas. I just..."

There came a pause, the tension stilling between them with a hush.

"I just need some help, is all." Libby's voice was more like a breath. Jamie's fury flattened, some, as she considered her sister with a dubious look. "Help, and time. Just until I get my family packed up and moved up here... Can you do that?"

In turn, Jamie heaved her own sigh, and wheeled around to peek at her mother through the bay window again. Elaine Huang-North remained as still as mouse, silhouetted in the warm kitchen light– her face devastatingly unmoving, haunting.

"Just for a little while?" She breathed.

Libby's hand returned, sneaking its way back to Jamie's, holding tight with a grip that threatened to crush Jamie's palm. To anyone else, it would feel like a victory. To Jamie, it was a crossroads, a sad defeat of anything else. When Libby spoke again, her voice was uncharacteristically feeble. "A little while, yeah."

"For Mama?"

"For Mama."

The conversation stilled, and with another tight squeeze of hands, Libby stood and brushed herself off– but not before she stooped and kissed Jamie's forehead. Then she was gone, the screech of the storm door behind her.

Jamie sat for long time on her own, staring down the Ford in the drive. It stared her back, the ghostly remnant of her father standing quiet against the debate that had just ensued between his children. She sat until the sky darkened, and the porch light flickered to life with a rattle. Only when the air chilled and the goosebumps rose against her bare arms, did she dry her face again and pick up her phone– dialing back the number from earlier. She paused a moment to scan the face of her blond cowboy as the photo lit up her screen once more.

Then she raised the phone to her ear, closed her eyes, her breath trembling as the line rang once, then clicked as the other end picked up.

"Hey, baby." A deep, warm voice said, filling her chest with honey and lead.

"Hey." She murmured. "Can we talk?"