Abandon - Meg Cabot [77]
Shocked, I interrupted, “My grandfather knew John? I thought you said you only played bocce with him.”
He looked slightly ashamed of himself. “Oh, you mean what I said back at the high school today? Well, yes, that was a small fabrication. And no, your grandfather never met John, though he knew of him, of course. The person who held this position before I did —” He cleared his throat. “Let’s just say his views on the existence of an afterlife were somewhat narrow. You can’t imagine how unreceptive some people can be to the idea of a young man who is able to walk both the earthly as well as the astral plane, and has been doing so quite comfortably for the past century and a half —”
Actually, I could very easily imagine how unreceptive “some people” might be to this idea. Like my dad, for instance. Which was why I’d never mentioned it to him.
“My grandfather,” I said, trying to steer him back to the subject.
“Oh,” he said. “Well, yes, as I was saying, we didn’t see much of John in those days. It wasn’t until my own tenure here as sexton that I got a chance to know him, and by that time your grandfather had unfortunately passed. As for the bocce, your grandfather never wanted your grandmother to know that he was a member of our little, er, society. As I mentioned, some people consider the study of death deities and the Underworld slightly…well, just morbid. And your grandmother is one of those people. I’m not saying she’s not a lovely woman,” he added hastily. “And an asset to the community. My partner knits, and buys all his yarn at her shop. She’s just a very conservative lady, and I think she might have found the fact that your grandfather was involved in something so…esoteric a bit harder to understand than his being on a bocce team.”
I shook my head. “That’s weird.”
The cemetery sexton eyed me over the rims of his glasses. “Why is it weird?”
I’d been about to say, Because she’s the one who introduced me to John.
But she hadn’t, I remembered. In her kitchen, she’d actually insisted I’d made the whole thing up.
It’s not safe for you here.
Underworlds? Death deities? Furies? John hadn’t been kidding: It wasn’t safe for anyone in this cemetery. No way Grandma would have let me out of this office if she’d had a clue.
“It’s weird,” I said instead, “that Grandma didn’t know. Because you said everyone knows. Everyone knows about John, and that Isla Huesos is just sitting over the top of this Underworld.”
“There’s knowing,” Mr. Smith said, “and then there’s believing. Your grandmother knows the stories about John. Everyone around here does. But whether or not she believes they’re actually true…that’s different. Your grandmother is well known for having her feet planted rather firmly on the ground.”
He was right. Grandma didn’t believe in anything she couldn’t see with her own two eyes, except for what it said in the Bible. That’s what she’d told Mom about the dispersant Dad’s company had used.
“I haven’t seen any sign of it,” she’d said. “Or of any of that oil people were complaining about so much.”
“That’s the point, Mother,” Mom had said. “Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. No one knows what damage it could do to the ecosystem years from now.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Deborah,” Grandma had said. “I put in my claim for lost tourist income, and that company paid up pronto, every last cent. So I’m sorry, but why should I care about a bunch of dumb birds?”
“In any case,” Richard Smith