Free Raising the Dead by Mara Purnhagen Page A

appropriate.”
    Although really, how was I supposed to know what was appropriate for this kind of thing? We were arranging a funeral ceremony for people who had been dead for over a century.
    While Avery perused the flower selections, I pushed back the living room curtain to look outside. It was gray and windy, which somehow made sense. Halloween weather should be slightly creepy. Mom had already left for the hospital to pick up William and Dad was at the funeral home to collect the cremated ashes of William’s ancestors so we could bury them.
    It had been Trisha’s idea to hold a small ceremony at the cemetery, so I wasn’t sure how most of the planning had been thrown at me. But William had liked the idea, so we were doing it.
    “What day do we need these by?” Avery asked.
    “The ceremony is next Saturday morning. So maybe they should be delivered Friday?”
    Mom didn’t think William would be well enough before then. He was still weak and couldn’t remember what had happened to him. I was surprised that he was being released from the hospital so soon, but Mom said it was an insurance thing. She wasn’t happy about it, and had decided to hire a nurse to check in on William for a few hours every day.
    “Okay.” Avery typed at the computer. “I think this should do it. Do you have the credit card?”
    I looked at the arrangements Avery had selected. Simple white lilies and a few cream-colored roses would adorn the gravestones. “Looks good. Thanks for your help.”
    “No problem. What else needs to get done?”
    I plugged in Dad’s credit card info and completed the order. “We’re supposed to order some food.”
    Avery nodded. “This might sound bad, but this reminds me of planning a dance. The food, the flowers. We don’t need to find a DJ, do we?”
    “Sort of.”
    She looked surprised. “Seriously?”
    “My dad wants to track down a Civil War group, see if they can send some people to play music.”
    “This could get expensive.”
    I shrugged. “Mom says they have a special account for stuff like this.”
    “A funeral account?” Avery wrinkled her nose.
    “Not exactly. They keep their book money separate from their DVD money. We use the book money for travel expenses, but since we’re not planning a big trip this year, my parents are using those funds for William.”
    “But they hardly know him,” she pointed out.
    “True. But we can use the footage from his property for a future DVD, so we owe him, really.”
    The items being retrieved from the lead coffins were all from the Civil War, a fact Dad wasn’t really supposed to know. The museum group was carefully guarding their newfound treasures, but Dad’s friend at the morgue was sneaking in after everyone left to take pictures. Sofar, half a dozen swords, a few guns and a bugle had been discovered. There were still three remaining coffins to examine, including a tiny one. I guessed it belonged to the gravestone Noah had pointed out to me, the one that simply read Daughter.
    I didn’t understand why the rare items had been hidden inside the coffins to begin with. Neither did my parents. Shane and Trisha were investigating the names on the gravestones at the local historical society. Now that we had been kicked out of the morgue and off the project, we had a new plan: uncover vital information before the museum team did. They might have the artifacts, but we could at least understand what they meant.
    Avery and I ordered deli trays and fruit platters from a local caterer. Before we could move on to finding the Civil War band my dad wanted, he called. He was going to be at the funeral home for longer than he had anticipated and wanted to know if Avery could drive me to William’s house. “Your mom could use some help, I think.”
    I told him it wouldn’t be a problem. I was eager to see William. I wanted to erase the image of him lying on a stretcher from my mind. I also wanted to find out if he remembered anything else about the