A Novel By Riley Adaris
Delilah has to go through the most horrible experience anyone can imagine: her wife, Nan, feels unwell, falls on the floor and dies, right in front of her eyes. Del frantically calls for an ambulance while trying her best at CPR. She recently took a first aid course, but one thing is practicing with a dummy, another is doing it on a real person, and if that person is related to you, it’s even more challenging.
Unfortunately, there is not much that her or the paramedics can do, and Nan is pronounced dead at the scene. It’s devastating. It’s made even worse by the fact that Del became a widower in her early 30s after only a few years of wedding: in her world, ‘forever’ is still a big, meaningful word.
Friends and family gather around Del in her darkest hour, and she does all she can to go through it. One night, though, after having had a bit too much to drink to cope with the pain, she wakes up in her living room, in the dark and with the ashes of her beloved wife on the floor. But, to her great surprise, she is not alone. Sitting on the armchair there is an old guy, named Naylor ‘Nelly’ Maltby, who thinks he is at this place called the Twelve Elms, a nursing home nearby.
The situation doesn’t make sense to either of them, so they decide to go out for breakfast and try to pierce together what happened and what is actually going on. Maybe, they say to each other, with some talking we can find what links us and make it right. But in the middle of their peaceful meal, two women approach them, accuse them of being a fraud and definitely not funny. When Del stares at Nelly looking for an explanation, he tells her that the two women were his daughter and granddaughter but he has no clue why they said what they said. While ranting, they also mentioned that the real Nelly died 6 moths before, but he is right there, flesh and blood, old, yes, but still breathing and walking and talking and eating.
It will take us readers quite some time to start piecing the pieces together: Nan and Nelly died on the same day, they have both been cremated in the same crematorium and they both had the same initials, NSM, just in a different order. Because of this, their ashes have been swapped, and Nelly’s ashes ended up in Nan’s urn. Due to the mix-up, Nelly couldn’t pass over, and that’s why he woke up in Del’s living room in the middle of the night when the urn was opened again.
The pass over has also been hindered by some more unfinished business: when Nelly was young, he joined the Navy; there, he met Jack, his bunkmate but also his lover. Being gay was against the law back then, but they promised to each other to find a way to keep in touch after their discharge. Only, that didn’t happen, for many different reasons, although they never forgot about each other.
I enjoyed the overall idea, it gives a nice twist to a very hurtful and delicate theme, and I appreciated the ending (sad, but the only possible ending), but I was less keen on the execution, which I found ok but definitely with room for improvement. The narrative remains superficial most of the times, never going deep into what makes the characters tick. The plot is not always well developed, with plot holes or loose threads at times, which are not essential for the story itself, but it’s good custom to tie them before the final full stop. Perhaps not the most original story, but still a good creative effort.
Ashes to Ashes is available for purchase at: https://amzn.to/3RPte5t