about it. Here I’d been thinking the worst when this guy had just lost his wife or maybe one of his kids. I slid behind the wheel and looked over at Lloyd.
“You see what being a cop’ll do to you?” I said. “It jaundices you toward life. It blinds you to the good in human beings. I’m telling you, Lloyd, in my next life, job, whatever, I’m gonna be something optimistic, you know, like the lay version of a nun. Maybe I’ll go into social work.” I remembered the overburdened therapists at the mental-health center in Garden Beach and thought better of the idea. “Okay, maybe I’ll take up exotic dancing. That way, I’ll be improving men’s mental health while actually getting paid for it!”
Lloyd wasn’t listening. He was looking out the window at the darkened shop and growling.
“Lloyd,” I said, “if your instincts are that good, how come you didn’t warn me about Pete, huh?”
Lloyd’s head whipped back in my direction at the mention of Pete’s name and he yipped, a quick, short bark that I interpreted as an apology.
“Okay, you’re right,” I muttered. “You told me so.” We turned off Lancaster Avenue onto Sunset Drive. “Here we go. We’re home,” I said. I coasted slower as we rounded the corner and approached Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny’s tiny Dutch colonial.
The street was lined on both sides with cars. “Looks like they got company,” I said. “Maybe it’s Aunt Lucy’s altar guild.” But there were too many cars for it to be a simple ladies’ meeting.
A blue sedan pulled away from the curb close to the house, and I pulled in, parked and looked up at the house where I’d spent the last four years of my childhood. There was a white funeral wreath on the door.
My throat tightened. I stared up at the flowers and felt denial take over. It couldn’t be. I was tired. It was just a decoration, nothing special. The cars meant nothing. My skin began to prickle. Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny, they’d been fine when I’d seen them last Christmas; no one had called to say they were ill. They would’ve called. Someone would have called. What was going on?
I opened the car door and stepped out onto the street, feeling as if time had somehow slowed to a frozen halt. I rounded the car and opened Lloyd’s door mechanically, watching him jump out onto the sidewalk and make a beeline for a nearby bush. It was like watching a movie.
I felt myself cross the yard, felt the cold air stinging my cheeks without registering the fact that it was cold. I was fixated on the white carnations in the wreath, staring at them as I walked closer and closer to the front door.
As I started up the front steps, the door suddenly swung open. My cousin Nina from California stood there, unsmiling, her black-lined eyes rimmed with red. She looked like an updated, shorter version of her mother, Aunt Lucy’s oldest sister, Myrna. She’s dyed her hair, I thought, taking in the peroxide-blond choppy cut and the pink tips that stood out like miniature signal flags all over her head. I felt frozen, removed from the strange movie that was my homecoming.
“Where the hell have you been?” she said, hands on hips, black vinyl miniskirt tight against her stick-thin thighs. “Well, at least you got here. I guess somebody finally reached you. We only called about five thousand times. I thought cops always had their cell phones on. Isn’t it like a law?”
“What happened?” I asked. I could hear voices behind her and caught flashes of people moving around inside the house.
Nina shrugged, stepping out onto the porch and pulling the door almost shut as she moved. “Heart attack, I guess,” she said. “He had his tablets but they didn’t do any good. By the time the ambulance got there, he was gone.”
“Uncle Benny?” I whispered, tears flooding my eyes. “He’s dead?”
Nina stared at me, frowning. “Stella, hello? Yes, Uncle Benny’s dead. What did you think?” She frowned harder. “How come you’re dressed like that?” she asked. “I mean, even I knew it was cold. And what’s wrong with your foot? Why’s it wrapped up like that?” She looked past me, her eyes lighting on Lloyd. “You brought your dog with you? You couldn’t find somebody to watch him?”
The questions came, rapid-fire, one after another, without a pause to hear the answers. I couldn’t have answered her, though; I was too overwhelmed to speak.
“You’d better get your suitcase and come on,” she said. “We’ve got to leave for the funeral parlor in an hour. They’re sending limos for the family.”
She turned and started to open the door, realized I wasn’t moving and turned back around.
“Are you coming?”
“I didn’t bring…” I began. “I didn’t know…”
Nina closed the door again. She turned and descended the steps slowly, opening her arms to me as she approached.
“Oh, my God! You didn’t know! What did they tell you?”
“Nothing,” I whispered. “I didn’t know.”
Chapter 3
It was a lovely funeral. Strange, but nonetheless beautiful. The only hint of a hitch came when Aunt Lucy said she wanted Uncle Benny propped up in the casket for the viewing, but between the more sensible cousins and the funeral home director, calmer heads had prevailed.
The funeral director explained that they couldn’t prop Uncle Benny up in the casket, that certain natural events would occur to make this impossible, so Aunt Lucy gave in and went standard on the visitation. But she did manage to insist that Uncle Benny be dressed in his fishing vest and lure hat.
“I want people to remember him like he was, not like he is,” she said, and her voice cracked just slightly, letting us all know that if we pushed it, she’d lose it.
Nina leaned over and muttered in my ear. “Too bad you couldn’t get here any sooner,” she said. “Aunt Lucy actually wanted to bury Uncle Benny in his Jon boat. It took some doing to talk her out of that one, I’ll tell you!” She looked over at Aunt Lucy and smiled innocently, then turned back to me. “She’s lost it, Stella. Ever since the stroke, she’s been loopy.”
I looked at my aunt, trying to do an assessment of her mental capacities. She looked just as she always had, only older. She had always been a small butterball of energy and enthusiasm. Uncle Benny’s death had stifled that, but had a stroke made her crazy? I was reluctant to believe that.
“She’s got some strange ideas, Stella,” Nina continued. “I mean, sure, she’s always had strange ideas, but I mean really weird stuff. She thinks she’s the next Einstein or something. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I mean, she can’t live on her own—she’s too nuts to handle the bills, let alone drive or take care of herself!”
Aunt Lucy stopped talking to the funeral director, glared at Nina and said, “I heard that, young lady! I don’t think anybody who runs off with a rock musician and gets certain intimate portions of her anatomy pierced has much room to be calling the kettle black.”
The room fell silent as everyone turned their attention toward the object of Aunt Lucy’s displeasure. Nina’s face turned scarlet, her chin inched up a defiant two inches and she stalked off, her spiky pink-and-blond hair waving like a midsummer wheat field in Iowa.
“You
