Текст книги "The Perfect Stranger"

Автор книги: Wendy Corsi Staub

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

She starts to laugh and call out to Roger, then remembers, and the laugh ends in a sob.

He’s gone.

She’s alone.

Alone, except for this crazy dog.

“I’m sorry, girl. You need to go out, don’t you? And I slept late.”

Ironic that she went from not sleeping at all last week, in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death, to feeling as though all she’s wanted to do this week is sleep.

Probably because she forced herself to go back to work on Monday morning. It’s not as though they can’t get along without her at the campus admissions office where she works. They told her to take as much time off as she needed.

But what else was there for her to do? Sit around the house and cry?

It was the right decision. Back on campus, she was busy when she wanted to be, and when emotions overwhelmed her—which they did, frequently—she could cry on the shoulders of colleagues who had known Roger. It got a little easier later in the week, until she went on an errand that took her past the Academic quadrangle where his office was located. She lost it, and vowed to take the long way around from now on. Probably forever.

Every day after work she came home, walked and fed the dog, and then fell into bed and into a deep, dreamless sleep until the alarm went off at six.

Today, of course, it didn’t go off.

Poor Maggie.

Sheri pets the dog, then hurriedly follows her down the stairs and opens the back door to let her out into the sun-dappled yard.

If only Roger had done that on the fateful morning that shouldn’t have been his last. But he didn’t think it was fair for a puppy to be limited to the confines of a small fenced yard.

“She needs the exercise,” he’d told her, “and so do I. You’re always telling me I need to get into shape, build up some muscle . . .”

She didn’t point out that walking wasn’t going to turn her scrawny husband into a he-man anytime soon. Any physical activity at all was probably a good thing, she thought at the time. Even strolling while smoking.

Standing at the sink, filling the glass coffeepot with water, Sheri finds herself thinking, again, of the tortoiseshell guitar pick found among her husband’s belongings.

It’s been in the back of her mind ever since she decided it would probably be a good idea to at least mention it to the police. But the week got away from her; she’s been too caught up in mourning, working, and sleeping to do anything about it.

Today, she decides, turning off the tap and dumping the water into the coffeemaker. I’ll do it today.

Thanksgiving Gratitude

Today most of us will gather around tables with loved ones, stuff ourselves with heaps of home-cooked food, and give thanks for our blessings.

Me? I’ll be sitting alone in my kitchen eating a turkey sandwich, most likely, same as I do every year. But don’t feel sorry for me. I have plenty to be grateful for. My health, with continued remission, tops the list. All of you, my good friends, are right up there, too—along with the incredible, unexpected education I’ve gained late in life.

Since my diagnosis, it sometimes seems that I’ve learned everything there is to know about breast cancer—about the disease itself. But there have been other lessons along the way: lessons I learned once I started blogging, precious lessons you have taught me.

I learned how similar we all are, despite having different backgrounds. And how very different we all are, despite sharing similar postdiagnosis experiences.

Thanks to you, I’ve had my eyes opened to the shameful inequity in fund-raising.

I’ve come to know very little progress has been made in finding a cure for metastatic breast cancer, and that early detection is by no means a cure.

I’ve learned that although I live by myself, and spend most of my days and nights in solitude, I’m far from alone. I’ve learned that I can care deeply—and yes, even love—people I’ve never met. With that, I’ve gained not just friendship, but also something I never imagined: the return of a childlike wonder for the world around me, so foreign to my own midwestern city. Beyond my house in Indianapolis are places I now want to explore because someone in our cyber community has brought it to life.

I want to watch a marching band do formations on the football field at a huge southern college and peek inside the graceful old houses of sorority row.

I want to sit on a rocky beach beside a lighthouse and watch the sun rise over the Atlantic ocean, and I want to eat lobster pulled out of the sea just minutes ago.

I want to buy a hot dog from a street cart in New York City and check out the view of Central Park from the top of a skyscraper.

I want to cheer for the home team in the stands at the Great American Ballpark and taste Skyline chili.

I want to fly across the ocean to England and see a real castle and Big Ben and London Bridge.

And so today, and every day, I’m grateful for the blogging friends that have stopped along the way, read my words, shared their own and broadened my small world. Who would have thought writing about cancer could do that?

—Excerpt from Kay’s blog, I’m A-Okay

Chapter 14

Something’s wrong, Landry realizes, watching Kay and Elena walking out into the airport terminal, clearly in the midst of a weighty discussion.

Well—a one-sided discussion: Elena, pulling a wheeled carry-on bag, seems to be doing all the talking. And whatever she’s talking about has them both so absorbed that they don’t even remember to look around for her.

“Guys,” she calls, “over here.”

Distracted, they glance over, wave, and head toward her—Elena in such a hurry that she nearly bowls over several leisurely southerners on the way. Landry senses that her rush has nothing to do with being glad to see her again, and everything to do with whatever they were talking about.

“Kay just saw her in the airport,” Elena blurts, then catches herself and leans in for a hug. “Sorry. Hi. Thank you so much for coming to get us, for having us . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be—”

“What is going on?”

Still hugging her, Elena whispers in her ear, “Jenna Coeur. Kay saw her.”

“What?” Landry’s heart skips a beat. “Where?”

“At the airport.”

She jerks back, looking around.

“Not this airport. In Atlanta.”

Catching up to them, Kay asks, “Did she tell you?”

Landry nods numbly. “You saw her at the airport?”

“I thought I saw her. I’m not a hundred percent sure.”

Of course not. Nothing, according to Bruce, is a hundred percent certain. But . . .

“What was she doing? Was she on your flight?”

“No!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. That, I’m sure about. The woman I saw—if it was her—she was still sitting in the gate area when I got on the plane, and I was the last one to board.”

“They closed the door right after Kay,” Elena confirms. “Did she see you see her?” she asks Kay.

“I don’t think so.”

“What made you think it was Jenna Coeur?” Landry asks.

“She looked like the woman in the picture Detective Burns showed me on Saturday.”

“But she didn’t get on this flight,” Landry can’t help saying—again—as her gaze flicks uneasily at the other passengers coming from the gate area.

“No, she didn’t,” Kay assures her. “Don’t worry about that.”

“Every seat was taken,” Elena tells Landry. “I’m thinking she must have been on standby. She’s probably on the next flight from Atlanta.”

“There are a few more, this afternoon and tonight.” Landry knows the schedule. She took one of those flights herself, on Sunday. With Bruce Mangione.

I have to call Bruce.

Right now.

I have to tell him—

“Kay, I think you should let Detective Burns know.” Elena says interrupting Landry’s thoughts. “She gave me her personal cell phone number. I plugged it into my phone.”

“I have it, too,” Kay says, “but I’m not even positive it was Jenna Coeur, so—”

“You’re trying to talk yourself out of it.”

“Maybe I am,” Kay tells Elena, “but . . . I mean, I thought it was her. It probably wasn’t.”

But if it was . . .

If Jenna Coeur is on her way to Alabama . . .

Then what? Do you honestly believe she’s coming here to kill you all?

The thought is preposterous.

Still . . .

“Detective Burns needs to know anyway,” Landry says. “Do you want me to call her?” She, too, has the detective’s personal cell phone number.

“No. I can make the call.”

“Then I’m going to go to the ladies’ room,” Elena announces. “I’ve had to go since we left Atlanta, but they left the seat belt sign on the whole way and the flight attendant wouldn’t let me get up.”

“I thought you just wanted to talk to me,” Kay tells her.

“I did, but I also had to pee. I drank a couple of . . . cups of coffee during the layover. I’ll meet you guys by the baggage claim. Kay checked a bag,” she adds, to Landry.

“Sorry.” Kay shakes her head. “I should have done carry-on like Elena said, but I haven’t flown in a long time and there are so many rules now . . . I was a little intimidated.”

“I just hope your bag made the connection,” Elena tells her, “and I’m really glad Jenna Coeur didn’t.”

Apparently overhearing the familiar name, a nearby middle-aged couple turns their heads as they walk past, shooting Elena a curious look.

At Landry’s belated “Shhh!” Elena whispers, “Sorry. I’m used to speaking loudly and enunciating for my first graders. I’ll be down at baggage in a few minutes.”

She disappears into the ladies’ room, leaving Landry and Kay to regard each other anxiously.

“What do you think is going on?” Kay asks.

“You’re the one who saw her. I don’t know what to think.”

“I thought it was her, in that moment. I really did. But now I keep wondering if I was just imagining things.”

“Deep down . . . do you think that’s all it was? Just your imagination?”

Kay hesitates, then shakes her head, eyes wide. “She’s coming here, isn’t she?”

“I hope not. I really do. Call Detective Burns. I’m going to call my husband.”

“To tell him about this?”

“What? No! I just want to . . . make sure he landed. I’ll meet you over at the baggage claim in a few minutes.”

“Okay. Where is it?”

Landry points in the right direction, then hurries away, already reaching for her own cell phone.

She doesn’t dial until she’s slipped into a distant, shadowy, relatively private corner of the terminal.

He picks up on the first ring.

Not Rob. Rob can’t help her right now; he’s seven hundred miles away.

“Bruce Mangione.”

She takes a deep breath. “I think I’m in trouble. Big trouble. I need your help.”

Use a made-up word you wouldn’t find in the dictionary, not a name or initials . . .

When Beck remembers the advice she gave to her mother—and realizes Mom took it—she wonders how she possibly could have missed the password until now.

Then again, when the worst tragedy imaginable has struck the person you love more than almost anyone—no, more than anyone—in the world, is it any wonder that your mind is too grief-clouded for logic?

But now all that matters is that she’s guessed it correctly at last.

It took her a while, even after she figured out that stinkerdoodle was the password, because the word was only part of it. She had to remember the rest of the advice she’d given her mother.

Substitute a digit for a letter—a zero for an O—or replace it with a symbol, like the at symbol for an A, or a dollar sign for an S . . .

If you use the phone number, put the digits in reverse . . .

Mom had done all of the above. The password is $tinkerd00dle5697.

Open Sesame . . .

At last granted access to her mother’s e-mail account, she begins scrolling through the mail folders, hoping to find everything intact: old mail, sent mail . . .

“Aunt Beck?”

“Mmm-hmm?” She looks up to see Jordan tearing a page out of his coloring book.

“I made this for you.”

“Oh, Jordan . . .” She swallows hard and gathers him close, examining the picture and complimenting him on the beautiful colors and the way he’d tried to stay inside the lines. “Great job, sweetie.”

“You can hang it on the fridge like Grammy used to.”

“I will.” She stands and crosses over to the refrigerator, looking for a magnet that isn’t already holding up a grandchild’s artwork.

“No, I meant your fridge at your house.”

“Oh. I will. I’ll do that.” Just as soon as I figure out where my house is going to be.

“Aunt Beck? Can I watch TV now? Please?”

Well aware that his parents limit his screen time, Beck is pretty sure she should say no. Instead she says “Absolutely,” her thoughts consumed by her mother’s e-mail account—and what she might find there.

Standing at the baggage claim with Kay and the other passengers from their flight, Elena looks at her watch. “Why is this taking so long?”

“You’re in the South now. Everything probably takes a little longer,” Kay tells her. “Just be patient.”

“Patience isn’t exactly my thing.”

“Really?” Kay asks dryly, watching Elena pace until at last there’s a buzzing noise and the conveyer jerks into motion.

Bags—none belonging to Kay—begin to topple down the chute.

“I think the connection was too tight,” Elena tells her as one passenger after another grabs luggage and rolls it away. “I bet your bag didn’t make it.”

“Don’t say that! I need it!”

“You should have carried on, like I told—”

“There it is!”

Looking triumphant, Kay hurries forward to grab a small black carry-on that could have easily been stowed above—or even beneath—an airplane seat.

Elena fights the urge to chide her again. The bag made it. That’s all that matters, right?

“Now all we need is Landry,” she mutters. Then, seeing the look on Kay’s face, she adds, “Patience. I know, I know. I need patience.”

That, and a nice big, strong drink to relax my nerves.

She paces again.

At last Landry hurries around the corner, phone in hand. “Oh, good! You got your bag, Kay! Are y’all set to go?”

“More than set,” Elena can’t help saying pointedly.

“Sorry my phone call took so long,” Landry tells her. “He’s at work, so it took a few minutes for them to track him down.”

“I thought he was in North Carolina.”

“No, my husband is in North Carolina.”

“Isn’t that who you went to call?”

“Is that what I said? I meant my son.” Landry gives a flustered little laugh.

“I bet it’s easy to get them mixed up, now that Tucker is growing up,” Kay tells her.

Elena says nothing at all, regarding Landry through narrowed eyes.

What if something strange is going on here?

What if I just walked into some kind of trap?

Landry is the one who, last weekend, had so much to say about the potential for Internet imposters. What if she, herself, is one of them?

Elena studies her now as they walk out to the parking lot. She’s fiddling with her car keys, checking her cell phone every couple of seconds.

“Are you waiting for a call back or something?” she asks.

“What? Oh, no . . . just checking the time.”

Right. She’s wearing a wristwatch.

An expensive one, Elena noticed earlier. She certainly looks like the wife of a fancy lawyer.

But what if she’s not?

“Do you want to try to reach Detective Burns again?” Landry asks Kay.

“We should probably just wait for her to get back to us.”

“I can’t believe it’s taking this long. Are you sure you called the right number? She said she always picks up.”

“I know, but she didn’t. I left a message for her to call as soon as she can. I’m sure she will.”

Landry nods, clearly on edge.

They exit the airport into the glare of heat so humid that Elena feels as though she’s trying to breathe through a sopping towel pressed against her mouth and nose.

“Wow. It’s hot here,” Kay observes, and the needless comment gets on Elena’s nerves. Everything is getting on her nerves right now. Her friends’ languid pace as they cross the blacktop, the trickling tickle of sweat on her hairline, the weight of the bag she’s pulling along, the fact that she’s here at all.

At last they reach a black BMW. Landry aims the key chain to unlock the doors, then opens all four of them and starts the engine with the air-conditioning blasting. She loads their bags into the trunk but tells them not to get into the car yet. “Let’s wait a minute for it to cool off. It’s an oven in there.”

It’s an oven out here, too. They wait in silence.

Then Elena asks, “Do you really think Jenna Coeur is planning to blindside us?”

She wants them both to say it’s ridiculous.

Neither does.

“Why else would she come down here?” Landry is grim.

“If it really was her . . . then maybe it’s a coincidence,” Kay says.

“You believe in coincidences?”

Kay hesitates. “No.”

“Me neither.” Landry bites her lip and shakes her head, looking down at her phone yet again.

“I do,” Elena tells them with a shrug. “I’m not saying this is one of them, but I believe in—”

She breaks off as Landry’s cell phone rings.

“There’s a coincidence now,” Kay says. “You were looking at your phone, and it rang.”

Not really a coincidence, Elena thinks, since Landry has done nothing but look at her phone, clearly expecting a call.

“I’ve got to take this.” She hurriedly motions them to get into the car. “Go ahead. Get in. It’s cooled off.”

It hasn’t.

But Elena and Kay climb in and Landry closes their doors after them, sealing them into the oven. Still outside, she answers her phone as she closes the driver’s side door.

Elena hears her say, “Addie? Listen, I need you to do something for me . . .”

In the front seat, Elena turns to look at Kay in the back.

“Addie,” Kay observes. “That’s her daughter. Addison.”

Yeah. No kidding.

Biting back the sarcasm, swallowing her craving for a calming drink, Elena says only, “She’s really freaked out that you saw Jenna Coeur in the airport.”

“Maybe I just thought it was her.”

“What, are you thinking you’re delusional or something?”

“No! I just—I didn’t get a close enough look to be sure. Maybe . . .” Kay shrugs and rubs her forehead, as though it’s hurting her. “I don’t know. I could have been wrong.”

“I hope you were.”

A minute later Landry is back, climbing into the driver’s seat with a strained smile. “Ready to go?”

They paste on their own smiles and tell her that they are.

The Day My Life Changed Forever

Back when I was an English major in college and planning to become a writer one day, I read a lot of poems. One of my favorites was Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” It begins:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both . . .

I went many years without remembering that poem—decades spent being a wife and mother and day care provider, but not a writer. Not yet. I figured there would be plenty of time to reclaim that childhood dream and make it a reality when I retired, when my children were grown and out of the house . . .

Then came the day I found myself sitting in a doctor’s office as he delivered the bombshell I never expected to hear.

I had breast cancer? Me?

Two roads diverged . . .

The old poem barged back into my brain and hasn’t left since. The road not taken has new meaning when you’re faced with a life-threatening illness and you realize you might never have time to do all the things you once wanted to accomplish.

Chances are, you wouldn’t have done them anyway. Chances are, you stopped wanting to do them years ago. But until you got sick, they were still out there, floating randomly in the realm of possibility. Now they’d been snatched out of reach, but somehow you knew your life had been purposeful and well-lived even if you never become a Pulitzer prize winning author or even a college poetry professor. Just living—that was meaningful enough.

As I sat that day listening to my doctor describe the journey that lay before me and the decisions I would have to make, I wanted nothing more than to backtrack to the happy, simple days I’d left behind. But that, unfortunately, wasn’t one of my choices. Neither was stopping in my tracks and doing nothing at all. There was only one option: choose a path, keep forging ahead, and do my best to never, ever second-guess the road not taken.

—Excerpt from Meredith’s blog, Pink Stinks

Chapter 15

Landry was planning to serve lunch—tea sandwiches and fruit salad—in the air-conditioned dining room. Behind locked doors.

The others overruled her, though. They’d prefer to be outside—in the “fresh air,” as Kay calls it, apparently having missed the memo that no such thing exists at high noon on a Deep South summer’s day. Not even here on the porch, where the ceiling fan does its best to diffuse the afternoon heat that swaddles like a wet towel, allowing not even a breath of breeze off the water to stir the live oak boughs that shade the yard.

Torpor has fallen over the world beyond the porch railing. In the rose garden, fat bumblebees barely seem capable of moving from blossom to blossom. Out on the water, a mere smattering of this morning’s fishing boats remain and there isn’t a kayaker in sight. It’s too hot for paddling. Or pedaling, though occasionally a pair of flushed-looking tourists will pass on bicycles that seem to move more languidly, even, than the bumblebees.

Sweat rolls down the back of Landry’s neck as she fills tall green glasses of sweet tea and decorates each with a sprig of fresh green mint. She sets the coordinating green pitcher down beside the vase of pale pink roses she carried out on a tray from the kitchen with a stack of china plates, linen place mats, and napkins.

“You don’t have to go to all this fuss,” Elena protested as Landry set the outside table as nicely as she’d have set the one in the dining room.

“I want to. Y’all are my guests.”

The well-bred belle in her won’t forget that, even now.

But that’s fine. All she has to do is get through one moment at a time. Not so difficult, really, now that she knows her kids will be safely out of the house—and harm’s way—for the remainder of the weekend.

That was her first instinct all along. She should have gone with it, instead of having to put a contingency plan into place when she found out that Jenna Coeur might be on her way here.

Her first phone call—after Bruce—was to Everly. She knew her friend would take both kids overnight, no questions asked.

But Everly didn’t pick up at home, and when she answered her cell sounding too groggy for eleven o’clock even on a Saturday morning, Landry belatedly remembered her friend had gone away for Father’s Day weekend, visiting her widowed dad who retired to Hawaii years ago.

“Is everything all right?” she asked Landry, reading the tension in her voice.

“Everything’s fine.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I just needed a quick favor, but it’s not a problem, I can ask someone else.”

Her mother, or Barbie June. Neither fell into the no-questions-asked category, though.

She had lunch with her mother two days ago, feeling as though she’d been neglecting her, and was grateful when Mom mentioned her busy weekend ahead, taking a senior bus trip to Mobile to see the Saturday matinee of a touring musical, with dinner afterward.

Ardelle Quackenbush is the kind of woman who would drop everything in a heartbeat to be there for her family; Landry knows she’d insist on missing the show just to be on standby for teenagers with weekend plans of their own. Nor does she want to inflict upon the kids her mother’s early bedtime and house cluttered with fragile antiques that must not be touched.

She correctly guessed that her cousin—also a well-bred belle—would graciously accept overnight guests in a heartbeat despite feeling neglected lately, as long as Landry framed the favor properly: “Sweetie, how would you like to put those two beautiful guest rooms of yours to good use tonight? We have company this weekend and the kids have to give up their beds, and of course they’d much rather sleep at Aunt Barbie June’s than share the pullout here at home.”

Next she texted the kids at work and told them both to call her during their breaks. Neither was thrilled to be shuttled off to Aunt Barbie June’s for the night but they grudgingly agreed.

Now only she is here to face whatever is going to happen next.

Hopefully nothing at all. Bruce is at the airport, waiting for the next flight from Atlanta. Waiting for Jenna Coeur.

If she’s on it.

Landry passes the platter of sandwiches, the bowl of fruit salad, and keeps the conversation going. She asks Elena about the last few days of school. Wants to—but doesn’t—ask Kay again about the woman she saw in the airport.

Wants to tell her to try calling Detective Burns yet again, even though she’s overheard Elena encouraging Kay to do that as well—twice—since they got back from the airport. The first time, as they headed upstairs to settle into their rooms, Kay replied that she’d wait another half hour before calling again; the second time, as they took their places at the lunch table, Kay told Elena she’d just left another message.

If she hadn’t spoken to Bruce already, Landry thought, she’d probably be leaving messages of her own for Detective Burns.

“Look, it’s not as urgent as you think,” he told her when she brought it up in a whispered phone call from the laundry room before lunch. “There’s not much she can do with the information except follow up on it the way she would any other potential Jenna Coeur sighting. She needs to know, but I can pretty much guarantee you that she’s not going to jump on the next flight to Alabama—especially since you said your friend isn’t even positive it was her.”

He’s right. They’re all preoccupied and jumpy.

“Hang in there. I’m at the airport and I’m not budging until that flight arrives from Atlanta. She won’t get past me. You can all relax.”

“I haven’t told them about you yet.”

“You might want to.”

“I will,” she promised, but has yet to do it. Maybe because a part of her still clings to a shred of suspicion about the others.

She forces herself to nibble a cucumber sandwich and tries to focus on what Elena is saying.

“ . . . and I don’t know, all I could think was, thank God he isn’t here. I’ll never have to see him again. Maybe it makes me an evil person, but . . .” She shrugs, stabs a grape with her fork, and pops it into her mouth.

Tony Kerwin, Landry realizes. That’s what she’s talking about: her relief that she didn’t have to face him at school this week.

It doesn’t make her an evil person.

But then a terrible thought occurs to Landry, and the tiny bite of sandwich lodges in her throat.

What if it hadn’t been a heart attack, after all?

What if Tony Kerwin had been murdered?

Thoughts racing, she excuses herself to go inside and get dessert ready. The others offer to help, but she waves them away. “I’ve got it. Just relax. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She hurries up the stairs, past the closed bedroom doors. She put Elena in Tucker’s room and Kay in Addison’s.

“I thought your kids were going to be home tonight,” Elena protested when she showed them upstairs.

“Change of plans.”

“That’s too bad. I was hoping to meet them.”

What if Elena—and not Jaycee, or Jenna Coeur—is the person she should have been worried about all along?

In the master bedroom, she closes and then—after a moment’s hesitation—locks the door. She grabs her laptop from the desk and sits on the edge of the bed, opening a Google search.

Déjà vu.

She did this when Meredith died, trying to figure out what had happened to her– though not as frantically.

She types Tony—then corrects it to Anthony—Kerwin, taking a guess on the spelling.

She got it right; an obituary pops up.

She scans it.

. . . died suddenly at his residence on Monday, June 10 . . .

But of course the cause of death isn’t listed. It never is.

If he’d been murdered, though, there would be online newspaper coverage, as there was after Meredith’s death.

There is none for Tony.

Going back to his obituary, she rereads it, then the funeral notice.

In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciate donations in Tony’s memory to the American Heart Association.

That, Landry thinks, would certainly indicate a heart attack.

He died at home. There would have been an autopsy. If it had shown anything unusual, that would have come up by now. Because you can’t disguise murder as a heart attack . . . or can you?

She returns to the search engine.

Two minutes later she has her answer—and the implications rock her to the core.

Beck has gone through every e-mail exchange in her mother’s files, going back a couple of years.

Nothing in her sent or received folders indicate that anyone was out to get her; not a shred of evidence to incriminate anyone.

Least of all her father.

Is that really what you were expecting to find?

There are only a few e-mails between her parents—mostly references to job hunting and household paperwork. But there were plenty of e-mails Mom sent to friends that seem to indicate the marriage was as solid as ever.

I miss Hank, she wrote to Jaycee, one of her blogger friends, just a few days before she died. I can’t wait until he’s back home and things are back to normal. I hate being alone at night.

I do, too, Jaycee wrote back. I wish I had a Hank!

There was another e-mail, further back, sent to a neighbor asking for the recipe for the potato side dish she’d made for a dinner party the night before. Hank devoured it, in case you didn’t notice, Mom had written. I want to make it for dinner some night.

Recipe . . .

That reminds Beck.

One of the bloggers she met at the funeral had mentioned that Mom e-mailed her about the cheesecake Beck had brought over on Mother’s Day.

She doesn’t recall seeing anything about that in the files.

She goes back to May 12, Mother’s Day, and begins working her way forward through the sent mail, looking for the exchange.

That’s strange. It isn’t there.

She checks the received e-mails.

Not there, either.

It’s nothing earth-shattering, and yet . . .

It’s bothering her.

She can’t remember which of the bloggers even said it. So much of last Saturday’s service is a blur. There were so many people . . .

She sighs, rising from the kitchen table.

Maybe the e-mail was there, and she’s so delirious she just missed it. She needs a break, and it’s time to go back to the living room to check on Jordan again. He’s been asleep on the couch for over an hour now. She turned off the television and covered him with a blanket when she first found him like that.

Looking down at her sleeping nephew’s sweet face, she’s swept by an overwhelming sadness.

He may not remember Mom. Beck lost her maternal grandmother when she was his age; she doesn’t remember her at all. Mom used to try to jog her memory, showing her photos of her sitting on her grandmother’s lap as a little girl or holding hands with her at the zoo . . .