This would have been bad enough under normal circumstances, but at least then there was a routine to follow. You called the doctor. The doctor called the ambulance, and then eventually someone got in touch with the funeral home. That was how it worked when Grandmother Ivy — my mom’s mother — had passed.
Now, though…now you couldn’t even get a call through. And if by some miracle you did, it wouldn’t matter, because there wouldn’t be anyone on the other end to answer it.
My father wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We don’t need to do anything,” he said, that scary monotone back in his voice. “It’ll take care of itself.”
And something in the way he said those words made me too frightened to ask what in the world he meant.
Chapter Four
He went into the kitchen after that. I didn’t follow, but instead just stood there in the family room, my entire body feeling as if it had been encased in ice. One thought kept hammering away in my head, over and over again.
She’s dead. She’s dead. Your mother is dead.
I wished I could cry.
From the kitchen, I heard the clunk of ice dropping from the dispenser, the sound of liquid pouring, although not from the refrigerator door. I had a sinking feeling I knew exactly what it was.
My father was not, unlike a lot of cops, a heavy drinker. He and my mother would have a glass of wine with dinner sometimes, and I’d seen him drink champagne at weddings and have a beer after a morning of washing both his and Mom’s cars, but that was about it. But there was a bottle of Scotch he kept high up on a shelf, a bottle that rarely made an appearance. One time when his partner Josh was shot in the leg while breaking up a domestic dispute. Or the time my mother found a lump in her breast and had to go in for a biopsy. It turned out to be nothing, a benign cyst, but we’d all been fearing the worst.
And now the worst had happened, although in a manner none of us could have imagined, and he was sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, drinking Scotch on the rocks.
And I was too scared and shocked to even give him shit about it. If he wanted to seek comfort in a glass of Scotch rather than in me, there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Still with that horrible lump lodged firmly in my throat, I went back to the staircase and slowly went up it, each step more and more difficult, as if I were in some horrible alternate dimension that kept strengthening the gravity pulling at me with every movement. Finally, though, I made it up to the landing, then went to Devin’s room.
He had shifted and was now lying on his side, half his covers thrown off. They’d probably felt far too hot, but I knew he had to stay warm. I crossed the room and grasped the sheet and blanket, hesitating as my hand paused on the comforter. Maybe that really was a bit too much, since it had been a mild, warm day, and his room wasn’t anywhere close to cold yet. I could always put the comforter over him later.
As I began to settle the sheet over his shoulders, though, something felt wrong. At first I couldn’t quite figure it out, and then, even as I realized what the problem was, my mind didn’t want to acknowledge it. Not this. Not so soon after — well, after.
The last time I’d been this close to him, heat had fairly radiated from his flesh. Now, though, he felt cool, and when I reached down to touch his hand, his fingers were like ice, and somehow already stiff, although logically I knew it was far too early for rigor mortis to have set in.
Then again, what was logical about any of this?
I recoiled, letting go of my dead brother’s hand, and backed away from the bed. As my father had told me about my mother’s passing, Devin didn’t look dead, just asleep. For whatever reason, his face didn’t have that sunken look about it that my mother had worn. Maybe his fever hadn’t burned as hot?
Not that it mattered, because he was gone, too.
A frightened little sob tore its way out of
Now, though…now you couldn’t even get a call through. And if by some miracle you did, it wouldn’t matter, because there wouldn’t be anyone on the other end to answer it.
My father wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We don’t need to do anything,” he said, that scary monotone back in his voice. “It’ll take care of itself.”
And something in the way he said those words made me too frightened to ask what in the world he meant.
Chapter Four
He went into the kitchen after that. I didn’t follow, but instead just stood there in the family room, my entire body feeling as if it had been encased in ice. One thought kept hammering away in my head, over and over again.
She’s dead. She’s dead. Your mother is dead.
I wished I could cry.
From the kitchen, I heard the clunk of ice dropping from the dispenser, the sound of liquid pouring, although not from the refrigerator door. I had a sinking feeling I knew exactly what it was.
My father was not, unlike a lot of cops, a heavy drinker. He and my mother would have a glass of wine with dinner sometimes, and I’d seen him drink champagne at weddings and have a beer after a morning of washing both his and Mom’s cars, but that was about it. But there was a bottle of Scotch he kept high up on a shelf, a bottle that rarely made an appearance. One time when his partner Josh was shot in the leg while breaking up a domestic dispute. Or the time my mother found a lump in her breast and had to go in for a biopsy. It turned out to be nothing, a benign cyst, but we’d all been fearing the worst.
And now the worst had happened, although in a manner none of us could have imagined, and he was sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, drinking Scotch on the rocks.
And I was too scared and shocked to even give him shit about it. If he wanted to seek comfort in a glass of Scotch rather than in me, there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Still with that horrible lump lodged firmly in my throat, I went back to the staircase and slowly went up it, each step more and more difficult, as if I were in some horrible alternate dimension that kept strengthening the gravity pulling at me with every movement. Finally, though, I made it up to the landing, then went to Devin’s room.
He had shifted and was now lying on his side, half his covers thrown off. They’d probably felt far too hot, but I knew he had to stay warm. I crossed the room and grasped the sheet and blanket, hesitating as my hand paused on the comforter. Maybe that really was a bit too much, since it had been a mild, warm day, and his room wasn’t anywhere close to cold yet. I could always put the comforter over him later.
As I began to settle the sheet over his shoulders, though, something felt wrong. At first I couldn’t quite figure it out, and then, even as I realized what the problem was, my mind didn’t want to acknowledge it. Not this. Not so soon after — well, after.
The last time I’d been this close to him, heat had fairly radiated from his flesh. Now, though, he felt cool, and when I reached down to touch his hand, his fingers were like ice, and somehow already stiff, although logically I knew it was far too early for rigor mortis to have set in.
Then again, what was logical about any of this?
I recoiled, letting go of my dead brother’s hand, and backed away from the bed. As my father had told me about my mother’s passing, Devin didn’t look dead, just asleep. For whatever reason, his face didn’t have that sunken look about it that my mother had worn. Maybe his fever hadn’t burned as hot?
Not that it mattered, because he was gone, too.
A frightened little sob tore its way out of
Similar Books
