Part 2
Finally she said, “Do you need me there?”
“No.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I don’t know what you’d do.”
“Sit. Wash dishes. Complain about your coffee. Whatever.”
Mara looked down at the handkerchief she had taken out without noticing. The blackened corner folded across the emerald.
“My mother has a brooch,” she said.
“Okay.”
“A real one, I think. Emeralds and diamonds.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Your mother who returned a twenty-dollar bill she found in a grocery cart?”
“The same.”
“Did she steal it?”
Mara almost smiled. “She tried to burn it.”
“That was going to be my second guess.”
“She wants me to take it to Bellweather Estate.”
There was a pause long enough for Mara to check whether the call had dropped.
“The Bellweather Estate?”
“You know another one?”
“Why?”
“She won’t say.”
“Who are you supposed to give it to?”
“Graham Vale.”
“Who is Graham Vale?”
“The owner.”
Tessa breathed into the phone. “I need you to hear how that sounds.”
“I have heard it.”
“Maybe it’s fake.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe she’s confused.”
“She knew the date of his engagement gala.”
“People know strange things when they’re sick.”
“She tried to destroy it before telling me.”
“That part is less encouraging.”
Mara rubbed the handkerchief between her fingers. The fabric was old but finely woven, softer than anything her mother owned. There was a small embroidered letter near the edge. She had assumed it was an E, but when she held it nearer the lamp, she saw a second line beneath the first. It might have been a V.
“I’m not going,” she said.
Tessa did not answer immediately.
“Good,” she said at last, with the careful tone people used when they did not believe her.
Lillian died Thursday morning while Mara was in the bathroom brushing her teeth.
There was no final sentence. No last-minute confession. No hand squeezing weakly in farewell. Mara heard the oxygen machine stop changing rhythm and came out with foam still at the corner of her mouth.
For several seconds she stood beside the bed and waited for the next breath.
Then she touched her mother’s shoulder.
The body was warm. That seemed like a mistake.
Mara called hospice, then the funeral home, then Tessa. She moved through the necessary sentences with an efficiency that frightened her. Yes, Lillian had died at home. Yes, she was under hospice care. Yes, the nurse had pronounced. Yes, the funeral home had the authorization. Yes, there would be no autopsy.
When the men came for the body, one of them was young and nervous. He bumped the hallway wall with the stretcher and apologized three times. The older man touched his elbow, guiding him. Mara watched them cover her mother’s face and nearly told them to stop because Lillian hated fabric over her mouth.
Instead she stood aside.
After they left, the house became a place where something had happened.
The water glass on the side table still held a crescent of lipstick. The television remote lay beneath the blanket. A paperback mystery rested facedown on the floor, open to a page Lillian would never finish. Mara picked it up and marked the place with a grocery receipt before understanding how useless that was.
She sat on the edge of the hospital bed.
The brooch was in the pocket of yesterday’s jeans.
Friday morning, Mara met with the funeral director, a patient woman named Denise who wore a navy suit and spoke in a voice that never required anyone to ask her to repeat herself. Lillian had prepaid for cremation but not for the obituary, death certificates, urn, or county permit. Mara chose the least expensive container and still watched the total climb beyond what remained in her checking account.
“We can reduce the number of certified copies,” Denise said.
“How many do people usually need?”
“It depends. Banks, insurance, property matters.”
“There’s no property.”
“Vehicle title?”
“She didn’t drive.”
“Life insurance?”
“No.”
“Employer benefits?”
“She cleaned offices. Cash, mostly.”
Denise lowered her pen. She was too professional to look pitying, but Mara had learned that sympathy often appeared as stillness.
“Three copies,” Mara said.
Denise adjusted the form. “Three.”
Outside, Mara sat in Tessa’s dented Subaru with the paperwork on her lap. Rain tapped the windshield. Tessa had brought coffee and a paper bag containing two blueberry muffins, one of which was already missing its top.
“You always eat the top,” Mara said.
“It’s the good part.”
“The bottom isn’t a different species.”
“It might as well be.”
Mara held the coffee between both hands. She had not yet cried. People kept waiting for it, and their waiting had begun to feel like another task she was failing to complete.
Tessa started the engine but did not put the car in gear.
“What time is the gala?” she asked.
Mara looked at her.
“I searched it.”
“Why?”
“Because you weren’t going to.”
“I’m still not.”
“It starts at seven.”
“I have funeral forms.”
“You’re done with the forms.”
“I have to clean the house.”
“It has been dirty for six years. One more day won’t hurt it.”
“I need to call the landlord.”
“You did.”
“I need to—”
“You’re holding your mother’s last request in your pocket.”
Mara’s hand closed over the fabric through her coat.
Tessa glanced at it. “I’m not saying the request makes sense. I’m not even saying she was right to put it on you. But you’re going to spend the next thirty years imagining what would have happened.”
“And if I go, I spend thirty years wondering why she lied to me.”
“You already get to do that.”
Mara turned toward the passenger window.
May you like
Rainwater carried a crushed cigarette along the curb. Across the street, a man in a red jacket struggled to fit a cardboard box into the back seat of a compact car. His wife stood under an umbrella and offered advice he was clearly ignoring.
“I don’t have anything to wear to an engagement gala,” Mara said.
