Chương 2
“I heard everybody talking,” she said.
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I don’t know exactly what he said.”
Richard turned to Claire. “Call an ambulance.”
Althea reached for the old black lantern on the bedside table and moved it away from the scattered bills. The lantern had not worked since before Evan died, but Bill refused to throw it out because Margaret had bought it during a trip to Branson. Althea had dusted around it for six years.
“Call Ruth,” she repeated.
Claire went to the kitchen.
Richard did not follow. He stood among the coins with his shoulders rigid, scanning the room as if the cracked plaster, the medicine bowl, and Margaret’s portrait might accuse him.
Althea sat on the edge of the bed.
Bill’s eyes were closed. Without the labor of breathing, his face looked smaller and unexpectedly stern. She pulled the blanket higher on his chest, covering the money that had landed there. Her hands shook so badly that she had to try twice.
Richard watched her.
“How long did you know?”
“About what?”
“The pillow.”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t insult me.”
“I changed the case yesterday. It felt lumpy because the stuffing had bunched at the bottom. Everything in this house is lumpy.”
“You expect me to believe he hid cash beside you for months?”
“I expect you to believe whatever allows you to live with yourself.”
His eyes hardened, but he did not shout. Richard rarely shouted. He compressed his anger until it came out as slow sentences and pale pressure around his mouth. Even when he was young, Evan had once told her, Richard could make silence feel like a hand around your neck.
“You think six months of playing nurse makes you his daughter.”
“Three years.”
“I came when I could.”
“You came four times.”
“I run a business.”
“You sell commercial flooring.”
“I employ fourteen people.”
“And he died knowing the names of none of them.”
Richard looked at Bill again. For the first time, grief crossed his face without disguise. It was there and gone, replaced by calculation so quickly that Althea wondered whether she had imagined it.
Claire returned with the phone pressed to her ear. “She’s coming.”
“How long?” Althea asked.
“Twenty minutes.”
Richard glanced toward the doorway. “Tell her not to disturb the room.”
Claire covered the phone. “She knows how to do her job.”
He gave her a look that might have silenced her a year earlier. It did not now.
Althea remained beside Bill until Ruth arrived. Nobody picked up the money. Richard paced once into the hallway and back. Denise sat on the edge of a dining chair and broke a muffin into pieces she did not eat. Claire opened the dusty window two inches, then closed it when the cold air made the curtains move over Bill’s face.
Ruth came carrying a navy medical bag and wearing rain-spotted sneakers. She was fifty-eight, broad-shouldered, and unhurried. She took in the torn pillow, the cash, Richard’s coat, and Althea’s face without visibly ranking them.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Those were the first words anyone had spoken that acknowledged what had happened.
Althea stood because Ruth needed access to the bed. Her knees nearly folded. Claire caught her elbow.
Ruth listened for a heartbeat, checked Bill’s pupils, and noted the time on her tablet. She removed the medication patch from his shoulder and placed it in a disposal pouch. She asked whether the funeral home had been chosen. Althea answered. Richard interrupted twice.
Then Ruth looked at the money.
“What happened here?”
“My father hid it,” Richard said. “Apparently.”
“He hid it in the pillow,” Althea said. “Richard pulled the pillow away, and it tore.”
“I was trying to make him comfortable.”
Bill’s head rested flat on the mattress where the pillow had been. Ruth glanced at it, then at Richard.
“Did anyone remove anything from the room?”
“No,” Althea said.
Richard said nothing.
Ruth crouched, picked up a banknote from beside her shoe, and placed it on the bed. “This is a family and estate matter, not a hospice matter. But considering the amount and the disagreement I seem to have walked into, I recommend you photograph everything where it is and count it with all adults present. Write down the count. Everybody signs.”
Richard nodded as though the idea had been his.
Ruth continued. “And nobody leaves with the cash tonight.”
“He left it to Althea,” Claire said.
“We don’t know that,” Richard replied.
Claire pointed toward the envelope beneath Bill’s hand.
Ruth did not touch it. “That may be a letter. It may be a legal document. It may be a grocery list. Until it’s opened, none of you knows.”
“He handed it to me,” Althea said.
Ruth’s expression softened. “Then you decide when to open it. But I suggest you do it with witnesses.”
Richard’s phone vibrated. He took it out, read the screen, and silenced it without answering. Althea saw the name MARCY before the display went dark. Richard’s wife had not come with him. According to Claire, Marcy could not tolerate sickrooms. According to Evan, years earlier, Marcy could not tolerate any room where she was not the saddest person in it.
Ruth helped Althea wash Bill’s face. Richard stepped into the hall during that. Claire stayed, holding a clean towel and crying without sound. Denise asked whether anyone wanted coffee, then remembered the machine had broken in July. She offered instant. Nobody answered.
The funeral home attendants arrived at dusk.
May you like
They moved Bill onto a narrow stretcher with practiced gentleness. Before they covered him, Althea bent and kissed the place above his right eyebrow where a pale scar disappeared into his sparse white hair. Bill had acquired the scar in 1968, when a tractor belt snapped. He had told the story differently depending on his audience. In some versions he saved a man’s hand. In others he had been drunk.
“Take his blue blanket,” Althea told the attendants. “Not this one. The blue one is in the closet.”
