AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I wove between the cardboard stacks as I found my way to the kitchen, where I poured coffee into a mug I’d decided I wanted to keep. The Whispers was in transition now, full of boxes and bags into which we had started putting the remnants of Mimi’s life. We were supposed to organize it all into three categories—keep, toss, donate—but things kept finding their way out of the second two boxes and into the first. It was the most useless stuff that seemed suddenly priceless: a half-used lipstick, an old grocery list, a pair of ancient shoes whose brand-new soles meant they must have been her favorite.
My mother appeared, lugging a trash bag that looked ready to burst at the seams. “Someone has to take this to the church donation box,” she said.
I looked around at the empty kitchen. “Someone?”
“Well, one of us. But since you always seem to be off somewhere, I figured you could take it on your way to wherever you keep going.”
I shrugged, pretending I didn’t notice that I was obliquely being asked a question. “Sure,” I said, grabbed the bag, and left without another word.
In town, I stuffed the bag into the donation box behind the church thrift store and then walked back the way I came, pausing to gaze up at the church, its needlelike steeple rising high above the roofline so that it could be seen from anywhere in town. The gravestones in the churchyard cemetery were half-buried in the snow, jutting here and there like gray and jagged teeth. It was haunting, but meaningless: Mimi would never be buried here, not even when spring came and the ground was finally soft enough again to dig a grave. The plan was to scatter her ashes off the coast the following summer, as close as wecould to the spot where my grandfather was supposed to have fallen overboard and drowned. The two of them reunited at last, the molecules of what used to be their bodies drifting together in the same endless sea.
“Hello,” a voice said, very close behind me, and I jumped. I turned to see Reverend Frank smiling apologetically.
“I was sitting by the window and saw you pass by,” he said, pointing back behind him to the small rectory beside the church. “The first time I thought you looked familiar, and the second time I realized why. And now here you are. Miriam’s granddaughter, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Are you here for the meeting? You’re a bit early.”
“Meeting?”
“Alcoholics Anonymous. Parish library, three times per week. First-timers sometimes do a few laps around the block before they can bring themselves to come inside.”
I laughed nervously. “Oh no. I guess I’m just... loitering.”
“Church is always a good place to loiter.” He chuckled. “Perhaps you’d like to come in for a moment?”
“What for?”
He shrugged. “Whatever you might need. A cup of coffee. A rest. A conversation about whatever’s bothering you enough that you’re standing around on the street in this godforsaken weather.”
I hesitated. “I don’t want to bother you,” I said finally.
He chuckled and looked at his watch. “I’m not bothered at all,” he said. “And I need to be in the library in twenty minutes, so it would have to be brief. But if I can be of help...” The last part of his sentence was cut off by a sudden gust of frigid wind, so powerful it made me stagger backward. We both laughed.
“Okay, I’ll come in.”
Inside the rectory, the reverend poured me a cup of coffee and pointed to one of two wingback chairs that were set on either side of a farmhouse window. Beyond the patchwork glass I could see thecemetery and the sidewalk beyond, where we’d been standing a moment ago.
“So,” he said after I’d settled in and taken a sip. “Is there something you want to talk about?”
My mind flashed on the memory of Shelly’s open mouth and bulging eyes, and I shuddered. There was something I wanted to talk about, but the person I’d wanted to talk about it with was dead. All I had now was shapeless suspicion, grief, and questions that nobody could ever answer—but then, I thought, the priest was probably used to that.
“I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandmother,” I said. “There are things about her death, things I wish I understood.”
He nodded. “But of course, you must know that how you feel is normal. Death is rarely tidy. There will always be loose ends, unanswered questions. Conversations you wish you had, things you wish you’d known.”
“I know it’s normal. It still feels...”Like shit,I almost said, and caught myself. “Feels bad.”
He nodded. “We talked about this, you know. Miriam and I. Her past and her legacy. She had a very clear idea of how she wanted to leave this world, and about which of those loose ends she wanted to tie, so that she could move on without regret.”
I frowned. Mimi had never talked to me about dying, and of course I never brought it up; it had never occurred to me that she might be making plans.
“When did you last see her?”
“Maybe a day or two before she left Willowcrest.”
“I guess you can’t tell me what you talked about,” I said.
