Don't Fail Me Now(74)

“Quite a crew for first thing in the morning,” she says. “Are you on the list?”

“The list?” My heart drops.

“Yes, each patient has a list of visitors. You have to have been requested. We can’t be too careful, especially in this neighborhood. Hence the buzzer.” She gestures to a small monitor on her desk, a black-and-white video feed of the balcony we came in from.

“We’re here to see our father, so . . . I think we should be on it,” I say.

“And your father is?” She blinks up at me.

“Buck Devereaux.” I’m expecting her to flip through papers, so I’m taken aback when she stays frozen in place, her mouth falling open slightly, confusion in her eyes. “Or Allen,” I say quickly. “It could be under Allen, that’s his first name.”

“No, sweetheart,” she says, and the sudden change in tone of her voice and manner tells me immediately what’s really wrong, what I knew was wrong since I stepped off the bus. The blood rushes to my head so fast I can hardly hear the words as she says them out loud. “I know who your father is, honey. It’s just—I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Buck Devereaux passed away last night.”

? ? ?

The first feeling is shock, plain and simple, like getting body-checked from a blind spot. Buck is already dead. We’re too late. This realization knocks the wind out of me. But once its meaning sinks in, there’s a wave of relief that dovetails with a swell of anger and then something else, a kind of bitter, throbbing sadness—is that grief? It all happens in the span of a few seconds, as the nurse looks up at me with naked pity. What kind of daughter doesn’t know her father is dead, she must be thinking. I want to explain, but I can’t form the words. So I just say, “Oh.” I look back at the others. Cass is stone-faced, but Leah’s face is threatening to crumple, the muscles around her mouth trembling as she tries to control them. Tim, who just looks worried, puts his arms around both of the girls. Denny takes my hand and looks up at me.

“Dad is dead?” he asks. “But I really wanted to meet him.”

Me too, kid, I think.

“We didn’t have any next of kin,” the nurse says apologetically, “or we would have called. The only person who’s been to see him is his girlfriend. She’s coming in to pick up his personal effects.”

Personal effects. That’s a good name for what we are. The effects of his miserable existence. I suddenly have a strong urge to see his body. I always look away when they show dead people on the crime shows Cass loves, but I’m afraid if I don’t see Buck I’ll always wonder if this wasn’t just one last way to avoid us.

“Is he—” I try to keep my voice steady. “Is he still here?”

“No, the funeral home came and got him,” she says apologetically. “I can give you the number.”

I nod, and she pulls a business card from a drawer. All Faith’s Funeral Home. Next to the address there’s a cheesy picture of an orchid lit by a celestial beam. I’m sliding it into my back pocket when the doorbell rings, a loud, almost cartoonish ding-dong! I can see a woman standing outside on the monitor screen, with messy black hair and big sunglasses.

“That’s Carly, his girlfriend,” the nurse says, pressing the buzzer, and we all turn to brace ourselves as the last guest to our sad little party arrives.

Carly is small and skinny, swimming in cutoff shorts and a tank top with a big pair of red lips silk-screened on the front. She’s wearing flip-flops, and her toenails have chipped green polish. From her body I’d guess she was in her twenties, but when she pushes up her sunglasses, her face is sun-damaged and kind of puckered, probably more like forty-five. She’s got watery blue eyes and eyebrows drawn in with pencil. If she’s not a junkie now, then she’s definitely had a past—you can tell just by looking at her.

“So you made it,” she says, giving us the once-over, looking totally unfazed by our color spectrum and various stages of dishevelment. Her voice has a pack-a-day smoker’s rasp. “You missed him, but he wasn’t awake much for the past week anyway. Probably just as well.” She walks past us to the front desk and leans her elbows on the counter. “You got a box for me, Gina?”

I didn’t even know Carly existed two minutes ago, so maybe it’s unfair to have any expectations, but I’m instantly thrown by how casual she is, as if she picks up the effects of newly deceased boyfriends in front of their bands of estranged children every other week or something.

“We made it,” I say. “Barely.” But Carly either doesn’t hear or chooses not to respond. Cass makes a WTF? face at me, while Leah shoots daggers into Carly’s back.

The nurse—Gina, I guess—bends down, reemerging with a shoebox a minute later, marked on one side with Devereaux in black Sharpie. It’s not even a large shoebox, either. It looks like the kind sandals might come in.

“Thanks,” Carly says and then turns back to us. “You guys want any of it?”

“What’s in it?” Denny asks.

“Probably just a bunch of crap, little man.” She puts her hand on Denny’s head, and I jerk him back, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “He promised me a ring, but he didn’t get to that. Bought himself a used car, though. Typical.” She sounds more pissed off than sad.