The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(61)

“Hmmm? Oh . . . yes. It’s fine. I was just getting a call from a friend back home that I’d rather not answer right now. Some people will drive you crazy if you let them, you know?”

Landry thinks of Barbie June. “I know.”

“I’m just going to turn off the phone.” Elena holds down the power button. “I didn’t have time to fully charge it back up anyway, so I might as well conserve battery power for now.” She shoves it back into her purse and looks up.

“Okay—I’m good to go,” she says brightly, and resumes walking toward the car at a jaunty pace.

Noticing that Elena seems to have bounced back just as quickly as she’d faltered, Landry can’t help but wonder about the friend who’d tried to call her just now.

The drive to McGraw’s Funeral Home takes less than five minutes, though there’s more traffic now than when Kay did her morning drive-by.

She’s glad to see that although the bowling alley parking lot looks busy, no one is using the swimming pool at the duplex next door, as she’d feared. It would be disrespectful to Meredith if people were splashing around and having a good old time in their bathing suits just a stone’s throw from her remains.

“Oh my goodness, the parking lot is completely full,” Landry murmurs, slowly driving past rows of occupied spots. “Do y’all see anything?”

“I think you’d better follow those signs for the overflow lot,” Elena advises, pointing.

“Wait—is that a space?” Landry hits the brakes.

It isn’t.

“Let’s just go to the overflow,” Elena urges again, checking her watch.

There’s no denying she’s a bit of a backseat driver. If she were at the wheel, Kay thought, she’d be intimidated by Elena’s control freak tendencies, but she notices they don’t seem to bother Landry. The two of them have kept up a steady stream of conversation on the way over. Kay couldn’t get a word in edgewise—not that she’s tried.

Most of the chatter was about kids—Landry’s two teenagers and Elena’s first grade students.

Having never had children—or, really, even known them in the course of her adult life—Kay has nothing to contribute in that regard. But lack of conversational connection isn’t her sole reason for keeping quiet. Mostly, she’s preoccupied with what lies ahead.

In her opinion, Landry and Elena aren’t quite mindful enough of the reason they’re all here: to say good-bye to Meredith.

The solemn nature of the occasion does seem to sink in as they walk toward the funeral home, though, as the other women fall silent at last.

That Meredith left behind dozens—no, hundreds—of people who loved her is obvious the moment they cross the threshold into the large chapel adjacent to the foyer. An endless line snakes through the hushed room, weaving up and down rows of folding chairs.

She, Elena, and Landry join the mourners gradually making their way up to the bereaved family standing beside the large urn that holds Meredith’s remains.

As they await their turn, Kay studies the Heywoods.

She’s heard so much about them over the years that it’s easy for her to tell them apart. Gray-haired Hank, of course, is obviously Meredith’s husband. But Kay can easily see which of the three young women is her daughter—Beck looks a lot like her mother.

She can tell the two daughters-in-law apart, too: Teddy’s wife, Sue, is pregnant; Neal’s wife, Kelly, is the redhead.

As for the brothers, they look quite a bit like each other and their father, but Kay remembers that Neal, the middle son, is the tallest one in the family, much to his older brother’s frustration when they were growing up. Meredith blogged about that once.

By default, the fourth man in the family—the serious-looking bearded fellow—would have to be Meredith’s son-in-law, Keith.

Only the grandchildren—her beloved “stinkerdoodles”—are missing.

So these are the people Meredith lived for, the people she couldn’t bear the thought of “abandoning,” as she put it.

It’s not that I don’t think they’ll survive without me, Meredith wrote to her on the day they both confessed that their illnesses had progressed. In fact, financially, they’ll be better off, that’s for sure. I’m like George Bailey.

Kay didn’t understand that reference, not even after she quickly Googled the name and found that George Bailey was a character in the old movie It’s a Wonderful Life. She’s never seen it. She isn’t big on movies; hasn’t caught a film or even turned on the television in years.

When she asked Meredith what she meant by the comment, Meredith explained that the plot revolves around a character, George Bailey, who winds up destitute, other than a life insurance policy.

“But he’s the richest man in town in the end, of course,” Meredith said, “because he had friends, so many friends who loved him.”

As did Meredith.

The room is warm and crowded, the air thickly scented with the perfume of hundreds of women and all those funeral flowers. They’re everywhere, in vases and baskets and wreaths surrounding the urn and spilling over into the seating area—further testimony to just how much Meredith meant to so many.

Kay thinks of her own solitary life.

Mother’s raspy voice echoes in her head: It’s not better to have loved and lost . . . If you don’t love, you can’t lose.