Surfside Sisters(25)

“Did the doctor give you anything to help you sleep?” Keely asked.

Her mother waved an arm toward the dining room table. “Yes. Ambien. You should take one, too.” Eloise stared at Keely, a desperate look in her eye. “I want to sleep. I need to sleep. I need to be with my darling George.”

A frisson of fear streaked through Keely’s emotions. “Mom, you won’t take too many pills, will you?”

    Eloise swung her feet onto the floor. “No, darling. I’ll take only two at the most.”

They stumbled around the house like hunched, ancient crones, bent double with grief. Keely watched carefully as her mother took her pills. She tucked her mother in bed. She took two pills herself, knowing nothing could bring her the relief of sleep.

But she slept. When she woke in the morning, her grief was not shrill, not the urgent sorrow that felt like fear. It was slower. Heavier. It weighed her down.



* * *



—

Over the next few days, Keely helped her mother as they went through the necessary rituals of death. Rick Roberts still had his funeral home, and he was able to guide Eloise through the process of sending the body away to be cremated. Reverend Lisa from the Congregational Church held a brief service as Keely’s father’s ashes were interred in a handsome urn in a cemetery plot. Dr. Wayland had provided Eloise and Keely with a few low doses of Valium to help keep them calm during the funeral.

The day was dreary. The clouded sky was spitting snow and the wind was blustering. Keely kept her arm linked through her mother’s during the service and at the cemetery.

“I’ve paid for the plot next to him,” Eloise murmured to Keely as they stood by the open grave. “I bought an urn just like your father’s, so when the time comes, you can put me next to him.”

“Okay, but not for a long time,” Keely assured her mother.

A black limo drove Keely and her mother to the reception at their home. Brenda was in the dining room, setting out the small sandwiches and finger foods. Brenda’s daughter Sharon was in the corner, behind a table holding a choice of liquor and soft drinks. Keely dealt with her coat and her mother’s, swiftly checked to see that their small house was as neat as it could be, then unlocked the front door for the friends.

Dozens of people—even their mailman, even the woman who sold tickets at the ferry—came into the house, quietly at first, to offer their condolences, and to tell Eloise how wonderful her husband had been. They hugged Eloise and Keely and went off to the living room and dining room, replaced by other people. Some part of Keely’s heart took pleasure in the sight of so many people showing up. Nantucket families clustered near. So many doctors and nurses arrived that Brenda leaned over to Eloise and whispered, “Good grief, who’s running the hospital?” Her words brought a small smile to Eloise’s face, and Keely was grateful.

    The Maxwells were there, too. Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell, not Sebastian, of course. He was in Sweden. Isabelle and Tommy had intended to come, but a blizzard hit that area of the state, making driving impossible. Isabelle had called and cried with Keely. It was fine, really, that she wasn’t there. Keely was numb, dumb with grief.

She was grateful that the Maxwells came, but secretly she resented how chic Donna Maxwell looked in her black silk dress, her blond hair perfectly styled to show the tastefully small cluster of diamonds in her earlobes. She seemed arrogant, malicious, flaunting her beauty in front of Keely and Eloise, who were in mourning.

“Call me if there’s anything we can do,” Al Maxwell told Eloise, his deep voice booming through the room.

“I will. Thank you.” Eloise’s voice was hoarse.

Donna Maxwell put her hands on Keely’s shoulders and brushed her cheek with an air kiss, leaving behind a cloud of Joy perfume.



* * *



—

Keely said “thank you” for the seven hundredth time and closed the front door on the back of the last person to leave.

“Well, that was exhausting,” she said to her mother.

“So many people attended,” Eloise said. “George would have been so proud.”

    “Maybe he is proud, Mom. Maybe he’s somewhere up there looking down at us.”

“That’s a lovely thought, dear.”

Eloise had been restrained and gracious during the reception. Now she sagged with exhaustion.

“Here,” Keely said, leading her mother to “her” recliner, which only a few days ago had been “his” recliner. “Did you get anything to eat? Anything substantial?”

“I’m not hungry, dear.”

Keely turned the television to the Hallmark Channel. “I’m getting us both some of Brenda’s casserole.”

Keely joined her mother in front of the television with plates of comfort food. Until midnight, they watched beautiful people fall in love in beautiful places. Unreal, but soothing.



* * *



—

“Keely, are you ready?”

“In a minute.”

Isabelle’s father had been Keely’s father’s lawyer, although Keely had never known that until her mother told her they had an appointment with Mr. Maxwell for the reading of the will. Keely found herself stalling, panicking, searching for an earring that matched the pair she wanted to wear, an opal earring, the most expensive jewelry she possessed. Why it mattered to her so much she didn’t know—but of course she did know.