The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(33)

She’d rested her hand on Ilka’s shoulder. “It means he’s decided to stay over there. Without us.”

As she lay in bed and gazed around the small room, Ilka couldn’t understand why her father had traded owning a Br?nsh?j funeral home in the red with owning a Racine funeral home in the red. Racine, a town with less life on a weekday than Br?nsh?j Square on a Sunday morning.

And yet she knew he must have had a reason. But had he just been looking for adventure? Or did he run away from something? She knew everything had been going downhill for him—her mother had told her that much—yet Ilka had always looked at it as him leaving the two of them. It was telling, though, that he’d started up a new funeral home. And he’d fled suddenly, without making any arrangements. Maybe his reason for leaving did have to do with the business he’d taken over from his own father. But then there were the horses, of course. Her mother thought he’d accumulated a debt he’d never be able to pay, so he took off.

She’d loved it when he took her out to the horses. Except for that one time they’d never told her mother about.

It had been a sunny day. She’d been standing behind the living room door while he spoke on the phone, too low for her to hear. But when he noticed her, he told her to go out to the car and wait for him. Ilka looked down at the red toes of her shoes, uneasy and a bit scared. Her father usually didn’t sound like that.

She’d been looking forward to spending that day with him, but now she wished her mother was there too. He was acting strangely. As if he didn’t want her to be there. She grabbed the car keys on the dresser and picked her sweater up off the floor.

She was hoping they’d go to the racetrack or out to Mogens’s. They’d been there before. He had a lot of horses, and last time they were there he’d let her curry one.

“Where are we going?” Luckily he hadn’t spoken on the phone very long. He was wearing his brown suede jacket. He lit a cigarette, but he remembered to roll the window down a bit so she wouldn’t get carsick. For a few seconds, he sat as if he’d forgotten where they were going; then he flipped his cigarette out the window and into the hedge.

“We’re headed out to run and shout.” He laughed, and she laughed with him, though there was still something wrong.

They drove a long time before turning down a gravel road with tall old trees on both sides. They had counted the number of yellow cars on the way. She sat up to see if there were any horses, but the corrals were empty.

“Who lives here?” she asked, as they drove in and stopped at a courtyard. She didn’t like visiting people she didn’t know, and she felt a small knot in her stomach when a dog came running up to the car.

“I’ll only be a minute. Just stay out here.” He reached into the backseat and grabbed a Donald Duck comic book for her.

Her father wasn’t afraid of dogs. Ilka watched him walk over to a barn door; no one had come out to greet him. Maybe no one had heard them coming? She didn’t like this. What should she say if someone came while he was gone? Before going inside the barn, he turned and waved at her.

The dog was gone. Ilka sat for a while; then she opened the car door and hopped down onto the courtyard’s cobblestones. The air smelled sour, like it did when manure had been spread out on fields—she knew about that from summer vacations when they drove out into the country.

She walked over to the horse barn and opened the door a crack. Riding gear hung all around. She heard voices, and she slowly opened the door and walked inside. The barn smelled of oil, hay, and leather, odors she knew and liked from the racetrack barn. She called out for her father, but the barn was quiet. For a minute, she stood gathering up the courage to walk down the long row of stalls, which were empty. Someone was cleaning them, though; a wheelbarrow full of straw and horseshit was parked there. They must be out back. She called out again, louder this time.

“Daddy!” She froze at the sight of a man she’d never seen before. He was gripping her father, as if he were trying to lift him up, and speaking angrily to him, hissing in his face. She screamed, and the stranger whirled around. But she couldn’t move. Not even when her father yelled at her, told her to go back to the car. He walked over and took her hand.

The stranger was still angry. “You’ll hear from me!”



It was light outside when Ilka woke up. She must have fallen asleep again. It was a few minutes past eight, and when she walked downstairs, feeling a hundred years old, she heard Artie rummaging around in back. The preparation room had no windows, but the door stood open and the ventilation fan roared like a range hood set on high. She found him in the kitchenette, pouring Red Bull in his coffee. His eyes were tiny, and he’d tied his longish hair in a small bun on top of his head. Something the under-thirty generation would usually do, she’d thought.

He nodded good morning to her and pointed to a plate of doughnuts. “Have one,” he said, his voice low; instinctively she understood he preferred a quiet morning. But today he was out of luck.

She grabbed the powdered milk for coffee and started in. “Have you seen the refrigerator?” She followed him out under the carport, where he sat down on the steps with his coffee, doughnut, and cigarette. He shook his head silently and began eating; a small fleck of icing stuck on his mustache. “No,” he finally answered, after he’d finished chewing. “But I’ll do Mike first. I don’t have time to work miracles before Shelby comes, but I can do a cover-up, so she won’t see what bad shape he’s in.”