The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(4)

For a few moments, he kept his eyes on the road; then he glanced at her and shrugged. “They’re nice enough, but I don’t really know them. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them. Truth is, I don’t think either of them was thrilled about your father’s business.”

After another silence, Ilka said, “You should have called me when he died. I wish I had been at his funeral.”

Was that really true? Did she truly wish that? The last funeral she’d been to was her husband’s. He had collapsed from heart failure three years ago, at the age of fifty-two. She didn’t like death, didn’t like loss. But she’d already lost her father many years ago, so what difference would it have made watching him being lowered into the ground?

“At that time, I didn’t know about you,” Artie said. “Your name first came up when your father’s lawyer mentioned you.”

“Where is he buried?”

He stared straight ahead. Again, it was obvious he didn’t enjoy talking about her father’s private life. Finally, he said, “Mary Ann decided to keep the urn with his ashes at home. A private ceremony was held in the living room when the crematorium delivered the urn, and now it’s on the shelf above the fireplace.”

After a pause, he said, “You speak English well. Funny accent.”

Ilka explained distractedly that she had traveled in Australia for a year after high school.

The billboards along the freeway here advertised hotels, motels, and drive-ins for the most part. She wondered how there could be enough people to keep all these businesses going, given the countless offers from the clusters of signs on both sides of the road. “What about his new family? Surely they knew he had a daughter in Denmark?” She turned back to him.

“Nope!” He shook his head as he flipped the turn signal.

“He never told them he left his wife and seven-year-old daughter?” She wasn’t all that surprised.

Artie didn’t answer. Okay, Ilka thought. That takes care of that.

“I wonder what they think about me coming here.”

He shrugged. “I don’t really know, but they’re not going to lose anything. His wife has an inheritance from her wealthy parents, so she’s taken care of. The same goes for the daughters. And none of them had ever shown any interest in the funeral home.”

And what about their father? Ilka thought. Were they uninterested in him, too? But that was none of her business. She didn’t know them, knew nothing about their relationships with one another. And for that matter, she knew nothing about her father. Maybe his new family had asked about his life in Denmark, and maybe he’d given them a line of bullshit. But what the hell, he was thirty-nine when he left. Anyone could figure out he’d had a life before packing his weekend bag and emigrating.

Both sides of the freeway were green now. The landscape was starting to remind her of late summer in Denmark, with its green fields, patches of forest, flat land, large barns with the characteristic bowed roofs, and livestock. With a few exceptions, she felt like she could have been driving down the E45, the road between Copenhagen and ?lborg.

“Do you mind if I turn on the radio?” Artie asked.

She shook her head; it was a relief to have the awkward silence between them broken. And yet, before his hand reached the radio, she blurted out, “What was he like?”

He dropped his hand and smiled at her. “Your father was a decent guy, a really decent guy. In a lot of ways,” he added, disarmingly, “he was someone you could count on, and in other ways he was very much his own man. I always enjoyed working with him, but he was also my friend. People liked him; he was interested in their lives. That’s also why he was so good at talking to those who had just lost someone. He was empathetic. It feels empty, him not being around any longer.”

Ilka had to concentrate to follow along. Despite her year in Australia, it was difficult when people spoke English rapidly. “Was he also a good father?”

Artie turned thoughtfully and looked out his side window. “I really can’t say. I didn’t know him when the girls were small.” He kept glancing at the four lanes to their left. “But if you’re asking me if your father was a family man, my answer is, yes and no. He was very much in touch with his family, but he probably put more of himself into Jensen Funeral Home.”

“How long did you know him?”

She watched him calculate. “I moved back in 1998. We ran into each other at a local saloon, this place called Oh Dennis!, and we started talking. The victim of a traffic accident had just come in to the funeral home. The family wanted to put the young woman in an open coffin, but nobody would have wanted to see her face. So I offered to help. It’s the kind of stuff I’m good at. Creating, shaping. Your father did the embalming, but I reconstructed her face. Her mother supplied us with a photo, and I did a sculpture. And I managed to make the woman look like herself, even though there wasn’t much to work with. Later your father offered me a job, and I grabbed the chance. There’s not much work for an artist in Racine, so reconstructions of the deceased was as good as anything.”

He turned off the freeway. “Later I got a degree, because you have to have a license to work in the undertaker business.”

*



They reached Racine Street and waited to make a left turn. They had driven the last several miles in silence. The streets were deserted, the shops closed. It was getting dark, and Ilka realized she was at the point where exhaustion and jet lag trumped the hunger gnawing inside her. They drove by an empty square and a nearly deserted saloon. Oh Dennis!, the place where Artie had met her father. She spotted the lake at the end of the broad streets to the right, and that was it. The town was dead. Abandoned, closed. She was surprised there were no people or life.