The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(56)

While he spoke, Ilka walked over to him, put her arms around him, and leaned down to kiss him. Her lips were nearly touching his before he stopped talking. He tasted of lake water and something sweet he’d eaten. Hard candy, she guessed.

He was startled. “Are you sure about this?” he murmured, but he allowed himself to be backed up and led into the house. With her hand on his chest, she tried to steer him around even though she’d never been inside his house. She backed him through the kitchen with big windows facing the lake, then through the living room. She sensed more than noticed the sofa and dining room table. The small TV on a box in the corner, low priority. Paintings on the wall, antlers. She felt his breath against her neck as her heart hammered away. And she felt the freedom to loosen the knot of anger that had built up since she’d left Mary Ann’s big white house.

Artie managed to open the door at the end of the living room. “Are we sure this is a good idea?” he said, his words streaming directly into her mouth.

Ilka kissed him harder and began unbuckling his pants with one hand, her other hand still around his neck. That seemed to wake him up. He ripped his sweater off and helped her loosen his belt.

She sat down on the bed and pulled him down to her. Then she noticed he was still wearing his rubber boots. Her greedy hands got rid of the Hawaiian shirt in short order, and they both smiled when Artie stood up and took his pants and boots off. The bun of hair on top of his head was coming undone; it looked like something exploding. Ilka didn’t bother taking off the white shirt she’d been wearing since the funeral service. Her father’s shirt. Though that detail was the last thing on her mind at that moment. She stared as Artie pulled his boxers off and fell back onto the bed, muttering, “Jesus Christ!”

He spoke directly into her ear, asked if Danish girls usually took whatever they needed, whenever they felt like it.

She leaned over and pulled her jeans off as she assured him that it was completely normal, that there was nothing more to it than that.



He could have thrown her out. He could have invited her for a drink afterward. Or asked why the hell she hadn’t at least called before showing up. But Artie Sorvino simply followed her out onto the front porch after they’d taken a quick shower and wrapped themselves up in thick blankets he pulled out of a reed basket in the hallway. Ilka handed him a can of beer and opened one of her root beers; he tossed a few cushions on the porch chairs and grabbed the lighter in the kitchen.

The sun had set; the darkness hid Lake Michigan. The only part of the lake that reached them was the roar of the waves rolling in over the rocky shore. And the smell.

She sensed him looking at her. Sensed that he was unsure what she expected from him. If it was affection she wanted.

Ilka pointed to a chair on the other side of the table, hoping it was enough to make him understand that this wasn’t anything more than what they’d already done.

“What is it about that family?” she asked, after they sat down. “It’s like they don’t want to have anything to do with my father. Has it always been like that?”

She pulled the blanket tighter around her, though she enjoyed being outside this late.

Artie lit a cigarette and pushed the pack over to her, but she let it lie. He shook his head. “That’s not how I see them, but you’re right that Paul kept his private life and the business separate. Very separate. It wasn’t something I thought about so much. That’s just how it was.”

He hesitated a moment. “A lot of people have problems with this business. Several very nice female acquaintances jumped ship on me when I told them what I did for a living. It’s almost like people think that death disappears if you ignore it. Or that you can keep it at a distance by not talking about it.”

“But the business must have been a big part of his life.”

He nodded. “I think they had an agreement. He wouldn’t bring the dead home into his private life. And he kept his private life away from the dead. That’s how I always saw it. And it probably wasn’t a bad way to do it. A business like ours can dominate your life.”

Ilka set her bottle down and pulled her legs up.

“You might not want to hear this, but your dad was very caring toward Mary Ann and the girls. I thought he overprotected them, but I never told him that. If anyone so much as mentioned something like that, he’d turn around and walk off.”

She stared into the flame of the small square electric candle in the lantern. It flickered mechanically, as if an invisible wind blew inside the glass and shook the wick. She didn’t want to hear any more. It might have been na?ve of her to expect them to greet her with open arms. If they’d felt that way, they would already have visited her. She thought about Amber, who clearly hadn’t told the others she had sat for hours on the bench in front of her father’s business. Maybe she had hoped Ilka would invite her in or take her up to her father’s room, which still held so much of him.

Artie interrupted her thoughts. “That name of yours—is that a usual name in Denmark?” He opened another beer.

Ilka shook her head. “I’d be surprised if there is one other person so unlucky. My father named me for the horse that won the Derby in 1947. Ilka Nichols only won once. It was the year my grandfather took my father to the track for the first time. He talked my mother into giving me this idiotic name because he said it was the symbol of a winner and…how do you say, someone not like other people. Someone who fought and did okay against the odds. But the name has been more like a curse, when I think about what the racetrack meant for my father’s life.”