The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(76)

Inside the arrangement room, Shelby helped her daughter sit down in the armchair while Ilka brought in the coffee and chocolates, which she set on the table.

Ilka noticed something different about her. Something lighter, even though in a few moments she would be going in to say good-bye to her oldest child. Ilka smiled and looked away when Shelby met her eyes.

“Emma is a bit nervous about seeing her brother in there,” she said, glancing affectionately at her daughter. “But I told her not to worry, because Artie Sorvino has taken good care of him.”

“He does look very good,” Ilka said. She asked Emma how she remembered her brother.

At first Mike’s sister stared down at her hands. Should she not have been so direct? Ilka wondered. But then Emma looked up with a big smile on her face. “He always needed a haircut. And he wouldn’t put on a shirt, even though Mom told him to. Isn’t that right, Mom?”

She turned to Shelby, who nodded. “I’m sure it’s true, even though I can’t remember about the shirts.” She smiled. “But I do remember he always got holes in the toes of his tennis shoes. They’d start fraying, and you knew it was just a matter of time before they’d fall apart.” She shook her head at the memory.

“I always did like Ashley,” Emma said after a few moments of silence. “She was always nice, and she asked me several times if I wanted to go down to the harbor when they went to look at the ships. Back when Mike hung out with Jesse and the other guys, I never got to go along.”

Her mother tilted her head, as if she were surprised that her daughter had suddenly spoken about something that had happened years ago. “But you and your brother spent a lot of time together,” she said.

Emma nodded. “Maybe it was mostly Jesse who didn’t want me along.”

“Were they together a lot back then?” Ilka asked. “I mean, Mike and Jesse Oldham?”

Shelby said the two boys had been in the same class, but it wasn’t until they were fifteen or sixteen that the younger Oldham boy started acting friendly toward Mike.

“And it was only because Mike was the starting quarterback,” Emma said. “Jesse wasn’t any good at football, but he hung around, a real wannabe.”

She snorted. “But when Mike started going out with Ashley, he stopped hanging around with Jesse.”

“Yes,” Shelby said. “And look where that got him.”

Emma slumped in her chair. The film of old memories had stopped abruptly; reality had returned.

Shelby looked at her daughter, then turned to Ilka. “Phyllis Oldham came up to us at the hospital today.” Her expression changed, and again it looked as if her sorrow had lightened, but there was anger, too, in the furrows around her mouth.

“She offered to pay for the rest of Emma’s treatments. No matter how long it took, how many treatments were necessary. And if the doctors at some point think it’s no longer too risky to operate, she’ll pay for that too. She’s even offered to have Emma moved to another hospital, if we can find one with better specialists.”

Again, her daughter stared down at her hands, intertwined in her lap.

“I accepted her offer. Maybe I shouldn’t have; she shouldn’t be allowed to buy her way out of responsibility for what she did to Mike. Of course she shouldn’t. But I said yes and thank you.”

Mostly Ilka sensed some sort of embarrassment. As if she was ashamed of having to accept the offer, though she surely wanted nothing to do with the Oldhams after what they had done to her son. “Of course you should let her pay. It’s so wonderful for the both of you.”

Shelby simply nodded, as if she was relieved to have said it. “We’ll give him ten more minutes. This is so like him. He could just have said he didn’t want to drive all the way over.”

“You can’t know; he might be parking outside right now,” Emma said, looking at her mother.

The doorbell rang, and Ilka smiled.

“You stay right here; I’ll go out and bring him in.”



Ilka put on a professional smile as she walked through the foyer to greet Mike Gilbert’s father, but she stopped at the sight of a woman with short blond hair holding the hands of two small children. She’d been sobbing, and she seemed utterly crushed and exhausted.

“Hello,” Ilka said, feeling a bit awkward as she approached her. How was she going to deal with this right now, when Shelby and her daughter were about to enter the chapel?

She might want to talk to Artie about the woman he’d brought in, Ilka thought. She could be a relative who had changed her mind and wanted to view her anyway.

“May I help you?” It annoyed her that Sister Eileen wasn’t there, even though it was totally unfair.

“We’re here to see Mike Gilbert,” the woman said. The two children looked as if they had just woken up. Shy and a bit frightened, they glanced around in confusion. The haggard woman’s lips trembled. “We first heard what happened this morning, and we’ve been driving all day. Tommy called and told us you’re holding a funeral service for him.”

“Tommy?” Ilka tried to gather her thoughts.

“My father-in-law. I’m Mike’s wife.”

“Of course,” Ilka said hurriedly, though she didn’t know what was going on. “Come inside. Do you need anything?”