The Next Best Thing (Gideon's Cove #2)(56)

“Boggy choked on a scone?” Iris asks, giving me a sharp look.

“No! She didn’t choke on anything, right, Stevie? You were with her.”

Stevie shrugs, then scratches his ear. “We were watching Matlock. She said that old dude was still handsome, I’m eating the scone, she starts coughing, and then—” Stevie widens his eyes and sticks out his tongue “—dead. I thought about giving her a scone. Brought her back the first time, right, Luce?”

“You didn’t give her one, did you?” I ask, cringing at the idea of him stuffing a pastry into our ancient aunt’s mouth as a bizarre form of resuscitation. Granted, his IQ is roughly the same as a chicken’s, so it is possible.

“No, Luce, I’m not stupid,” my cousin protests. “But you’re the one who said they brought her back to life.”

“I was hallucinating at the time, Stevie.”

“Will you two stop your bickering?” Iris says. “You’re ruining this perfectly lovely wake.”

I close my eyes. The cloying scent of lilies makes my head throb, not to mention the saccharine organ music that simpers in the background. Personally I’d rather have the Brandenberg Concertos or the Smashing Pumpkins or something. Anything but “On Eagle’s Wings.”

My mother bustles up in her usual cloud of Chanel No. 5, looking like Audrey Hepburn: a black silk dress with a large white bow at the waist, strappy, three-inch black Manolo Blahniks which make her feet look like they enjoy a little bondage. “You look incredible,” she gushes, reaching out to touch my shoulder. Yes, I’m wearing a skirt, a sweater, some decent shoes (just some Nine West pumps…unlike Mom here, I thought it inappropriate to use Boggy’s wake as a showcase for my slutty shoes). “It’s wonderful to see you all dressed up! That color is fantastic on you!”

“Mom, settle down. We’re at a wake,” I say.

“Oh, you,” she says fondly. “Those earrings are darling!”

Let me explain. The Black Widows love nothing more than a well-planned wake, the flowers, the people, the tears. They attend everyone’s, and to be fair, they know everyone, being second-generation locals in a town of two thousand. There’s a complex scoring process for such events—number of attendees, expense of the flower arrangements, classiness of the charity the deceased’s family chose for the in lieu of flowers bit, who’s catering the after-funeral reception. Iris booms out how beautiful the deceased looks, Rose chirps about how thoughtful were those who sent flowers, and Mom announces how kind so-and-so was to come.

I myself have a little less fun at funeral homes, though they don’t present the same degree of distress as the cemetery. But Stevie has seized the idea that an errant crumb was carried on a rogue draft of air into Boggy’s esophagus, and this was in fact her cause of death. Furthermore, he is now relaying this fact to anyone who will listen. And lastly…well, lastly, none of us was prepared for little old Boggy to pass away so quickly.

“I was planning to visit her today,” my cousin Neddy, Iris’s son, complains.

“Well, if you’d wanted to see her, you could’ve come any time over the past fifteen years, Ned,” Iris says in stentorian tones. “This is what you get for waiting till the eleventh hour. Not that we knew it would be eleventh hour, that is. She was doing so well. A medical miracle. Dateline was going to pick up the story. Poor Boggy!”

“It’s a tragedy!” Rose weeps. “We should’ve had her for years more!”

Years more. How long was Aunt Boggy supposed to hang around, huh?

Good old Cousin Anne tries to be the voice of reason. “Aunt Rose, Ma,” she says firmly. “Boggy was a hundred and four. It was just her time. She had a very long life, and dying at a hundred and four is hardly a tragedy, now, is it?”

“It is!” Rose sobs. She does love to cry, that woman. “How can you be so heartless, Anne! All those years, she just lay there like a dead dog, and when she finally woke up, Lucy just had to bring her something that she’d choke on. Lucy, why didn’t you bring her ice cream instead? Why? Really, a little common sense…”

“She did not choke on a scone!” I protest loudly, forcing a smile to the next person in line.

“Reverend Covers!” my mother sings. “Aren’t you wonderful to come! How thoughtful!”

Iris and Rose discuss Boggy’s tragic death to everyone who comes by, and that’s the whole town, since news of the medical miracle and subsequent death has piqued everyone’s curiosity. The line is long, and my feet are killing me.

There, in the back of the room, is Ethan, wearing a navy blue suit and red tie. His eyes catch mine, and my heart squeezes abruptly. I haven’t seen him since the morning after my little Michael Phelps incident, and I’m not too sure how he’s feeling toward me these days. I give a little wave, and he nods. No smile. My throat tightens. Ethan and I need a little sit-down. We need to talk. Something’s got to give.

“Yo, Luce, so sorry for your loss.” Charley Spirito stands in front of me, Red Sox jacket over a shirt and tie.

“Thanks, Char—” My words are cut off as Charley engulfs me in his gym-teacher arms. He buries his face against my neck, planting a wet kiss on my collarbone. “Ick!” Crikey! He just copped a feel! “Knock it off, Charley!” I snap.