The Next Best Thing (Gideon's Cove #2)(8)

I don’t like the cemetery. I love the park, but I can’t go into the cemetery. Instead I ride around it. Every day, which is a great excuse for exercise.

I duck to avoid smacking my head on a low-hanging branch as I cruise along the cemetery wall. Underneath a generous chestnut tree and very close to the street is my father’s grave. Robert Stephen Lang, age 42, Beloved Husband and Father. “Hi, Daddy,” I call as I pass.

Even before my dad died, and long before Jimmy, I’d hated the cemetery, and for good reason. When I was four, Iris’s husband, Uncle Pete died (esophageal cancer after a lifetime of Camels Unfiltered). I hadn’t been allowed to see him in the hospital—the hospice ward is no place for a kid—and so I didn’t realize how thin and wasted he’d become. The casket was closed at the wake, and pictures of a younger, healthier Pete had adorned the funeral home.

At any rate, we all went to the cemetery, the men somber in their suits, black umbrellas provided by the funeral home hovering above the mourners. It had been a wet spring, and the ground was soft, saturated with rain. Our heels sank into the earth, and rainwater seeped into our shoes. I was sad, of course…all those grown-ups crying quite unnerved four-year-old me. I was about to become considerably more upset.

Cousin Stevie, future eater of poison ivy, was eight at the time. We all stood around the grave as the priest began the traditional funeral prayers. Stevie was bored…his own dad was still alive (to die three years later in a railroad accident). Everything was boring to Stevie at that age. He’d been good until now, thanks to Rose’s threats of his own imminent death if he didn’t behave, but he couldn’t hold out any longer.

As I said, it had been a rainy spring. The night before had seen a nor’easter that dumped an additional two inches into the earth, I found out later at the many retellings of this awful tale. All I knew was that it was muddy, my mother was crying and Stevie was more fun to look at than my sad mommy.

And Stevie was bored. So, being Stevie, he started doing something. Something ill-advised. Something stupid, one might say. He dug his toe into the muddy earth, and a clump of soil fell into the grave, landing with a wet splat. Stevie was fascinated. Could he get another clot of earth to fall? Without his mother noticing? He could. How about another? Yes, another. Bigger this time. Splat. What a neat sound.

The adults were droning their way through the Lord’s Prayer. Stevie looked up, saw that I was watching and decided to show off for his little cousin. He dug his toe in up to his ankle, wriggled it, and suddenly, the earth under Stevie crumpled away in a mud slide into the grave. Stevie staggered back, arms flailing, fell against the casket, causing it to slide just an inch or two toward the compromised edge of the grave. Then, in slow motion, Uncle Pete’s casket slid slowly, then listed into the yawning earth. One corner hit the other side of the grave. The casket tipped…and opened.

Uncle Pete’s body—oh, gosh, it’s hard just to remember this story—Uncle Pete’s decimated body tipped out, fell almost all the way out of the casket and dangled there for a second before falling with a horrifying squelch into the sodden grave.

The screams that followed still echo in my mind. Aunt Rose shrieking. Uncle Larry, knowing instinctively that his son had caused this, repeatedly smacking Stevie on the bottom as Stevie wailed. Iris fainting. Neddy and Anne screaming and sobbing. My father hauled my pregnant and awkward mother away from the terrible sight. As for me, I stood frozen, staring down at that thing that didn’t even look like Uncle Pete, facedown in the muck.

Four years later, dehydrated from crying and terrified that he would meet a fate similar to Uncle Pete’s, I’d fainted at the cemetery during my own dad’s funeral and, according to family legend, nearly fell into the grave myself.

So. I’d say I have just cause to be phobic about cemeteries. The only thing I remember about Jimmy’s graveside service was that I was shaking so hard that I wouldn’t have been able to stand were it not for Ethan’s arm around me.

The truth is, not all cemeteries freak me out. In grammar school I went on a field trip to a Colonial cemetery not far from Mackerly, and I did just fine. Once, Jimmy and I spent the weekend in Orleans on Cape Cod and found a beautiful cemetery with wide expanses of shade, and we actually had a picnic amid the granite stones and sad stories from long ago. But this one, where so many of my menfolk lie…this one I just can’t go in. Aside from the funeral, I’ve never been to Jimmy’s grave. I’m not proud of this. It makes me feel like a bad widow, but I just can’t seem to walk down that path, go through those gates.

It’s okay, I rationalize. I get my cardio workout this way. I reach the intersection of Bridge and Main Streets, ring my bicycle bell and then cross, cruising into the bakery parking lot. My sister’s car is here. Oh, goody!

Jorge comes out as I head in. “Did you see the baby?” I ask. He grins and nods. “Isn’t she pretty?”

He nods again, his dark eyes crinkling.

“See you later, Jorge.” He’ll be back for the afternoon deliveries.

“Hi, Cory!” I say, gently twisting past the Black Widows to see the baby. “Oh. Oh, wow. Oh, Corinne.” I saw Emma yesterday at my sister’s house, but the thrill has yet to fade. The baby is sleeping in my sister’s arms, pink and white skin, eyelids so new and transparent I can see the veins. Her lips purse adorably as she sucks in her sleep.