A Curve in the Road(26)
My breath catches in my throat, and I kneel down to whisper words of love and to share memories of special times. Eventually, Carla lays her hand on my shoulder. “Abbie . . . it’s time.”
No. Not yet.
I blink hard over tears that burn my eyes and run my knuckles gently down Alan’s cheek, but he’s so cold. He can’t feel the warmth of my touch. He’s not here anymore.
My hands shake, and my body trembles as I force myself to rise and step back. The whole experience leaves me weak and depleted. I have to fight to keep my emotions under control as we walk out the door—at least until I can return to my mother’s house, shut my bedroom door, and allow myself to fall apart completely.
I rise at dawn the following day before anyone wakes, having slept very little through the night. Only Winston is at my side in the kitchen, with the plastic cone still fastened around his neck. He rests quietly on his bed in the corner by the table.
As I make a pot of coffee, I try to prepare myself for the church service and burial that afternoon. I just need to get through it, and then everything, I pray, will get easier.
Winston rises from his cushion and ambles to his food bowl by the back door. I realize it’s empty, so I get up from my chair to fill it.
“How are you doing, by the way?” I ask as the kibbles clank into the stainless-steel bowl.
He drinks some water but doesn’t have much of an appetite, so he simply follows me back to the table, where I sit down to finish my coffee. He stares at me with those big brown eyes, looking concerned.
I set down my mug. “I know. You can see that I’m upset, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And you don’t like wearing that silly collar. I wouldn’t like it either. But don’t worry. You won’t have to wear it forever. Just a few more days.”
He lies down and rests his chin on his paws, and I understand that it’s more than just the plastic cone around his neck or a headache or pain from the surgery that’s causing him to look so depressed. Somehow, he knows we’re all suffering, and he’s feeling it too. He’s wondering where the fourth member of our pack has gone and why he’s not here.
Paula Sheridan makes a sudden appearance in my mind. I realize that I was so exhausted after I returned home last night that I hadn’t given any more thought to her tearful presence at the wake.
I’m still curious about why she was there. Alan was just a customer, so I don’t see why she would be so upset.
Unless she knew Alan better than she let on . . .
I raise my coffee cup to my lips and think about the obvious implications of that, and then I shake my head at myself. Stop it, Abbie. That’s just crazy.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder if Paula will be at the funeral service today. If she comes, will she bring her husband and stay for the reception in the church hall afterward?
I hope so, because if she tries to sneak in unnoticed like she did at the wake, I’m going to consider that to be very strange and suspicious behavior, and I can’t handle strange and suspicious right now. There are enough unanswered questions on my mind, like why my husband was driving drunk on the night he died. I’m still craving an explanation for that, and the question won’t leave me alone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As it turns out, Paula attends Alan’s funeral service, but just as I feared she might, she arrives at the last minute, sits at the back of the church—without her husband—and disappears before the organist begins to play the recessional.
Later, at the cemetery, as Alan’s casket is lowered into the ground, I spot her watching from a distance, high up on the hill. Only family members have been invited to attend the burial, so I’m acutely aware of her presence while the minister reads from the prayer book.
Afterward, as we slowly make our way back to our cars, I glance toward the crest of the hill, but Paula has disappeared again. I can’t help but wonder if she thinks I haven’t noticed her lurking around during these times of heightened grief.
By now, I’m quite certain that she wants to be seen and she wants me to reach out to her, but I don’t know why, and I don’t want to suspect the obvious—that she knew my husband in an intimate way. It could be something else entirely.
Either way, my family has been through enough. We’ve had to deal with the press asking questions about whether Alan had a serious drinking problem and if he’d ever lost a patient under suspicious circumstances. Of course, I will continue to deny those accusations because Alan was an excellent heart surgeon, the very best in the city. I never saw him drink excessively, and certainly not a single drop when he was headed for the OR. He would have lost his license ages ago if he had done something like that.
But clearly I didn’t know everything about Alan, because I have no idea why he was drunk on the road that night, nor was I aware of his connection to Paula Sheridan and the possibility of a friendship—or something more. My poor broken heart is demanding answers, and I know I’m not going to be able to simply let it go.
“It was a lovely service,” Verna says to me as we reach our vehicles. She touches my arm, and suddenly I find myself wanting to lay aside my frustrations from the previous day when Lester behaved so atrociously.
This is Alan’s family. They traveled a long way to be here. I should be mindful of that, and I don’t want to harbor any ill will. Not today.