Flying Solo(12)

“Yeah, how is Angus?” Joey said. “Is he still single? Can we get him back?”

Ryan held up one hand. “All right, this is as much as I can take about Laurie’s love life.” He had decided to bail her out. Ryan, because he had happened to visit her just after the breakup, was the only one of her brothers who knew what, in fact, had happened to Angus. He was not still single. He was married now, and he had a six-month-old daughter. What had happened to Angus was simple: He had wanted kids. “If she’s a hummingbird,” Ryan continued, “she’s a hummingbird, whatever that means.”

“Do you want that, though?” Patrick asked. “You were about to get married. Are you sure you want to commit to being by yourself forever? It seems kind of lonely.”

Laurie looked around the room. “Dot was a hummingbird,” she said. “I don’t think she was particularly lonely. And look at all the stuff she got to do.”

“Yeah,” Scott said, looking around the room. “She probably had sex on this couch.”





Chapter Four


Most mornings, Laurie made breakfast while she FaceTimed with her mother, which was much more convenient now that they were in the same time zone. The morning after she met the Grim Reaper, her mom answered with “Good morning, I hurt my ankle.” She aimed the phone straight down, so Laurie could see the big brace strapped around her leg.

“Oh no! What happened?”

Her mom hesitated, and her face went a little pink. She said, “I was trying to catch the ice-cream truck.” There was indeed a truck that tootled around their Florida neighborhood for much of the year, playing “My Heart Will Go On” and serving Drumsticks and Chipwiches out the side window. Laurie’s parents had been known to indulge in the occasional Dove bar. “He stopped for the kids across the street, the twins, and I was trying to find cash—you know I never have cash anymore—and when I got out there, he was starting to pull away. So I ran down the sidewalk, and I tripped over a box full of shirts your father ordered from Tommy Bahama.”

Laurie had to admit it was never boring to ask her mother what happened, in almost any situation. “Okay, but what happened to your ankle? Did you break it? Did you go to the emergency room?”

“Dad drove me to the hospital. We had to sit around for three hours so they could tell me I sprained it and give me some crutches. By the way, if anybody ever tells you your armpits are made to support your entire weight,” she said as she swung the camera over to show her crutches leaning against the wall, “don’t believe it.”

“I’m so sorry. You didn’t mess up your hip, right?”

Barbara waved her hand. “No, it’s no big deal. How are you doing at Dot’s? I was going to check in with you last night, but I took to my bed to watch Bridgerton and it was lights out before I knew it.”

“We did fine. The guy came, the guy who’s going to pick up everything. I’m trying to pack up what you asked for and whatever I think we should try to keep. I got the framed pictures from the mantel, her big Dutch oven…I’m trying to make sure I get everything on the list. I did want to ask you about one thing.”

“If you don’t mind talking to me while I’m eating breakfast.” Her mother bit into an orange section. “Fire away.”

“Do you know anything about the duck decoy that was in the cedar chest? It was under these blankets, like she was hiding it or something. It was weird, because of the way everything else is just all over the place, on her shelves and in cabinets and things. It doesn’t really go with her other stuff, either. It’s sort of rustic, you know? For Dot? It’s pretty, but it’s not sparkly. Most of her stuff is sparkly, or it’s a souvenir, or something like that.”

Barbara frowned. “I don’t know anything about a duck decoy, no. I assume it’s from a yard sale or the rummage sale at church, maybe. She certainly wasn’t a hunter. She probably forgot about it. You know how she was about saving everything, and she went everywhere.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” To bring up the letter or not to bring up the letter? Better not to. “It just seemed odd. That it was buried like that, when her place is so organized and everything is lined up and displayed, I don’t really get it. I took some pictures of it.” Because they were chatting by iPad, she could pull the pictures up on her phone and hold them up to the screen for her mother to see.

Barbara leaned forward and squinted at them. “I can barely tell what I’m looking at, but it doesn’t seem familiar. Maybe it was a gift and she hated it, so she tucked it away and never thought about it again. Did you keep it?”

“I did for now,” Laurie said. “The antiques guy, Matt, he said it was a cheap little doodad, didn’t seem important. He offered me fifty bucks for it.”

“Well, that’s up to you. I think the lady who takes on the huge job gets to make the decisions. Do whatever you think is right. Aunt Dot probably had a lot of mysteries in that house. Ninety-plus years of independence leaves a lot of room for questions.”

“Am I going to find mysteries if I have to clean out your house someday?”

Her mom smiled and picked up her coffee cup. “Not like with Dot. No ducks here.”

“You know, the more I looked at her pictures and things, the more I wish I’d talked to her about the wedding. About deciding not to have it, I mean. The last couple of times I called her, I was going to get into it more, and I thought maybe she would ask, but we just didn’t talk about it.”