Hold (Gentry Boys, #5)(50)
“Coroner finished with the autopsy,” he said. “Official results won’t be in for a while but I had an off-the-record chat with her and she said it was pretty cut and dry. There was no fresh physical trauma. Maggie passed out on her back and there was no one around to help when she started choking.”
I didn’t have anything to say about that. Neither did my brothers. We just stood there and let the image sink in.
Gaps stepped closer to us. “Do you want to see her?” he asked quietly. “I can only let you in there for a few minutes but you boys deserve the chance to say goodbye.”
The front desk demon had apparently been listening to the entire exchange. “That’s against protocol,” she bleated. “You can’t let them in to see the body without written permission from-“
“Shut up,” Gaps interrupted with a roll of his eyes. “I mean it, Darlene, or else there might be a few reasons to probe a little harder into the case of the vanishing office supplies.”
Darlene quieted down although I could practically see the steam rising from her curly hair.
“What do you say?” Gaps asked.
“Yeah,” I answered, looking at the boys. “After all, we did come down here to say goodbye, right?”
“We did,” Chase agreed, squeezing Cord’s shoulder. “Right?”
Cord closed his eyes. “Right.”
We followed Gaps outside. All the municipal buildings were in the same cluster on Main Street. He led us into a modest structure a few dozen yards away. It didn’t have a sign on it other than a simple Town of Emblem plaque over the door. I figured that inside must be where they kept bodies that were in need of some official business before they could be laid to rest.
Laid to rest.
Bullshit phrase if ever there was one.
Gaps greeted a black-haired woman who looked like she might not have seen the sunlight for at least three years. He talked to her quietly and she looked over at us.
“Come with me,” she said with a wave of her pale hand. As she tiptoed down a lime green corridor I started getting kind of a horror movie vibe. In a way it actually was a horror movie. Marching off to bid farewell to your mother’s dead body was certainly horrible.
The woman reached a closed door. “Wait here,” she ordered, and then disappeared inside, closing the door behind her.
Cord leaned against the wall, looking more or less as green as the floor tile. Chase crossed his arms and stared at the ground. They looked so lost, so much like the little boys they’d once been. I wondered if I did too.
A few minutes ticked past before the door opened again and a hushed voice told us we could enter. Neither of my brothers moved so I went inside first, knowing they would follow. An acrid chemical smell made me think of high school biology. I wrinkled my nose involuntarily and figured that smell would linger until I took a shower. In the center of the room were three long tables but only one was occupied. I would have guessed that a room like this would ordinarily be severely lit by high wattage fluorescence but instead the lighting was muted, shadowy. I wondered if the black-haired woman had done that on purpose, to spare us a clear look at what was lying on the nearest table. Just as she’d probably been the one to neatly tuck a gray blanket around Maggie Gentry’s shoulders and smooth her hair around her sunken face.
I’ve heard all kinds of things said about the sight of dead bodies. How they look peaceful, serene, simply sleeping. My mother just looked like a shell. The tortured person who’d live inside there for so long was gone and what was left behind was what we were looking at. I heard Chase suck in a breath and exhale shakily. Cord stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared.
“You can have a few moments alone with her,” said the black-haired woman and there was kindness in her voice. Whatever her role was in all this - coroner, body sitter, whatever - she was definitely someone who was used to the sight of death. She left us alone silently and all I could hear was the sound of my brothers breathing until Chase broke the silence.
“There were times,” he said, “when we were kids that I would wake up in the middle of the night and be sure that she was dead. I was afraid to go check and not just because Benton might wake up and thrash me. I’d just lie there on my mattress and watch sunrise approach, praying to whoever lived beyond the sky to keep her here a while longer. For a time I was convinced that if I stopped thinking that silent prayer then she wouldn’t be alive in the morning.”
He winced and swallowed.
“You guys remember that time he punched her in the stomach and she fell into the television stand, opening up a four inch gash in her head? We were only about nine or ten but Creed, you went at Benton like a tiger, calling him a filthy f*cker and beating on him with all that you had. You caught him off guard and he lost his footing, landing smack on his ass and whacking the back of his head on the wall. He just kind of sprawled there all stunned and you were getting ready to kick him in the gut when Mom started screaming. She crawled across the floor, full of blood and bruises, and hurled her body across his so you couldn’t kick him. And the most terrible thing about that memory was the look on your face. Because in spite of everything he’d ever done to her, and to us, he was still what she loved the most. I thought you would cry Creedence, but you didn’t. You ran out the door and straight into the desert. We chased you but couldn’t catch up for nearly an hour.”