The Accident

“The poor kid,” Marcus said, meaning Kelly, not Emily. “It’s just one thing after another.”

“I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough what happened. It’ll be on the news, or there’ll be a death notice in the paper, a Facebook memorial, something. Kelly will probably get a text message before any of us learn a damn thing.”

“Will she still spend the day with us?” Fiona wasn’t going to let some tragedy derail a day with her granddaughter.

Fifteen minutes later Kelly bounded down the stairs, dressed and ready for an outing. Before they got into Marcus’s Caddy and drove off, however, she gave me a private hug in the kitchen. I knelt down and wiped a tear from her cheek.

“I never knew anyone else whose mother died,” she whispered. “I know Emily’s got to be really sad.”

“She will be. But she’ll be strong, like you. She’ll get through this.”

Kelly nodded, but the corners of her mouth trembled.

“You don’t have to go with them if you don’t want to,” I told her.

“No, it’s okay, Daddy. But I don’t want to live with them. I always want to come home and be with you.”

Once I had the house to myself, I made a pot of coffee. This had always been Sheila’s job, and I was still struggling to get it right-the number of spoonfuls, running the water from the tap until it was really cold. I filled a mug and went out onto the back deck. It was a cool day, but with a light jacket on it was nice out there, if somewhat bracing. I sat down, took a sip. Not nearly as good as Sheila’s, but drinkable. That was all coffee really had to be for me.

Aside from a soft breeze that was liberating the last of the fall leaves from the three oak trees in our backyard, it was oddly still out there. The world seemed, briefly, calm. The last couple of weeks had been hell, but the preceding fifteen hours had been a maelstrom. The aborted sleepover, Kelly’s tale of the overheard phone call, Fiona’s unexpected visit and unwanted school proposal. And, overshadowing everything, Ann Slocum’s death.

Christ on a cracker.

“What do you make of that, Sheila?” I said aloud, shaking my head. “What in the hell do you make of that?”

Two little girls from the same class, both losing their mothers within a couple of weeks. And while I hadn’t wanted to actively follow up on Kelly’s request that I find out what happened to Ann, I was curious just the same. Could it have been a heart attack? An aneurysm? Some crazy thing that struck her dead in a second? Had there been some kind of accident? Did she fall down the stairs? Slip in the shower and break her neck? If she’d been ill, surely Sheila would have known about it and told me? Everyone told Sheila their troubles.

Would Darren Slocum have reason to feel about his dead wife the way I did about Sheila? Would anger displace grief? Maybe it would, regardless. If Sheila had died instantly of a stroke, I might be just as enraged, but my fury would be directed elsewhere. Instead of asking Sheila what the hell she was thinking, I’d save that question for the man upstairs.

“I still don’t get it, Sheila,” I said. “How’d you pull it off? How’d you hide a drinking problem?”

There was no answer.

“I’ve got stuff to do.” I tossed the rest of my coffee onto the grass.

I decided to make good use of the day. With Kelly occupied, I could go into the office and do things that were impossible through the week. I could tidy up, replace a few saw blades, make sure no one had walked off with any of the tools. I could catch up with the voicemail, maybe even return a few calls rather than leave them all for Sally on Monday morning. Most likely all of them would be from customers wondering why their jobs weren’t moving along more quickly. There weren’t many projects that got done on time, despite our best intentions. Organizing the different trades-plumbers, tilers, electricians, just for starters-was akin to setting up dominoes. If you could get them in order and on time, everything fell into place. But it never happened that way. Supplies didn’t show when promised. People got sick. You got called back to other jobs you thought were finished.

You did the best you could.

As I was getting out of my deck chair I heard a car door slam around the front. Coming around the side, I saw a white pickup truck I recognized parked across the end of the drive. Theo’s Electric was stenciled onto the door, and Theo himself, a wiry guy in his mid-thirties who, at six feet, had about four inches on me in the height department, was sliding out from behind the wheel.