The Last Good Day (22 page)

A week after the funerals, Rose and I visited the Lake View cemetery. We came with flowers, jam jars full of petunias from Betty’s garden. Lily’s were pink; Alex’s purple. “Better for a man,” Betty had declared.

As we always seemed to be, Rose and I were in step. We were silent as we placed our flowers on the graves and unhurried as we thought our private thoughts. It was a gentle day, cool, sunny, and breezy.

“So how are you doing?” Rose asked finally.

“Truthfully, I feel as if someone ripped away my top layer of skin.”

Rose nodded sagely. “I know that feeling. But we have to stop. The old people say if you mourn too long they get stuck, the ones who’ve passed away. They can’t get on with their journey.”

“I’ve heard that,” I said. “I always thought it made a lot of sense.”

“And you and I have to get on with it, too. We’re not young women.”

“No,” I said. “We’re not.”

“And we’ve got responsibilities,” Rose said. “I’ve got Gracie and her dad.”

“And I’ve got my kids and my job. Did I tell you my daughter and her family are spending the month of August here?”

“Is that the daughter I met at Alex’s funeral?”

“Yes,” I said. “My daughter Mieka.”

“How old are the kids?”

“Maddy’s three and Lena’s seven months.”

“That’s good,” Rose said. “We could use some babies around here.”

I stopped to pick a weed from a grave. Rose took the Safeway bag from her pocket and held it out to me. I dropped the weed in and she nodded approvingly.

“That Zack Shreve’s an interesting man,” she said.

“He is,” I agreed.

“Tough.”

“So they say.”

Rose raised an eyebrow. “They also say that sometimes the toughest nuts have the sweetest meat. I wonder if that’s true.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Rose shoved the Safeway bag back in her pocket. “Well,” she said, “isn’t it lucky that you’ve got the rest of the summer to find out?”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Jan Seibel, B.F.A., LL.B., a great artist, a fine lawyer, and an incredibly patient and generous teacher; to Joan Baldwin, who continues to care for our family with consummate skill; and, as always, to my husband, Ted, for making everything possible.

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THE LAST
GOOD DAY

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GAIL BOWEN’s first Joanne Kilbourn mystery,
Deadly Appearances
(1990), was nominated for the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada Best First Novel Award. It was followed by
Murder at the Mendel
(1991),
The Wandering Soul Murders
(1992),
A Colder Kind of Death
(1994) (which won an Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel),
A Killing Spring
(1996),
Verdict in Blood
(1998),
Burying Ariel
(2000),
The Glass Coffin
(2002),
The Last Good Day
(2004),
The Endless Knot
(2006),
The Brutal Heart
(2008), and
The Nesting Dolls
(2010). In 2008
Reader’s Digest
named Bowen Canada’s Best Mystery Novelist; in 2009 she received the Derrick Murdoch Award from the Crime Writers of Canada. Bowen has also written plays that have been produced across Canada and on CBC Radio. Now retired from teaching at First Nations University of Canada, Gail Bowen lives in Regina. Please visit the author at
www.gailbowen.com
.