Wreathed (8 page)

“That must be a nice problem to have. Next you’re going to tell me how much your student loans are. Can’t be that much worse than mine.”

“If you came all this way to work out your class resentment issues, you wasted your trip,” I said.

“You mean you still haven’t figured it out?” she said. “I thought you were smarter than that, dearie.”

“The only thing that makes sense is that you’re freelancing for Gawker, in which case, go to hell. You’ve already caused me enough agita.”

Vanessa drained the last of her Long Island iced tea. “This is what happened,” she said. “Hand to God.”

“Which God?”

“Another good comeback. I am totally writing that one down. All right, look. When I got out of school, I got a job with the
Inquirer
writing obituaries. I got to be good at it. I was an assistant editor when I got downsized. And don’t tell me how sorry you are about that, because it could happen to you tomorrow, and I would not shed one solitary tear for you.”

I wasn’t about to explain how close she’d come to putting my own job in jeopardy. “There’s a market for freelance obituaries?” I asked. “No wonder you’re bumming drinks off near-strangers in bars.”

Vanessa snorted. “Don’t you condescend to me. And no, there isn’t. I’ve been spending the last four years copy editing the worst crap imaginable. Software manuals. Sales brochures. God-awful self-published vampire erotica novels.”

“Poor you.”

“So a couple of years ago, because I was bored, I started this Tumblr account where I linked to interesting or unusual obituaries. A mutual friend saw your Facebook post and sent me the link to the late Mr. Berkman’s obit, and I did a squib about it on Kinja, which is the freelance portal that Gawker Media uses. It got promoted on
Curtains,
which is all I expected to happen. Somehow, it got cross-posted to the main Gawker site, which gets an insane amount of traffic, and then it went viral from there.”

“So you started this,” I said. “You’re the one who helped this go viral. You’re the one who blew up my in-box. What are you going to do for an encore, steal my car?”

“Why do you assume this is about you? I had no idea you were involved, not until the commenters brought up your Facebook page. It was a coincidence I even knew you, sweetie. If this has inconvenienced you a trifle, well, I wish I could say I was sorry, but I can’t. This is my big break. For the last five years, I’ve been working my heart out for a chance to be noticed by somebody. If it can’t be a respectable print publication, at least it’s Gawker, and they get a ton of eyeballs. And they’re willing to pay me to write up the next phase of the story.”

“What next phase of the story?
There’s no story
.”

“You know that’s not true. Tomorrow is the funeral. Will the mystery woman show up to pay her respects? The entire Gawker Media readership is curious. I’m going to be the one to tell them, and you’re going to help me.”

I took a short, quick sip of my drink, just for the pleasure of slamming the glass down on the bar. “In your dreams
,
Vanessa. If you think I am going to help you with your little scheme, then you’re more pathetic than I remember you being, and I remember you were dating Herman Howard at one point.”

“Howard Herman.”

“Same difference. He was a little creep, and it sounds like he’s rubbed off on you.”

“Just hear me out, before you say anything you can’t take back,” she said.

“I have nothing to say. This is a small, quiet family funeral. There’s no way in this world that you can get a story anybody will want to read out of this. It’s not a romance, and it’s not a mystery, it’s just a dead guy and the people that he used to know.”

“That’s what you think, is it?”

“If there’s anything interesting, you aren’t going to find it out from me.”

Vanessa folded her hands together and cracked her knuckles. It was a horrible sound in the quiet bar. “You think you have it all figured out, don’t you,” she said. “Your mother is not exactly the most popular person in the world, you know. And neither are you.”

“You can make all the empty threats you want, Vanessa. My mother won’t do an interview with you. I am sure the hell not going to. You’ve got no leverage.”

“Then why are you sitting here talking to me?”

“Good point. Good night. Nice seeing you. Say hi to Bad Boy Tommy Killebrew for me.” I slid off the barstool and headed for the door.

“I don’t want you to do anything,” she said.

“Then you won’t be disappointed.”

“You don’t understand. All I want is one picture of your mom walking into the church. Maybe one of her walking out, if that’s a better picture, depending on the angle. It’s a very picturesque church, so it’ll be hard to take a bad picture, really.”

“So you’re a wannabe paparazzi, too. Good luck with that.”

“All I want you to do is to not make my life more difficult. Don’t sneak your mother in or out of the church. Don’t have her put her hands in front of her face, or wear a veil. Don’t warn her that I’m going to be there. Just keep your mouth shut about me, and I’ll keep my mouth shut about her.”

“I’m leaving.”

“You don’t have to decide now. Just think about it. All I want is one good picture.”

All I wanted was for Vanessa to develop a horrible, painful, flesh-eating virus, but that’s not something you can say out loud without sounding hateful. I stalked my way out of the bar and up to my room, where I fell into bed like a dead thing.

Chapter 10

I am not the kind of person who writes snarky reviews of bad hotels for websites, but the coffee machine in my room produced the worst Goddamned coffee I had ever tasted in my whole entire life. I shouldn’t call it coffee, even. It was coffee-flavored sludge. Having said that, it was hot and fortified with caffeine and I was in no position to complain. I forced just enough of it down to make continued existence look attractive, and then ran a hot shower to facilitate blood flow to get the caffeine moving through my system. I got dressed and squeezed into my shiniest and least-comfortable pair of black heels. I was just starting the first layer of makeup when my mother started hammering on the connecting door to her room. I opened the door just a crack.

“Is there any chance that you’re even close to being ready?” she said. “I ask purely for technical reasons.”

“Almost done,” I said. “And it’s a good two hours until the funeral. No reason to rush just yet.”

“Do I smell coffee?”

“If you want to stretch the definition to include it,” I said. “It’s ice-cold by now anyway.”

“If you can’t open the door and let me in, the absolute minimum you could do would be to get me a straw and stick it through the crack in the door and let me drink some coffee that way.”

I opened the door and gave her my best early-morning glare, and then let her in. She perched on the edge of the one sorry chair in the room, and I got her a paper cup of the remnants of the horrible coffee. She made a face—anyone would have—and downed half the cup anyway. “Ye gods, that’s foul. It’s like a mouse gave birth and died in the coffee maker.”

“We’ve got time,” I said. “We can go to Wawa and get decent coffee beforehand. If you’re close to being ready to go.” I looked at her in the mirror as I applied lipstick. She had a nubbly black wool jacket on over her dress, and she looked diminished and sad against the wide lapels and the dark fabric.

“I feel awful. I couldn’t sleep, and I left my Ambien at home. I need coffee more than I need oxygen.”

“If you give me a minute to put my makeup on, I can go downstairs and scrounge you some.” I was working on a variation of my normal workaday makeup palette, with more pink in the blush to make me look halfway animate, and a slightly paler shade of lipstick. The combination made me look young and innocent, which was nice enough, except that I was going for quiet and unobtrusive.
Close enough
, I figured.

“I don’t know how Jackie and Ethel did it,” Mother said. “They must have been tranquilized to the gills.”

“If you’re not feeling up to it, we can skip the funeral. Pay our respects at the gravesite later, or something.” Not to mention that not showing up at the church would frustrate the hell out of Vanessa’s little scheme.

“I have to go. I promised Sheldon I would.”

“When did you do that?” I asked. “Like, right before he started cheating on you?”

“No. It was the last time I saw him. He came home, on leave. This must have been the summer of 1972, right around the time I was dating your father. The Air Force was getting ready to send Sheldon to their base at Da Nang to service bombers—this was right before Operation Linebacker, if that means anything to you. Sheldon had been in Alaska all through the war, up to that point, and the poor man was terrified of having to go to Vietnam.”

“He thought he was about to die, and he wanted you to go to his funeral? That’s not romantic.”

“It wasn’t, not at all. It was sad and desperate. But he’d come all the way to Washington to find me, and he looked so handsome in his uniform. So of course I said yes, and since I promised him, of course I’m going to keep my promise. It’ll be a short service, and then I can come back and try and get some rest.”

I felt a small tear welling up in the corner of my eye, and blotted it away before it could ruin my makeup. I pinned an onyx-and-silver brooch to the lapel of my suit.
Kennedy widows
, I told myself. If Mother wasn’t going to show the emotion she felt for Sheldon at the funeral, I wasn’t going to let the sadness and sympathy I felt show through, either. “I’m all set,” I said. “Let’s see whether that Wawa has decent coffee or not.”

The church was a largish pile of light-colored stone on a quiet street lined with Victorian houses. Most Jersey Shore towns are hodgepodges of different architectural styles—Cape Cod cottages and high-rise condos and cheesy mid-century motels, all on the same block. Cape May had the tackier features of most Shore towns, like trashy surf shops and miniature golf courses, but all the Victorian gingerbread made it look more like a New England town than it had any right to.

I didn’t take a good look at the houses, though, because I was trying to figure out where Vanessa was hiding. I figured she was staying in one of the bed-and-breakfasts across the street and watching the door of the church with a telephoto lens. Either that, or she was hiding in a parked car, getting ready to pop out for a close-up. If I had been smart, I realized, I would have followed her last night, so I would know where she was staying and what kind of car she was driving. All I could do now was try to figure out how to make sure Vanessa didn’t get the shot she wanted. I didn’t have a real strategy other than standing between Mother and where I thought Vanessa might be lurking.

“We can try to go in a back door,” I said.

“Why would we do that?” Mother asked. “Besides, we have to meet the nephew out front.”

“Whose nephew?”

“Sheldon’s nephew. What’s-his-name. Alan or Aaron or something.”

“Just the one nephew?” I asked.

“I imagine so. He’s the one that called and told me about Sheldon in the first place, otherwise I never would have known that he died. He sent me the link to the obituary that I sent you. I think he said that he was all the family Sheldon had left. It would be nice to not have to deal with a lot of family. God, I hope I’m the only ex-wife that shows up.”

I hadn’t thought about who else would be at the funeral. To the extent that I thought about it, I would have preferred to sit in a large anonymous crowd, or else a quiet service with just me and Mother and a minister and a couple of other silent mourners.

“So, what, he just saw your name in the obituary and figured out who you were and gave you a call?” I asked.

“The nephew is the executor of the will, and Sheldon had left him my contact information, as sad as that sounds.”

“How do we know what he looks like?”

“He said he’d find us. Maybe that’s him, over there.”

He was tall. That was the first thing that I noticed. He was tall, and he was wearing a black suit. He had big, chunky shoulders and long, loose limbs, like a swimmer. His hair was jet-black with a short cut that made him look confident and calm. And he was walking towards us like that was where he wanted to be and I was who he wanted to be with.

“Ms. Thornhill?” he asked.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Adam Lewis. We spoke on the phone. And I hope this is Wendy.”

He shook my mother’s hand delicately, but when he took my hand his grip was strong and warm. “Hi,” I said, or at least that’s what I think I said. I was trying to take in all the details—the crispness of the knot in his charcoal tie, the chiseled features of his face, and the friendly tone of his voice as he said my name. “Wendy,” he’d said.
Wendy Wendy Wendy Wendy Wendy. He knows my name. The cute guy knows my name.

“I’m so glad you both could make it.”

“Our pleasure,” Mother said.

“I especially wanted to talk to you, Wendy. I wasn’t sure if you were coming or not, but I’m so glad to see that you did.”

“Oh,” I said.

Here is a cute guy
, I thought,
obviously smart and articulate, showing interest in you specifically, and you can’t say anything more intelligent than the barest monosyllable. Shape up, girl.

“Yeah,” he said. “I had sent you an e-mail on LinkedIn, but you hadn’t responded, and I wasn’t sure if you’d read it or not. We can talk afterwards, if you have a few minutes.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’d be happy to talk about whatever.” I congratulated myself for managing to get a full sentence out of my fool mouth.
This is the cute guy from LinkedIn
, I thought.
The financial advisor from Freehold.
He had looked cute enough on LinkedIn, and he was looking much cuter in person.

“We have a few minutes, as it turns out,” he said. “Since the other mourners aren’t here yet.”

“Well,” Mother said. “If you young people don’t mind, I’m going to go inside and sign the guestbook. Excuse me.” She turned and climbed up the stairs into the church. Or at least that’s what I infer that she did, because I was not paying her the least bit of attention. If I had been, I would have done something different than what I did, which was to keep standing there and gawping at the cute guy who was showing an interest in me.