“I’m sorry,” Wil whispers into the microphone. “I can’t—”
The priest gets up and guides Wil back to his seat, murmuring soft words. Then the priest says to us, “At this time, prayers for or recollections of the departed are welcome, either silently or aloud.”
Somebody stands up and starts talking about how Wilson once built him a beautiful dinghy out of eastern red cedar so that he could spread his wife’s ashes on the Intracoastal. When the man returned, Wilson refused payment.
I gather story after story. They are precious now.
When the service ends, the church aisle fills. Everyone acknowledges one another with weird, tight smiles. Death is too close here and we jostle past one another, trying to outrun it in heels and dress shoes that pinch.
“Are you—” Leigh starts.
“I don’t know.” I search the crowd for Wil.
“I’ll take Micah home. Call you later.” Leigh kisses me on the cheek and steers my brother into the current of mourners and out the door.
On the church steps, Wil and Henney greet the flood with vacant stares. The same two detectives stand on the curb near a police cruiser: a tall black woman with cropped hair, and a pudgy white guy in a wrinkled shirt and jacket that doesn’t quite fit. They are granite-faced. Every so often, Wil glances over at them, then at his mom.
Leave them alone. I glare at the cops. Just for a few hours.
The adults leaving the church stop to hug Henney or give Wil a pat on the shoulder. The kids from school leave a wide berth. They pretend to be in deep, sober conversations with friends. Only Ana stops to give Wil a hug. She stands on tiptoe and sobs into his suit. After a moment, he nudges her back to her best friend, Thea Tritt, who is wearing a dress that’s too short for church.
I wait until the steps are almost empty. I force one heel in front of the other until we’re standing toe to toe. Wil’s dress shoes are so shiny I can see my hazy reflection.
“You had to buy new shoes for this,” I whisper.
“They’re his. He only ever wore them once.” Wil tugs at a piece of hair curling against his ear. I remember the softness of his hair. My fingertips burn with the memory of it.
“I loved him, you know,” I say quietly.
“Yeah.” When I look up, Wil’s eyes are wet and rimmed red. “He would be really glad you came, Golden Gate.” When he hugs me, he smells like varnish and sawdust.
After the service, I sit in my truck, taking in the heat with the windows rolled up, like I might be able to sweat these ugly feelings out of me. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to hear the sympathetic slide of Mom’s voice on the phone or watch Micah ditch me for his loser friends. What I really want is a drink, but I’ll settle for the next best thing. I jam my keys in the ignition and head for Minna’s.
I pull through the front gate of her assisted-living community and stop at the guard’s cottage. The usual security guard is there, balanced on the back legs of a metal folding chair. She’s watching a miniature television and eating granola straight out of the bag.
“Hey, Rita.” I pull up to the open door.
Rita bolts upright and the chair hits the floor. When she sees that it’s just me, she gives me a sheepish grin.
“Oops. Hey, Bridge.” She wrestles with the chair until it pops into place.
I smile. “Hey. Is Minna home?”
Rita rolls her eyes. Her bright red lipstick weeps beyond the borders of her mouth. “Three complaint calls about how the landscaping guy is ‘giving her the eye’ say she’s here. You look nice today. Big date or something?”
“Something.” I pull through the gate.
The housing complex is arranged in concentric circles. The outer few rungs are comprised of small homes, carbon-copied and dip-dyed in Florida colors, shrimp and aloe. Beyond the homes are the duplexes. They are slightly smaller, with garden patios in the back or a view of the man-made lake. All have staff weaving in and out—nurses to help with medication or cleaning ladies with chemical-loaded carts. In the center of the grounds is the hospital. The game works like this: The players start in the houses, then move their game piece closer to the center of the property as they get older. It’s like the worst possible game of Monopoly. Minna calls the hospital the Epicenter of Death.
I park in front of one of the duplexes. Minna’s door opens a crack before I even knock. A thin gold chain stretches between the door and the wall. She peers through the crack with her strikingly green eye.
“Good. I thought you were the yard guy,” she says. “Guy’s a pervert.” The door slams and I hear the slide of metal on metal before it opens again. Minna looks like a seventy-five-year-old Mother Earth, with papery skin that’s folded into itself and long white hair that falls in rolling waves to her elbows.
“Sorry I didn’t call,” I say.
“The funeral,” she says, and pulls me inside. “I saw it on the news this morning. They had a reporter outside the damn church in the middle of the thing, if you can believe it. Girl was dressed like a stripper. Now sit,” she commands, guiding me to her velvet eggplant settee.
I lean into the cushions while Minna makes mint tea. Her apartment is small, with vaulted ceilings and sliding glass doors that look over what she calls “the fake lake.” The furniture is so old that it’s stylish again—dark wood, rich fabrics, curved lines. There are picture frames everywhere, all holding stock images of anonymous smiling couples. The walls used to be white, but before school started this year, she had me paint them a deep, almost-red pink. I don’t think the staff was too happy about it, but no one said anything. Don’t fuck with Miss Minna is practically the national anthem around here.
Minna sets two mugs next to the Scrabble board that has a permanent place on the coffee table, then settles into the tufted armchair across from me.
“Want to talk about it?” she asks.
“Not really.”
“Want to play Dirty Scrabble?”
I shrug.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She watches me while she divides the tiles. “How’s Wil?”
After our third week together, Minna knew everything there was to know about Wil Hines. She says small talk is for small people.
“I ran into Wil’s dad. At Publix, just a few hours before.” A shiver worms down my spine. “He told me to work it out with Wil. To fix it before we graduated.”
“And?” Minna raises her eyebrows, two silvery crescents, and nods toward the board. “If you’re not going to take your turn, I’ll take it for you.”
I nudge my tiles around the board. “And I want to. But I just don’t want to be one of the hundreds of kids who decide to be there for him now that his dad is dead.”
She shakes her head. “Tragedy is a powerful magnetic force. It either draws people in or pushes people away. After a while, the drama will die down, and Wil will see who’s left beside him.”