The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [170]
In the lobby, the receptionist with the fat made-up face raised a manicured hand to stop Annie from heading to the elevator. But this time Annie had a registered name to throw her. “I’m here,” she said, “to see my father, Coach Ronny Buchstabe.”
To her surprise, Miss Napp’s tight features immediately crumpled like an old jack-o-lantern. “Coach Ronny Buchstabe?” Her voice shook. “That’s who your daddy was? Coach Ronny?”
“Yes, that’s right. Is there some problem?” Annie wondered if her father had been arrested, despite Dan’s assurances that the case had been dropped. “And I’d like to speak with Dr. Parker.”
“Doctor who?”
“My father’s doctor, Dr. Tom Parker.”
“I’m not familiar with that name. But your father…You don’t know about him?”
“Know what?”
The receptionist looked strangely sympathetic, even stretching out a plump hand to pat Annie’s. “No one’s told you?”
Alarmed but not wanting to give anything away, Annie pulled her hand back to grip the curved edge of the counter. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He passed away. Passed away?” Miss Napp put an interrogatory glide on the news as if that would help. “Your daddy?”
Annie’s lips and tongue felt heavy. “Passed away?”
“Coach Buchstabe died in his sleep yesterday. I’m so sorry, honey.”
“…Coach Ronny Buchstabe? Room 540?”
The receptionist nodded sadly.
A curious thud at Annie’s heart moved her back a step. Miss Napp was saying something more but she couldn’t understand it. Words bounced around crazily as bingo balls, refusing to spell anything meaningful. How could her father die overnight?
Waiting for Miss Napp to stop talking, she bent down and retied the laces of her running shoes, remembering her father’s claim that if it hadn’t been for him, she couldn’t have tied her shoelaces, couldn’t have brushed her teeth, couldn’t have walked, talked, read, written…couldn’t have, what? Couldn’t have loved? Was that possibly true?
Miss Napp was leaning forward sympathetically. “I guess there’s some problem between you and your siblings?”
Hope stung Annie. “My siblings?”
The receptionist’s face bobbed. “I know y’all have been expecting this for months and months, still it’s always a shock. And why one of your brothers or sisters didn’t manage to reach you before now is anybody’s guess but theirs I guess. Did you leave town or something?”
Annie looked around as if these unfamiliar brothers and sisters might be standing behind her. “Where are they?”
The receptionist glared at her watch. “Honey, they’re getting ready for the family service right this minute. Not the one back in Tallahassee. But your big sister Jackie told me she already had this private family service ready to go for the past week; I mean, knowing it was only a matter of, well, days with your daddy. Jackie made the final plans yesterday and they’re already at Rest Eternal.”
From a distance, Annie heard herself stupidly repeating, “Jackie made the plans…” She was thinking that, okay, it was remotely possible that her father had another daughter, older than Annie, whom he’d named Jackie, for himself. Yet hadn’t he been under twenty-one when Annie herself was born?
Indignation at the precipitous Jackie led Miss Napp to pour Annie a paper cup of water from a pitcher beside her. “She didn’t tell you about Rest Eternal? Why, this is just awful! I just don’t even believe this!”
Annie drank the water. “You said he had a stroke? But I thought his heart was fine. He was young.”
“To the loved ones, any age is young.” The receptionist leaned so far forward that her large breasts rested on the countertop.
Annie asked if she could look at her father’s room. Miss Napp hesitated a long time, glanced at her computer and her phone and the lobby, then suddenly agreed.
Room 540 was empty, its bed stripped to the mattress. Annie looked inside the metal drawers of the bedside table. There was nothing