Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [80]
She hung up the phone and set it, facedown, in the middle of the table. “They took his body to the medical examiner’s office. There’s going to be an autopsy, because it was . . .” She paused, looking flustered for the first time, glancing at her notes. “Because he didn’t die in a hospital, I guess, so there wasn’t a doctor there. That’s what they have to do.”
“He overdosed.” My voice was flat. Kimmie got up from the table and stood behind me, one hand resting lightly on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly.
“Can you . . .” My voice was almost inaudible. I could barely get the words out. “Will you come with me?”
She answered instantly, as if nothing else were even possible. “Of course I will,” she said.
• • •
Kimmie gave me the window seat on the plane. I leaned the top of my head against the glass and stared out at the sky. All through the ride, she kept giving me things—a novel, a honey-nut granola bar, a bottle of water, tissues. I read, or tried to; I ate and drank what she gave me; I cried, wiping my eyes with my sleeve; and every once in a while I’d manage to tell her something about my dad: how he’d taken me horseback riding once after I’d seen International Velvet on TV, how proud he’d been when I’d gotten into Princeton. Kimmie listened quietly, nodding. “You must have loved him very much,” she said. For a while, when no one was looking, she held my hand.
It was getting dark when we landed in Pittsburgh. My mother picked us up, her eyes red, her hair still frizzy, tucked into its morning ponytail. “There’s soup and frozen pizza if you’re hungry, and, Jules, I put the air mattress in your room, and there’s fresh sheets...”
“We’ll be fine.”
“Did Greg get in touch?” my mother asked.
“He texted.” My brother had, indeed, sent a message consisting of two words: NOT SURPRISED. For Greg, our father had died a long time ago ... probably the night he’d stolen Greg’s prized possession, a baseball signed by Reggie Jackson, and sold it. Since then Greg seemed to have decided, maybe unconsciously, that the easiest thing for him to do was to simply hate our father, to forget that, once, he’d been a good dad.
“I’m glad you’ve got such a good friend,” my mother whispered after Kimmie carried our bags up the stairs, slipping quietly out of the room to give the two of us time together. I didn’t answer, didn’t even think to wonder if she suspected Kimmie was more than that.
Upstairs, Kimmie and I took turns in the shower, then had a funny little fight about which one of us should take the air mattress. Finally, I lay down on my bed and Kimmie lay down beside me, fitting her body against mine. I buried my face in the silken net of her hair, and that was how I slept.
The next morning, my mother drove us to the Hoffman Funeral Home, then sat outside waiting in her car. “I could come in,” she’d offered, her voice tentative, and I told her what she expected to hear: “Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”
The office floor was thickly carpeted; the chairs were plush and padded. There was a pitcher of ice water on the sideboard, a metal urn of coffee, and a pair of cut-glass decanters, one with amber liquid, the other with something clear.
Monday morning, I told the Hoffman who was helping us, a middle-aged, round-faced man who wore a sober gray suit and a small, sympathetic smile. I told him I would bring clothes for my dad to wear, that the coffin would be closed, that my mother should get the flag that would drape the coffin, and I’d get the bullet casings from the gun salute. (“As a remembrance,” Mr. Hoffman said, and I’d nodded, wondering briefly what I was supposed to do with spent shell casings. Put them in a candy dish? String them on a length of silk thread and wear them as a necklace? Offer them to Rita, who I’d have to deal with soon?)
There was a display room, where I picked out a simple coffin—it was one of the least expensive, and still more than two