بخش 04 - فصل 18

18 After the remembrances and a moment of silent reflection (“to use as you wish”), the clergyman asks the Lord to bless them and keep them and give them peace. Clothes

rustle; programs are stowed in purses and jacket pockets. Holly seems fine until she’s halfway up the aisle, but then her knees buckle. Hodges darts forward with surprising speed for a big man and catches her beneath her arms before she can go down. Her eyes roll up and for a moment she’s on the verge of a full-fledged swoon. Then they come back into

place and into focus. She sees Hodges and smiles weakly. “Holly, stop that!” her mother says sternly, as if her daughter has uttered some jocose and inappropriate profanity instead of almost fainting. Hodges thinks what a pleasure it would be to backhand Auntie C right across her thickly powdered

chops. Might wake her up, he

thinks.

“I’m okay, Mother,” Holly

says. Then, to Hodges: “Thank

you.”

He says, “Did you eat any

breakfast, Holly?”

“She had oatmeal,” Aunt

Charlotte announces. “With

butter and brown sugar. I

made it myself. You’re quite

the

attention-getter

sometimes, aren’t you, Holly?” She turns to Janey. “Please don’t linger, dear. Henry’s useless at things like this, and I can’t hostess all these people on my own.” Janey takes Hodges’s arm. “I’d never expect you to.” Aunt Charlotte gives her a pinched smile. Janey’s smile in return is brilliant, and Hodges decides that her decision to

turn over half of her inherited loot is equally brilliant. Once that happens, she will never have to see this unpleasant woman again. She won’t even have to take her calls. The mourners emerge into the sunshine. On the front walk there’s chatter of the wasn’t-it-a-lovely-service sort, and then people begin walking around to the parking lot in

back. Uncle Henry and Aunt Charlotte do so with Holly between them. Hodges and Janey follow along. As they reach the back of the mortuary, Holly suddenly slips free of her minders and wheels around to Hodges and Janey. “Let me ride with you. I want to ride with you.” Aunt Charlotte, lips thinned almost to nothing,

looms up behind her daughter. “I’ve had just about enough of your gasps and vapors for one day, miss.” Holly ignores her. She seizes one of Hodges’s hands in a grip that’s icy. “Please. Please.” “It’s fine with me,” Hodges says, “if Janey doesn’t m–” Aunt Charlotte begins to sob. The sound is unlovely, the

hoarse cries of a crow in a cornfield. Hodges remembers her bending over Mrs. Wharton, kissing her cold lips, and a sudden unpleasant possibility comes to him. He misjudged Olivia; he may have misjudged Charlotte Gibney as well. There’s more to people than their surfaces, after all. “Holly, you don’t even know this man!”

Janey puts a much warmer hand on Hodges’s wrist. “Why don’t you go with Charlotte and Henry, Bill? There’s plenty of room. You can ride in back with Holly.” She shifts her attention to her cousin. “Would that be all right?” “Yes!” Holly is still gripping Hodges’s hand. “That would be good!”

Janey turns to her uncle. “Okay with you?” “Sure.” He gives Holly a jovial pat on the shoulder. “The more the merrier.” “That’s right, give her plenty of attention,” Aunt Charlotte says. “It’s what she likes. Isn’t it, Holly?” She starts for the parking lot without waiting for a reply,

heels clacking a Morse code message of outrage. Hodges looks at Janey. “What about my car?” “I’ll drive it. Hand over the keys.” And when he does: “There’s just one other thing I need.” “Yeah?” She plucks the fedora from his head, puts it on her own, and gives it the correct

insouciant dip over her left eyebrow. She wrinkles her nose at him and says, “Yeah.”