“Hello, I’m looking for Alison O’Conner?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“My name is Francis Lefler. I’m the director of Lefler Funeral Home in Woodstock, New York. I understand you wanted to speak with me about making final arrangements for Paul Deegan?”
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks for getting back to me.”
I’d called the funeral home this morning and spoken to a nice young woman who asked questions I didn’t know how to answer; clearly sensing it wasn’t going well, she’d offered to have the director call me back to make arrangements.
“If you have a few minutes, we could go over some things.”
“Of course,” I said, sitting back down at the table in the food court.
“Do you know what Mr. Deegan’s wishes were? Burial or cremation?”
“Um… I’m afraid I don’t know.”
“Okay. We’ll come back to that. What sort of service are you thinking of? Did he have a religious affiliation?”
“I—I have no idea. I’m sorry. I can ask my mother, but she’s not always in a clear state these days.”
There was silence on the other end. At last he said, “There isn’t any family?”
“I don’t think so. Not that he was in contact with, anyway.” I repeatedthe words I’d heard, but the truth was, I didn’t know. What if he did have family somewhere, someone who would want to know he was gone?
“Have you found a will? Sometimes people keep a final-arrangements document with their will and advance directive.”
“I—” I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t looked. “I haven’t yet, no.” He was quiet again.
I knew what I had to do. It filled me with absolute dread, but I knew I had no choice. There was no one else to do it.
“Mr. Lefler, I apologize for not having answers for you. But I’ll get them. Give me a couple days and I’ll do my best to track down any family, look through Paul’s papers.” I promised to call him by Tuesday with answers to his questions.
The idea of going back to Woodstock, to the house I grew up in, hit me like jumping into a pool of ice water. My jaw clenched and I shivered.
When was the last time I had been there?
I’d gone home briefly the summer between boarding school and college, packed up a few things, then driven up to Vermont, where I’d gotten a summer job at an art camp for little kids.
That was the last time I’d set foot in the house. The place had felt more unfamiliar and cold than ever, and wherever I went, I felt like the house was watching me warily, breathing me in. It was as if the house and my mother had become one all-encompassing entity. My mother and I had avoided each other, creeping around the dark, shadowy rooms like two strangers. I remembered that I’d carried pepper spray and my cell phone with me everywhere I went, and slept with the door locked and my desk chair jammed under the knob. I was supposed to stay for a week. I lasted only one night. I spent every college break after that working, staying at first with friends and their normal families, and later in my own apartment. I had no intention of ever going back to that gray colonial and the pieces of my past it held.
When Mark and the kids and I visited, we stayed at a nice inn in Woodstock and never set foot near the house.
But I could do this.
I was a rational adult. And it was only a house, not a monster looming. Surely I’d get there and find nothing scary: just dusty memories hiding in the corners.
Strangely, I felt the house pulling me now, almost daring me to come back. Part of me wanted to see it again, sure that once I set foot inside, I would see it was just a house and had no power over me, not anymore.
I started taking a mental inventory of things I would need to do. I was good at lists, thanks to lessons gleaned from my husband, who was a master of organization. I did them well. I needed to arrange for someone to be with my mother for the day, maybe Teresa or Janice or even Penny. If none of them could make it, Mark could take a day off and stay home. I’d get the keys to the Woodstock house from my mother. I’d drive there and check on the state of things. Was there still a housekeeper who came once a week? Paul had said he’d been cleaning it out, closing it up. How far had he gotten? Were there things that needed tending? Plants that needed watering? Mail to be collected? Bills to be paid?
I’d search the carriage house Paul had lived in, looking for any information about possible family members, last wishes, a will. And while I was there, I’d look for other clues too.
Clues about my mother, about Azha, about what, if anything, Paul really knew.
TWENTY-FIVE
HOW WAS SHOPPING?” MARKasked when I got home. He’d jumped up from the couch to greet me. The Hallmark Channel was on, playing one of his much-loved Christmas movies. A man and a woman were sipping hot cocoa in a park full of fake snow. I was sure I recognized the woman from some long-ago, nearly forgotten TV show.
