“It makes sense.” Hailey studied the dark, desperate scratches undernever,ever. “Or it did before you knew he’d passed away. It made as much sense as anything.” She handed Mack the room service menu, and once he’d chosen, she called in their order. Mack was on his phone by the time she’d hung up.
“What are you doing?”
He turned his screen around to show her. He had pulled up his father’s obituary in theDaytona Beach News-Journal. It was a bare-bones write-up of the life of Warner T Evers and gave no hint of the man’s background apart from “he is survived by one son.”
“I looked for that and couldn’t find it,” Hailey admitted.
“I found it last week. It was way down in the Google search results.”
“Right.”
“There’s no photo with the obit though.”
“So?”
“So what if he’s not really dead?”
“Oh, Mack.” Hailey felt as sorry for him then as she had by his mother’s bedside.
“Just hear me out. What if he’s not dead, what if he faked it? What if he faked his own death so he could start over?”
“He’s like eighty, Mack,” Hailey said gently. “That’s a little late in life for that kind of thing, isn’t it?”
“Or okay, if heisdead, what if he set up some kind of thing where somebody else pays us for him? On his behalf, I mean? I know it sounds crazy, but I just don’t know anyone else rich enough to be sending us money out of nowhere, do you?”
“No.”
“And I don’t know, maybe Irene Weigandisoverseeing it. Maybe she’s not telling me the whole truth—”
“Why would she change up how she pays for things? She could just keep paying for your mom the way she always does.”
“I don’t know, I don’tknow! A way to hand off the money maybe, since she’s getting old. But those checkshaveto be tied to my dad somehow. Why would anyone else just send us a bunch of money?”
Hailey couldn’t think of an answer, at least not one that she was ready to voice out loud. David Rainierwasthere, though, sipping his whiskey cocktail in the dark corners of her almost-subconscious. Was it possible? Had the timing been right? That first check that Mack had deposited, when exactly had it come? She would ask him, later. Because David Rainier did owe her, no matter how much he hated his wife, and he was very,veryrich. Though she suspected that even he might have been shocked at the bill for their room service order.
16.
Feel free to disagree with me, but I think that most people find comfort in having big decisions taken out of their hands, even if they wouldn’t admit to it.
Take my mother, for example. The woman who could never decide on anything. Not where she wanted to live, not whether to leave my father, not could-she-or-couldn’t-she face sending her sweet baby off to boarding school. (She could, it turned out.) This indecision was written into her very person—the hand-wringing, the shallow breathing, the inability to get herself dressed for a night on the town. Even the small things like whether or not she felt up to eating dinner with us—whether she could bear the company of her own family on any given day—were best left for someone else to decide.
And it can be awfully hard work being that someone else. It’s a thankless job being responsible for someone so listless and ephemeral, and so I really sympathized with my father the time I caught him standing over Mother’s dressing table with his hands on her neck, telling her to start acting like a living, breathing human being or, by God, he would make sure she wasn’t one. Maybe he was a little rough about it, maybe his methods were a little heavy-handed (get it?!), but he got her attention. Sometimes people need that kind of intervention, is all I’m saying. It keeps life moving forward.
I’ve solved the mystery of the Evanses’ lawn ornaments, by the way. Mack and Hailey haven’t been around this week, and in their absence three goats have appeared at their house: one new one, made out of cheap plastic, on the lawn by the side gate, and two old ones, inside taking care of the grandkids.
17.
Mack
Somehow Hailey had fixated on the figure of $12,000. Mack had no idea what she was basing this on, whether she remembered that obscure detail from when they’d built the house, or whether it was just a nice shocking number. Pammy and Eddie Byers looked pretty shocked.
“Now, Hailey, let’s not get carried away. I could refinish that floor myself—”
“It’s sandalwood, Dad. You can’t just slap a coat of paint down. Oh my God,oh my God, this is just bare wood now. What did you use on it?”
“Just Mr. Clean.” Hailey’s mother was on the verge of tears. “And a few drops of bleach, to take away the urine smell. You have to do that so they don’t piddle in the same place again—”
“Why the hell was he peeing in the house? Did you let him out?”
