I touched the ends self-consciously. “I found an old box under the sink.”
“I guessed.” She regarded me in the old way, like my best friend, intuiting all the things I couldn’t find words for. “I’m so sorry about your dad. How’s Maddie holding up?”
“Oh.” I shrugged. “You know Mom.”
And that was the thing. She did. She knewme. She squeezed my arm. “You let me know if you need anything. Or if she does.”
I glanced toward the coffee service. Somehow Joe had persuaded my mother to sit down in one of the basement’s molded plastic chairs, a paper plate of cookies on her knee, a glass of water at her elbow.
“You want a drink?” I asked abruptly.
“I can’t,” Daanis said with regret.
Right. No alcohol. “I meant…” I flapped my hand toward the big silver urns. “Coffee? Tea? Water?”
“I have to pee every five minutes as it is.” Daanis smiled in apology. “Plus, I promised Zack I’d be home in time to kiss Rose good night.”
“Okay. Well.” I stood there, feeling oddly displaced. “Thanks for coming.”
“I love you, too,” Daanis said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
At the funeral.
I swallowed all the things I hadn’t managed to say. “See you.”
I watched her go, bereft. We didn’t even hug goodbye. Squaring my shoulders, I went to take over the role of Comforter-in-Chief.
Joe glanced over at my approach, his gaze snagging briefly on my hair.
I raised my chin, daring him to say something snarky.
“You need to help Joe,” my mother said. “He told me I’m officially off duty.”
“And she listened to you?” I asked him.
Our eyes met. A corner of his mouth curved inacknowledgment. In recognition. It was eerily like the look I’d shared with Daanis, only different, because she was my best friend for life, and he was my main rival for my father’s attention and my mother’s affection.
“She listened to reason,” he said.
Jerk.
“Joe. Maddie.” Deputy Chief Petrovski, the salt-and-pepper-haired head of the island’s first responders, nodded to me before turning to my mother. “Sure am sorry about Rob.”
“You did what you could, Bruno,” Mom said.
“We came as soon as Joe called. If we coulda gotten him on the plane…But he was already gone.”
“Wait.” My stomach hollowed. “Joe was with Dad? When he died?”
Chief Petrovski shuffled his feet.
“We were on a job together,” Joe said, when no one else spoke. “Rotten fascia board.”
“I thought…” My gaze cut to my mother. “You said it was Dad’s heart.”
“It was.”
Chief Petrovski cleared his throat. “Near as we can tell, he had a cardiac event on the roof before he fell.”
