Judy:Thirty-five dollars wasn’t nothing back then!
Dee:You’re only saying that because you remember 1948 better than Betty and me.
Judy:I was only three years old.
Dee:Tell it to Truman.
“Oh,” I said softly, scrolling back up to make sure I was understanding everything right.
“What?” Sunny had crept around the bed and was trying to stare at my phone, foiled as always by the privacy screen. I could feel the warmth of her near my shoulder and I wanted to turn and crush her into my chest. I wanted to run out the door and hide in my shower until my throat stopped hurting.
But I needed to be a good screenplay detective right now, and this development was too big to let myFeelingsget in the way.
“The mailman’s wife?” I said, scrolling back through the texts to show Sunny the pension voucher. “She was the soldier’s wife before that. She was married to Ronald Bushey, he died, and then a few years later, she shows up as Bernice Bushey Dugan,wife of the very same mailman who was led to her door by an angel.”
Sunny blinked at me, her mouth in a delicious O that had blood pooling in inconvenient areas of my body. “She marriedthe mailman?”
My phone buzzed again and I looked away from Sunny’s dangerous mouth. “Apparently,” I said, paraphrasing the texts coming in, “she stayed in the area after he died too. They were able to find a picture of her in a Vermont newspaper from two years ago. She was featured in an article about whether retirement communities should allow vaping. Bernice is pro vaping, by the way.”
“Never change, Bernice!” Sunny cheered.
“It was a retirement community in a town called Duck’s Crossing.” I wrinkled my forehead and looked up at Sunny. “I’ve never heard of Duck’s Crossing.”
“And you’re such an expert on northern Vermont too,” Sunny remarked, grabbing her own phone from the other side of the bed. She tapped the screen a few times and then showed me a map. “It’s only an hour away.”
That was indeed what the maps app said, although the road there was twisty, and even on the app, it looked alarmingly skinny. The kind of skinny that made me think passing a semitruck at speed would require a paper bag to breathe in and maybe a new pair of pants.
I looked outside, where darker gray clouds were hovering on the horizon. “It’s supposed to snow this afternoon...” I started.
I didn’t want to stay here all day and think about how Sunny wanted me to date other people. I didn’t want to mope around my studio, writing doleful lyrics about the girl upstairs.
A road trip with Sunny to see a hundred-year-old vaper sounded much better. Semitrucks and all.
“But if we move fast, we could beat the snow,” I said confidently.
Sunny was already shoving her feet into her boots. “To the widow we go!” she exclaimed with her usual dash and brio, and for just that moment, it was like this morning had never happened, and we could pretend that the future was nothing but sex and Christmas mysteries and headbutts from Mr.Tumnus.
The road was indeed skinny, and passing semitrucks on one side while the other side was a steep drop into the trees wasunpleasant, especially in the truck, whose steering was about as subtle as the steering on a replica pirate ship.
“You’re too tense,” Sunny observed. She had one leg tucked under her and was partly facing me. In her lap was a bag of gummy bears, and whenever I opened my mouth, she would place a non-yellow gummy bear on my tongue so I could keep my eyes on the road. Teamwork made the dream work and all that.
“You know,” she mused, “it’s far more likely that we’ll be killed by a moose than a truck.”
“What.”
I saw her nod sagely out of the corner of my eye. “You can’t see their eyes shine in the dark like you can with deer because they’re too tall. That’s also what makes them so deadly—their moosely bodies are at the same height as a windshield. And then—BAM!” She smacked her palm with her other hand, making me jump. “Instant death!”
“I’m much less tense now, thank you.”
In response, she pushed another gummy bear between my lips. Which did make me feel a little better.
“Do you think Bernice is going to think we’re bananaballs?” Sunny asked after a minute. “Showing up out of nowhere to shake her down for an eighty-year-old story?”
I mulled. At least as much as one couldmullwhile white-knuckling a mostly useless steering wheel. “Even if she thinks we’re bananaballs, she might still welcome the chance to talk about her husband. Sometimes, stories bring the people we’ve lost back to us, you know? Even if it’s just for a few minutes, even if it’s only for one. It could be a kind of gift, getting to tell someone. Getting to remember out loud.”
I could feel her looking at me. “Is that how you feel about Brooklyn?” she asked. Her voice was careful. “Like it’s a gift to tell stories about her?”
A strange feeling pooled behind my chest, cold and metallic. It was the same feeling I’d had in dreams where I’d walked onto a stage and realized I was supposed to perform a brand-new song I didn’t know the words to.
