Page 1

Chapter one

Flowers

Paul

The bench outside the hospital is metal, painted green, and warmer than it ought to be.

That’s the first thing I know after Renny dies. Not the shape of the doctor’s mouth when she said the words. Not Jessica’s voice on the phone when I called her. Not the exact minute, though I’m sure someone told me or wrote it down or expected me to care.

The bench is warm. The sun is bright. A bird somewhere in the ornamental tree beside the drop-off lane is making a noise like birdie-birdie-birdie.

I sit with both hands folded between my knees and stare at a cigarette butt near my shoe. It’s been flattened into the concrete, the paper split open, tobacco scattered in a little brown fan.

There’s no smoking this close to the entrance. I don’t know why that sticks in my head.

The automatic doors open and close. Open and close. Every time they part, a brief wash of cold air slips out and dies at my feet.

Everything continues. That feels offensive.

I want someone to stop it. Not forever, just long enough to acknowledge that a thing has happened. A large thing. A life-sized thing.

This morning he was here.

Now he isn’t.

A nurse I recognize comes through the doors and looks in my direction. For one disorienting second, I think she’s looking for me. That someone has misunderstood and Renny is upstairs, annoyed, asking why no one has brought him his phone.

But she looks past me and waves at a man in a pickup truck.

I lower my eyes to my shoes. A scuff on the left one. I should have noticed it when I put them on. I should have worn different shoes, though I’m not sure what the correct footwear is for becoming a widower in the middle of a Saturday.

A car pulls up too fast, brakes squealing softly. The door opens before the car has fully settled. Jessica gets out wearing white jeans and the expression she uses when something is already bad and she’s decided she’s not allowed to make it worse with true emotion.

My sister is eight years older than I am, which means she’s been preparing for disaster longer.

She leaves her car at an angle in the drop-off lane and walks straight toward me. A security guard near the doors notices, then takes one look at her face and finds something else interesting.

“Paul.”

I look up.

She stops a few feet away. Her sunglasses are pushed on top of her head, holding back hair that has mostly escaped whatever she did to it this morning. The thought that she had a whole day ahead of her before my phone call makes me suddenly sorry.

“I parked badly,” she says.

“I noticed.”

“Good. Then you’re still in there.”

For a second, she stands there with her purse hooked in the crook of her elbow. Then she sits beside me. Not too close. Close enough that I can feel the shift in the metal.

She doesn’t touch me right away.

I appreciate that more than I can say.

birdie-birdie-birdie

Jessica looks up. “That bird needs to fuck off.”