I cast around desperately for another right thing to say, but all I could come up with was what she was prepared to hear so many times that day that it had already been rendered meaningless. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Andora.” I stepped forward, timidly, wondering if I should offer her a hug. But Mrs. Andora put up her hand. Stop. Don’t come any closer.
“You were there,” Mrs. Andora said, amazed, as though just realizing this for herself, as though she hadn’t heard my worthless platitude at all. “She got to be with someone she loved at the end of her life. Someone who didn’t care about the smell or the sound of it.” She looked right at me, and I saw that the light was indeed on in her eyes. That she had heard me say I was sorry, and she was doing her best to forgive me. “It should have been me. But at least it was you. So it’s okay, Pamela.”
* * *
Most people don’t know that Denise and Robbie are buried in the same graveyard, that their funerals took place just one cool, muggy day apart in Jacksonville, Florida. The new round-shaped Holiday Inn in San Marco offered the press a promotional deal—two nights for the price of one. I tripped over a camera cord as I left Denise behind, her steel casket kept dry under a thorny layer of single roses.
“At least the rain held off until the last few minutes,” Brian said as we made our way back to the car.
“At least,” I agreed flatly. Some parts of her funeral were easier than I’d imagined, but the ones that were worse had left me pulverized. The members of The House had gathered around Denise and sang to her as she was lowered into the ground, a song Denise had learned as a pledge, the song we were all meant to sing at graduation and at one another’s weddings. I couldn’t stop thinking about the day our pledge class met in one of the rehearsal rooms at the new Ruby Diamond Concert Hall to practice. The song opened and ended with a solo, and Denise had volunteered herself for the job, boasting about her beautiful singing voice. We all readied for a moving performance and then we practically fell to our knees with laughter when Denise opened her mouth and brayed the opening verse. Who told you that you could sing? We were gasping, tears streaming down our faces, while Denise stared at us, confused. Everyone! she’d cried, at which we became inconsolable. Well, they lied, someone managed to choke out, and Denise flipped her the bird, but she was laughing too. And I was realizing that any time I wanted to visit Denise in my mind, I would be looking at her and thinking, You’re going to die soon, and I wouldn’t want to see her anymore. My memories of Denise made me feel like I was keeping a terrible secret from her.
I heard my name, and Brian grabbed my hand protectively, his eye on the reporters who had broken away from their camera crews at the gravesite, pretending to head back to their cars when, really, they were eavesdropping, encroaching, paring their vicious angles.
“Pamela,” Tina wheezed. She’d had to run to catch up to me. Peripherally, I noticed she was carrying a thick stack of the funeral programs, which I did think was odd.
“I didn’t realize you were here,” I said stiffly. I was acutely aware of the way Brian was looking at Tina, then at me, then back at Tina, like he was owed an explanation about who she was and how I knew her. Anything I said would only invite some kind of patronizing reminder that it wasn’t my job to investigate a double homicide; that I needed to sit back and relax and trust the police would find the person who’d put Denise into the ground seventy years too soon. Whenever he said some version of this to me, Brian always sounded a touch irritated. Why did I have to insist on making everything so much more difficult than it needed to be?
“You haven’t returned any of my calls,” she said, matching my stride so that I was stuck between her and Brian, whose neck had assumed an ostrich-like quality. His face bowed toward Tina with an expression I can only describe as territorial. How dare this beautiful woman in the hat （that day a black fedora, bordering on a gag at that point） speak to me like we’d known each other ten years and not ten seconds?
“I’ve had a lot on my plate,” I said, eyes straight ahead. Later, there would be a picture in one of the newspapers of the crowd departing the funeral, and I would see that both Tina and Brian were turned toward me expectantly, like I was the deciding vote on a polarizing issue, which in some ways I was.
I was wary of Tina after my conversation with Sheriff Cruso. I’d advise you not to spend time alone with the woman, Pamela. I’d advise you not to spend any time with her at all, for your own safety.