Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 03 - When the Carny Comes to Town (29 page)

A woman about my age said she was struggling to come to terms with the fact that her sister, who she said drank and used pot, ran her car into a tree a couple months ago and died.  “What else could I have done?” she kept asking.

Maybe stolen her keys?
noticed that while someone handed her a tissue no one really answered her question. 

“For me, it’s about choices,” Scoobie was saying.  “I’m trying really hard to choose to look ahead, not back.  I’m finding it,” he paused, “a lot harder right now. 

Look ahead.
  I intended to look ahead to get people to understand why I can’t leave loose ends alone, or at least get them to stop being mad at me when I try to find out something. 

There was a white board at the front of the room and I read it.

Enlightening darkness unwinds

The power of light reminds

Pain offers no clear berth

Gratitude is rebirth

Scoobie

Gratitude is rebirth.  Ok, my choice was to be mad that that Scoobie and George brought me here, but to be grateful they cared enough to do it.  Tomorrow I’d figure how to get even.  Tomorrow I’d show them I didn’t need to be here.

Or maybe I’d come back.

**********************************************************

If you would like to read the rest of Scoobie’s poem, finished as he healed, take a look.

Breakfast Table Cordial

As she undid the laces

Of her fragile mental health

Revealing to him places

Where she’d never been herself

Breakfast table cordial

Stage direction for the scene

Both being very careful

To not say what they mean

Struggling through the mourning

Of the night before

Juggling never-heeded warnings

From those who know the score

Much too close for comfort

In this game of truth or dare

A telephone-booth apartment

May be to blame, who really cares

Might as well admit it

This has been a big mistake

Fight like hell to fit it

But they knew it was a fake

Scoobie’s ghost writer is real-world poet James W. Larkin.

*     *     *     *     *

Read all the
book
s
in the Jolie Gentil cozy mystery series —

Appraisal for Murder

Rekindling Motives

When the Carny Comes to Town
.

Elaine L. Orr has written fiction and nonfiction for many years and recently introduced the Jolie Gentil cozy mystery series.  She grew up in Maryland and moved to the Midwest in 1994.  After working for public and private sector employers, she now writes full-time.  She and her husband, Jim Larkin, live in Indiana.

www.elaineorr.com