The Dearly Departed (10 page)

O
verheard at the filling station by a jittery teenager buying nacho chips and Dr Pepper: A man had died; a man named Flynn or Fin, who lived alone on Boot Lake.

The teenager had no money for gas and wasn't going to pull any more stunts in this lifetime. “Boot Lake?” he asked the cashier. “I used to swim there. How far is it from here?”

“As the crow flies? Two miles. But you have to get back on 12A again, then west on Old Baptist Road, past the gravel pit.”

“Right,” said the kid. “Now I remember.”

FINN
glowed white in the dark, stenciled on the black mailbox at the head of a dirt driveway. No lights, no signs of life. He'd hide the truck first thing in the morning. No big deal. He'd switch plates first—he was in New Hampshire now, Live Free or Die—and find an empty garage, a normal place, like it belonged to some old couple who only took it out for church. He nosed the Ford down the narrow road through scrubby bushes. It was a smaller cabin than he expected from the long private driveway, but nicer than you'd think for a dead guy who lived alone. New paint on the trim, light, maybe yellow. The siding at night was dark, stained by weather, wet-cigar brown. He found the spare key under a chunk of pink granite, sitting like a stool pigeon next to the door. You're not breaking in when you use a key, he told himself. You're freeloading. Taking shelter. Resting. Like Goldilocks. He wouldn't steal anything, except maybe eat what was in the refrigerator. The guy was dead. He wouldn't mind. He could think, borrow some clothes, maybe call Tiff.

Because he wasn't breaking and entering, he'd leave things neat. He'd make the bed and wash his dishes. He could say if they found him, “Look—I didn't take nothin'. There's your TV, your computer, your VCR, your CD player, your microwave oven. I was just taking shelter. If I was going to steal anything, I'd have done it by now.”

Shower. Shave. Wipe out the sink after. Hope the guy had disposable razors; too fucking creepy to shave with a dead guy's blade. Fish after sundown. Deep-six the gun. Watch TV. Hope the guy had cable.

Find out if anyone had I.D.'d him, and if the cop had died.

E
mily Ann diagnosed Fletcher's bad mood on the flight as situational depression, richly deserved.

“Would you like to talk about your dad?” she tried.

“Absent father, lousy husband,” he snapped.

Emily Ann didn't snap back. A man on his way to his father's funeral deserved some latitude. “Do you think,” she began carefully, “that it's doubly hard for you because of his deficiencies? Because you held out hope that someday you might become closer—like maybe when you had children of your own—but now that dream is lost, so it's all the more painful?”

Fletcher's lip curled. His stare was more disdainful than usual. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I'm trying to be compassionate,” she said. “I'm trying to provide a shoulder to cry on.”

He shrank a few inches from the armrest between them. “I had no illusions about him showing any interest in me—none—let alone in my eventual children.”

Emily Ann's voice brightened. “Do you think about having children? I mean, sometime in the future?”

“Way, way in the future.” He reached inside his jacket for his sunglasses and put them on.

Emily Ann and Fletcher were the lone passengers on the Big John jet, its fuselage painted a brash cranberry and pumpkin, winged bicycles gilded on its tail, cream-colored leather and burled walnut within. Fletcher had declined Mr. Grandjean's first offer of his pilot and his plane.

“But Emily Ann's going with you,” he had reminded Fletcher.

“Precisely. It feeds the critics. They love to hate the family's deep pockets. They'll make too much of it.”

But Emily Ann hadn't traveled by public transportation since her field hockey away games at Lawrenceville, and she wasn't going to start now. Let the Tommy d'Apuzzos of the world take potshots at her corporate perks. This was not campaigning; this was an emergency—something close to a humanitarian airlift. Besides, the Grandjeans had earned these prerogatives: Claude Grandjean had come to America in—well, not exactly steerage, but in an interior cabin, and had then inhaled mustard gas for his adopted country in World War One.

“If we drive,” she had pointed out, “we'd have to leave before dawn to make the funeral. And if we're going by air, why in the world would we want to fly with strangers?”

“This time you were right,” Fletcher conceded. He unbuckled his seat belt and walked to the stainless-steel galley. Emily Ann heard the sound of cupboards opening and closing, then the click of the refrigerator latch.

“There's dried fruit and pretzels,” she called.

“Any real food?”

Emily Ann smiled. “Check the warming oven, next to the Poland Spring dispenser.”

He came back down the aisle, peering into a shopping bag of McDonald's take-out. “Hash browns!” he exclaimed. “And it looks like one of everything. Did you get extra ketchup?”

“Bret did.”

“Who's Bret?”

“The co-pilot. I introduced you. He stopped on his way to the airport.”

“Good man,” said Fletcher, just before his teeth sank into a half-wrapped sausage biscuit. He climbed over her legs and dropped into his seat.

“It was my idea,” said Emily Ann.

“One of your best,” he said. He offered her the bag. “Want anything? There's tons.”

Emily Ann said, “I had a huge breakfast before I left.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm sure you did.”

Out the other ear, she reminded herself. Out the other ear.

“I've been meaning to try one of these,” he said, unwrapping a bagel sandwich. “Looks like a Western. Or an Eastern. I never can remember which is which.” He took two rapid bites, then two more without swallowing. Like an animal, she thought. Like a junkyard dog.

“I miss their breakfast burritos,” he continued. “But I could drive with this. I needed two hands for the burrito.”

“When I'm upset, my appetite disappears,” she offered.

“Is that your way of saying I'm making a pig of myself?”

“No, I'm saying I understand that sometimes a person eats to dull the pain.”

He reached deep into the brown bag and pulled out a lost hash brown, separated from its sleeve. “I've heard of that,” he said.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Abow whah?” His mouth bulged; a green-pepper fleck was pasted to his gums.

“Your father.”

“Not in the least.”

“How old were you when they divorced?”

He shrugged.

“You don't know?”

“I was in eleventh grade. What age is that?”

“Sixteen? Seventeen? Depends on your school district and your birthday.”

“My mother didn't want to break the news to me until after my SATs, but I caught on anyway.” He crumbled his last wrapper and reclined his seat. “Wake me when we get there,” he murmured.

“Wait. How did you do?”

He raised himself an inch from the headrest. “Are you asking me for my SAT scores?”

“No,” said Emily Ann. “Of course not. I meant . . . the divorce: How did you take it?”

Fletcher made a grudging affirmative noise and lowered his seat another notch.

Emily Ann wanted to clean off his tray, but the dirty wrappers bore either melted animal fat, melted cheese, or smears of ketchup. And the smells.

“Will I meet your mother today?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“She's not coming?”

Fletcher said calmly, “To a double funeral? With his latest paramour? Unlikely.”

“But she knows, right? You called her?”

He frowned. “Is that my job?”

Emily Ann groaned.

“Now, wait one minute,” said Fletcher. “How does my father's death—the death of a total stranger—and how I've chosen to break or not break the news to my mother distress you?”

“Because! I have a mother and a father and brothers, and I consider us a functional family and . . . and yours wasn't and I'd know how I'd act if, God forbid, I got a call one night that my father was found dead.”

“That's right, I forgot: your family-values plank, which makes you an authority on funeral guest lists.”

Emily Ann tried to keep her voice even, her feelings unbruised. “I'm simply saying she's going to be furious. He was the father of her child, and no matter—”

“Excuse me, Dear Abby, but her rule was, Don't mention that man's name in my presence. I think that's a pretty clear guideline.”

“She didn't mean life-or-death! She meant, ‘I don't want to hear about his girlfriends or about'—I don't know—‘the excellent cabernet you shared at Le Bec-Fin.' ” Emily Ann reached into her green leather satchel for her phone. “Call her. Right now.”

“You can't use cell phones on an airplane.”

“That's an old wives' tale. What's her number?”

Fletcher shook his head.

“You don't know, or you're stonewalling?”

“I'm stonewalling.”

“I've never heard of such a thing! Your father dies and you don't call your mother!”

“You're projecting what Emily Ann Grandjean would do in this situation, but you don't know my mother.” He paused, then added angrily, “You don't even know me.”

Emily Ann unbuckled her seat belt and plunked herself down across the aisle.

“Why are you pouting? I'm the one who's burying my father today. Can't you cut me a little slack?”

Emily Ann slowly turned back to face him. “Okay,” she said. “I'll change the subject. I promised myself I'd be compassionate today.” She yanked on the two halves of her ponytail to tighten it. “How far away is Dixville Notch? My father said it was relatively close.”

“What do you want with Dixville Notch?”

“What do I want with Dixville Notch? To be seen and noted, Fletcher. Maybe shake the hands of the staff at the hotel where they vote.”

“As . . . ?”

She smiled serenely. “A Republican with a future.”

He jerked his sunglasses off. “Is that why you wanted to come? To position yourself in New Hampshire? Because that offends even me, and as you know, I'm not easily offended.”

“This wouldn't involve you! You're in mourning. I'd hire a car and a driver while you're taking care of family matters.”

“First of all, I don't think you can rent a car or a driver in King George, and second of all, you don't do something like that without an advance team. You don't just walk into a town and start kissing babies.”

“Not even a car rental agency?” she repeated. “Not even at the airport?”

“It's a landing strip with a Quonset hut and a wind sock.”

“Then who's picking us up?”

“Somebody from the funeral parlor.”

“In a limo?”

“I didn't ask.”

“What about the daughter? Doesn't she have a car?”

“I know nothing about her. Her name is Sunny. Her mother was reportedly my father's fiancée, but I don't believe it.”

“Why not?”

“Miles Finn wouldn't have taken up with somebody who lived in the boonies. He liked urban women. Stylish women. Loose women.”

“Maybe it's a summer colony,” said Emily Ann.

“Have you ever heard of anyone summering in King George? He had a primitive cabin on a lake. No heat and no indoor plumbing. I went up with him once to fish and live off the land for a week. I hated it. He loved it—no shower, no shaving and, believe me, no women. I think he probably saw this dame when he needed to, and the only way the daughter could make peace with her mother dying with a male overnight guest was to say they were engaged.”

“What if you're wrong? What if they
were
engaged, and she was the reason he kept going back there? Not the fishing; not the iron-man thing?”

Fletcher didn't answer.

“The daughter would know,” prompted Emily Ann.

“ ‘Miss Batten?' ” he mimicked. “ ‘I'm Emily Ann Grandjean, running in the Sixth Congressional District of the Garden State? Just being a little nosy here, but was this a long-standing affair between your dead mother and Fletcher's dead father? I was wondering if said dead mother might have been the unnamed corespondent in his parents' divorce. Oh, and please accept my deepest sympathies.' ”

Emily Ann's pinched face turned a shade paler. “I didn't want to say this on your way to your father's funeral, but you can be unbelievably cruel.”

“You're right. You should not be saying this on my way to my father's funeral.”

Emily Ann sat perfectly still, her eyes closed, a sign of an anger-management exercise under way.

Finally, Fletcher grumbled, “I'm not cruel a hundred percent of the time.”