Untethered

Five Days
Left

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2016 by Julie Lawson Timmer

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eBook ISBN: 9780698407862

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Timmer, Julie Lawson, author.

Title: Untethered / Julie Lawson Timmer.

Description: New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016007261 | ISBN 9780399176272 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Families—Fiction. | Death—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Contemporary Women.

Classification: LCC PS3620.I524 U58 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016007261

p. cm.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For my
parents

C
har slumped low in the pew, fretting about the casket. It took her brother, Will, a moment to realize what she was doing. Like everyone else, he had risen with the priest's invitation and was waiting, a hand extended, to help her up and walk her to the social hall.

“I need a minute,” she said.

“Take all the time you need.” He sat and draped an arm across her shoulders. “No one's going anywhere for a while.”

Given the weather forecast—six inches of snow in the morning, changing to freezing rain around noon—the priest had made the call to proceed straight from the service to the reception. There would be no processional to the cemetery for the internment. It wasn't worth the risk, having people out on the roads. The pallbearers had been instructed to leave the casket in the sanctuary for now.

“I should have gone with darker wood,” Char said. “Bradley would be horrified at that thing.” They hadn't noticed until two hours ago the casket they had chosen had a large wood knot on one side.

“I feel there are other things about the scene that would bother him more,” Will said. “His being
inside
the casket, for example.”

“Will, I'm serious.”

“You can't be, Charlotte. You can't possibly think he'd be horrified about a tiny knot on the side of a coffin. Or that he'd even notice.”

“It's not tiny. And of course he would. He was a perfectionist. He was a quality control guy. He was—”

“He was a man who loved hiking in the woods with his wife and daughter,” Will said. “And I'm certain he recognized that those woods were made up of trees. And that trees have knots.”

“There were those black ones, remember?” Char said. “Made of synthetic . . . something. I bet they were perfect, all smooth dark paint. No flaws. I should've spent more time choosing—”

“I bet they had fake knots swirled into the paint, to make them look real,” Will said. He drew a circle on her shoulder with his finger. “Somewhere in America, in some other church, in some other town, a widow is perseverating about how she regrets having chosen something so fake when she could have had natural wood. With a big, natural, gorgeous knot in it.”

He pulled her to him, released her, and pulled her to him again, a gesture indicating the conversation was over. What he would like to do, she knew, was smack her on the head, or tell her to shut up already about the goddamn knot in the wood. They had been over it three times now. She patted his knee, thanking him for his patience.

“I just . . .” She sighed. “I'm angry with myself for not checking every detail about it, you know? Like he would have done. He was so meticulous. About everything. If there was a knot on my casket,
he'd have known about it, and approved it, in advance. He wouldn't be staring at it during ‘Amazing Grace,' wondering how it . . .” She raised her hands, palms up, then brought one to her mouth. “He never would have . . .” She gave up trying to explain her regret and instead cried it.

“Okay,” Will whispered, kissing her temple. He leaned sideways and reached his hand past her, to her purse. Rooting through it, he found a tissue and pressed it into her hand.

Char wiped her nose and slid lower in the pew, her head now resting against her brother's rib cage. “I know I need to pull it together and get out there but I just can't seem to—”

The sanctuary doors opened behind them and Char felt Will turn. “Hey, Allie,” he called.

Char bolted upright, wiped her nose with the tissue, ran the sleeve of her dress across her eyes, and forced her mouth into a smile. By then, the fifteen-year-old had reached the pew.

“Allie!” Char said. “I hope you weren't worried about us. I was”—she stumbled for an excuse—“I was, uh, talking to Uncle Will about his flight home tomorrow, and whether it'll be canceled or not. You know, with the weather.” She pushed her purse to the floor and gestured to the expanse of wood on her right.

Allie looked from Char to Will and back before plunking herself onto the pew and patting Char's knee lightly. “You were staring at Dad's casket.”

“No,” Char said. “Not exactly. I was—”

“And you were obsessing about that goddamn knot.”

Will laughed. So did Allie, and Char gave her brother a grateful smile.

The call had come on Monday night about the accident on
US-127 North. Black ice. A fourteen-car pileup. Six ambulances. Three fatalities. Char and Allie had collapsed in tears on the couch and hadn't moved, other than to use the bathroom, until Will flew in from South Carolina on Tuesday afternoon.

If he hadn't dragged them to their feet and ordered them to shower and change clothes, they might still be lying there, sobbing into each other's necks. There had still been plenty of tears since his arrival. But thanks to him, there had been arrangements made, too. Friends and relatives called. Meals eaten. Hair washed and brushed. And, eventually, stories shared—and even jokes told—about the late Bradley Hawthorn.

“Language, young lady,” Char whispered. It was Bradley's line. He had been determined to have the only teenager in America who didn't curse.

“Sorry, Dad,” Allie said to the casket. She shifted closer and let her head drop onto Char's shoulder.

Char put an arm around the girl and kissed her temple. “You holding up okay?”

Allie nodded.

“I'm proud of you. Your dad would be, too.”

“I know.”

“We should really get out there,” Char said. “People won't feel they can leave until they've spoken to the family, and with this weather, they shouldn't wait too long.”

Allie snuggled closer. “Five more minutes?”

Char leaned her head against the girl's. “Okay. But only five.”

Will stretched his arm across his sister's shoulders until his hand found his niece. He massaged her neck, then rested his palm there. Char heard the hum of the radiators along the wall of the sanctuary,
Allie's soft, even breathing, Will's change jingling in his pocket as he shifted in the pew. Orange-yellow cones of light rose from the dozen small fixtures that illuminated the stained-glass windows around the perimeter of the sanctuary. The colors, softened by the glow, soothed.

It was better this way, Char thought. Did a fifteen-year-old really need an internment as her final memory of her father? Was there any place bleaker, lonelier, than a Michigan cemetery in winter? She pictured black coats huddled around a dark rectangle in the frozen ground, dull stands of leafless trees offering no protection from the frigid wind and snow, the gray-white sky unyielding, unbroken in its desolateness. Better that their last moments with Bradley should be in the gently lit warmth of the sanctuary. Char pulled Allie closer and the girl sighed.

A thud from behind startled them. Moments later, the double doors burst open, light and noise from the hallway roaring in. They turned, squinting, to find a woman stamping her boots hard, clumps of gray slush sliding onto the carpet. She rubbed her gloved hands together and shook the snow from her hair, then raised a hand to touch each of her curls back into place.

“I missed it!” she shrieked, gazing around at the rows of empty pews. They flinched at the noise. “Damn! I'm so sorry, but the highways are skating rinks! And try getting a cab at Metro on a day like this! For a ride all the way out to Mount Pleasant!”

She pounded her boots against the floor again and bent to sweep off a few last bits of snow that hadn't shaken free. Setting her purse on a nearby pew, she withdrew a pair of peep-toe stilettos, which she placed in front of her. She pulled off her gloves and tucked them neatly into the purse before unbuttoning her coat and folding
it over the back of the pew. Stepping out of her boots and into her shoes, she smoothed the fitted dress that didn't attempt to reach her knees, and touched her curls again. With a smile big enough to show every one of her bleached teeth, she spread her arms wide. “Darling!”

Allie rose. “Hi, Mom.”