A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents by Liza Palmer

Author:Liza Palmer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9780446558280
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-12-22T23:00:00+00:00

chapter fourteen

Just throw it all in,” Abigail says, grabbing an old cardboard box from the closet. Leo opens up drawer after drawer and empties the contents into the awaiting box. Abigail made sure to separate the three documents Nurse Miller had asked for—the three documents that seem completely insignificant now. I find a bag of rubber bands in an upper drawer and take handful after handful of Dad’s spidery-written steno pads, band them together and put them into Mateo’s Batman backpack, which he let me borrow. But just for today.

Abigail is putting stacks of file folders into the canvas bags from her car. Evie and the twins are playing in the front yard. Some kind of tag where everyone’s pissed that they’re It and the entire game is spent disciplining and fighting. You know, normal tag.

I get to the bottom of the second steno pad drawer and pull out what I think is the oldest one. I flip it open as Leo and Abigail sift through the other desk drawers. I read the date written on the top line in writing much more assured, much less spidery.

3/26/05—1375 Daly Street, Mortgage Payment—$779.00

“When was the wedding? When was Connie and Dad’s wedding?” I ask, unable to quite understand what I’m reading.

“It was right after Mom…” Leo trails off.

“So, about a month after that?” Abigail says, walking over to me.

“September something,” Leo says, throwing a pile of files into the now overloaded box.

“He was paying the mortgage on the Daly house by March of ’05,” I say.

“What? That can’t be right,” Abigail says, taking the steno pad from me. Leo walks over to us. Abigail flips the pages back and forth. Back and forth. Each time growing angrier. Each time becoming more violent.

“Six months?!” Abigail says, shoving the steno pad back at me.

“No,” Leo says, taking the steno pad.

Abigail paces. “They were together six months?”

“How long did they even know each other before they got married?” I ask.

“If Dad came to Mom’s funeral after all…” Leo says. I grab the steno pad. Flipping pages, doing math and trying to understand what all of this means.

“He freaked out,” I say, dropping the steno pad to my side.

“Just like the rest of us,” Abigail sighs. Us. I look up… directly into her eyes. Soft. Wrenching. Confused. I hope that instead of the haze my eyes have displayed for the last five years, I have the good sense to look horrified.

We stand in silence.

“I should have believed you,” I say to Leo, feeling horrible.

“I didn’t want to believe me either,” Leo answers.

“I’m sorry about the drug mule line,” I say, ashamed.

“No, it was funny. It took me everything not to laugh,” Leo says. I give him a quick smile as he lets out a crackling giggle.

“Huston was right. He knew that power of attorney meant something,” Abigail says.

“How were we supposed to know any of this?” Leo implores.

“Regardless, we have to get back. Do we have enough?” Abigail asks, eyeing the canvas bags, the Batman backpack and the overloaded cardboard box.

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