Reunion by Christopher Farnsworth

Author:Christopher Farnsworth [Farnsworth, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farnsworth Radio LLC

19

Alanis Morissette Irony or the Other Kind

Carrie still hasn’t cried.

Not when she had to leave the house for a few hours to identify the body earlier today. There were other people who could do it, but she wanted to see him for herself. She did, and she didn’t cry. The coroner agreed to release the body before the end of the week. (It’s not like there’s a lot of dispute about the cause of death. There was an exit wound the size of a softball in the back of his skull.) While she was out, Carrie had a woman from a home health agency look after her mom.

When she got back, she found her mother had the nurse cornered with a knife. Mary Keene, despite all she’d forgotten, still knew how to hold a scalpel. (She had them stashed all over the house, apparently.) She thought the nurse was a burglar. Carrie apologized profusely, but the agency won’t send a replacement now.

The problem is, her mom will not remember that her father is dead. Mary is suspicious and mean, thinking Carrie is keeping something from her. She demands to know where her husband is.

So, in a special kind of torture she never imagined before today, Carrie has to break the news of her father’s death to her mother over and over. Every time, Mary Keene sobs, and her heart breaks, and she slowly, agonizingly, pulls herself together and reconciles herself to a world without her husband.

Then ten or fifteen minutes later, she asks where he is, and Carrie goes through it all again.

Despite repeating herself over and over, Carrie hasn’t cried once. Not once.

For Carrie, her father’s death is a wall she keeps running into, bloodying her nose every time. She realizes that someone will have to do her father’s laundry since he won’t be able to (because he’s dead). Someone will have to pack up his clothes (because he’s dead). Someone will have to sell his car, because he’ll never drive it again (because he’s dead). And so on.

Everything else that brought her here — the mystery, the murder of Hailey and her daughter, the feeling of doom barreling down toward Middleton like a meteor in the sky above — has been pushed back. She knows her father’s death is a part of it. But she cannot do anything about it.

Her mother finally goes off to the kitchen, where she will start washing the already-clean dishes. She does this sometimes, Carrie’s dad said. Fine, Carrie thinks. At least it will keep her occupied.

Carrie sits in the living room, and looks at the family photos on the wall. In one, she stands next to her father while he wears his chief’s uniform; they have just cracked a case together. She remembers (of course) every detail (escaped prisoner, twin brother, shaved beard, left-handed) and the feeling of pride that came when they worked together.

Nothing.

Carrie tries again. She selects one memory in particular. There was a day in second grade when she and her dad drove to Centerville.

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