Somewhere Along the Way by Thomas Jodi

Author:Thomas, Jodi
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-09-21T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

WEDNESDAY

FEBRUARY 13, 2008

WRIGHT FUNERAL HOME

My fourth funeral for the new year.

TYLER WRIGHT WAS WRITING HIS DAILY E-MAIL. HE WROTE every night just like he used to write to his friend Kate. She hadn’t answered an e-mail in two years, but he still wrote.

He leaned back, thinking he was probably the greatest fool ever born. A lonely bachelor in his forties who sent an e-mail to a woman he’d seen only a few times. They’d shared a dinner once at an out-of-the-way lodge on a night too icy to drive. They’d agreed that if the e-mails ever stopped, they would both go the first Monday of the months following for three months and wait for the other.

He’d been going on the first Monday to Quartz Mountain Lodge for two years. She never came.

I’m still missing you, he wrote. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to write those words again, but he just wanted her to know. Not much has happened here. Remember Reagan Truman? I told you about her getting hurt. She’s out of the hospital and on the mend.

Stella McNabb poked her head into Tyler’s office. “The Hendersons are gone, Mr. Wright. Mrs. Biggs was a lot of help tonight. You want to drive her home while I finish up? I hate keeping her out too late when she might have someone besides Martha Q to cook for in the morning.”

“Sure. Glad to,” Tyler said, a moment before he clicked Send. He could have thought about it for a while, but no one was reading his e-mails anyway. “I’ll get my hat and be right there.”

He rushed around the desk and grabbed his hat and coat. “Come on, Little Lady, let’s go take Mrs. Biggs back to the inn.”

The border collie stood and shook, as if fluffing her coat for the trip.

Mrs. Biggs was waiting for them when they reached the reception area. Since the mystery lady had showed up at his cemetery, Tyler had somehow become responsible for her.

When he had her tucked into the car, he said, “Thanks for helping out tonight. The Hendersons are a big family and sometimes get a little rowdy when they have a night visitation. Stella can usually handle them, after corralling high school kids for forty years, but I’d hate to think what they’d do if the food ran out.”

Mrs. Biggs laughed. “You know, they’re sweet people. I went to school with a few of them before I moved away. We used to play a game when they weren’t around. Someone would say Hendersons and we’d all try to name them in order as fast as we could. With all the names starting with H, it wasn’t easy.”

Tyler smiled. “It probably didn’t help that Mrs. Henderson got mixed up and named two of them Henry.”

“Henry the first and Henry the second. I’d forgotten that.”

“They’re both dead. The oldest Henry of cancer about ten years ago and the younger one in a car wreck in Houston. I made the long drive to bring him home.

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