The Fireweed Moon by Barbara Dzikowski

Author:Barbara Dzikowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiara Books via Indie Author Project
Published: 2023-05-03T13:20:27+00:00

-Eighteen-

CASSEROLES

Careful to keep it level, Joshua Wharton carried the covered dish his wife had made earlier that day, two days after Leon Ziemny’s death, a chicken casserole for Willow. That’s what people still did here after a death had occurred; they brought a dish of comfort food—homemade, of course—to the bereaved in the hope that some comfort, however slight, might be derived. He knocked on the front door with his knuckles—ringing the doorbell seemed too intrusive under the circumstances—and the girl appeared, looking utterly grief-stricken. A physician recognized the signs of grief beyond a river of tears: dark circles under dazed eyes, sallow skin, the dehydrated look of self-neglect.

“Hello, Willow. I’m Dr. Wharton—Joshua, not Aaron.”

“Oh, right, I remember.” She smiled, or tried to. “My father mentioned you so often. You were a good friend to him. Please, come in.”

He stepped inside. He’d been in this house countless times throughout the years, and the thought that Leon was no longer here, but his familiar belongings still were, cloaked him in sadness. “As you can see, I’ve brought along something for you to eat—it’s a chicken casserole. My wife, Melissa, made it for you. It’s really quite good, her best dish.”

“I’m sure it is. Thank you.” She took it from him as he followed her into the kitchen. He expected to find an array of similar platters and plates on her kitchen counter, wrapped in aluminum foil, but there was only one other, besides his, and a round tin. The meager outpouring troubled him. “Would you like a cup of coffee? A cookie?” She opened the tin, held it out to him. “Nancy—Leon’s next-door neighbor baked these. I don’t even know her last name.”

“Oh, you mean the Salvos.” He smiled. “Good people.” Though he was trying to cut back on sweets, he selected a small butter cookie filled with homemade raspberry jam, to be polite. “No coffee, though.”

She sat down at the dining room table, and he sat across from her. A bird clock chirped out the time, startling him, with its three shrill tweets. Joshua folded his hands, looked into Willow’s heartbroken face, the face of the girl he had advised her mother to abort, the girl about whom some were now saying such dreadful things—that she should’ve never come here from New York City and gotten her father mixed up with the Black stranger. Others, like Jeff Miller, were even blaming Willow for her father’s death!

He’d first heard of it yesterday, when he went to the grocery to buy the ingredients for Melissa’s casserole and bumped into Jeff Miller. “Disinterment? What disinterment?” Joshua had asked. And Jeff replied that Willow was opening her grandmother’s grave to retrieve some item from the casket, something valuable, though no one could fathom what it might be. “We would’ve filed a petition to stop it,” Jeff said. “But by the time we heard what they were planning to do, the application was already approved.”

All the way home and all night long, Joshua had thought long and hard about it.

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