Authors: Sally John
* * *
Eliot did not understand how to let it go.
In the kitchen, he watched Mercedes prepare his medication, deftly collecting pills from various containers and placing them in a yellow bowl.
Padre Miguel’s words resonated. Eliot had no quarrel with them. But how was he to implement them? On his way out, the old priest had pointed heavenward and tossed him an enigmatic smile, reminiscent of Eliot’s father.
Eliot Montgomery II had been a wise and tender man. When correcting his son, he often said, “You’ll figure it out,” and then he’d smile in the way Padre Miguel just had.
Mercedes’s hand stilled on one of the bottles. “Señor?” Her weary face questioned. “You seem almost agile.”
“Almost.” He almost smiled as well. His body communicated clearly that it was damaged. It ached, no question about it. His hands grasping the canes, what he had dubbed his mini walkers, proclaimed that his movement was restricted.
But it all added up to a two on the scale. A
two
.
“I believe,” he said, “that we can eliminate that pill this time around.”
“We want to stay ahead of it, you know. On top of it.”
“You’re lecturing me.” He chuckled at the sound of his wife’s words coming at him in Spanish in a young girl’s voice. “We will skip that pill.”
She gazed at him for a long moment and then returned to her task.
“I appreciate you, Mercedes. You are doing a top-notch job, and I’m glad that you refused señora’s suggestion to hire a nurse.”
She smiled shyly. “Thank you.”
Had he been aware of Mercedes’s early-morning trip to Mesa Aguamiel to phone Sheridan, he would have forbidden it. “Tell me again about your conversations with señora. She wasn’t too upset?”
“No.” Mercedes summarized the exchanges that she had already given to him. “She wasn’t too upset about her father’s death, either. Of course he was old and sick. Maybe she was in shock. We had just said good-bye and I hung up when she called right back. I was hugging my aunt farewell and the telephone rang. Señora.” The girl’s face fell and she began to talk in a monotone, which was totally out of character, especially for the information she delivered. “Señora said, ‘My father died a few minutes ago. Please tell señor. I will call again when we know the funeral schedule.’”
Eliot suspected that her tone echoed Sheridan’s. Of course his own response had been the same when Mercedes had blubbered out the news to him in the courtyard. How did one express sadness that simply wasn’t there?
But he could see that the naive child before him could not fathom a lack of sorrow. The woman she loved and admired confused her with what looked like stoicism.
“Mercedes, you’ve told me that your father was a happy man. He always made you laugh and feel safe. Then he passed away when you were only nine. Your life was extremely difficult after that.”
Her chin quivered.
“Señora’s life would have been happier and safer if her father had not been part of it when she was little.”
Mercedes gasped. “How awful!”
“Yes. It makes her sadness different. Do you understand?”
“I think so. It’s hard to cry for a nightmare that’s over.”
Eliot rethought his use of
naive
and
Mercedes
in the same sentence.
“I am sorry for her.” She gave him the yellow dish of pills.
He looked at it and suddenly felt a tidal wave of sadness. He missed his wife beyond words. “Uh, next time, may I have the brown pottery, please?”
“The brown—señor!” She smiled. “I did not know you had a preference.”
“That’s because I never said.”
There were many things he had never said. Perhaps it was time to speak.
God, I don’t know how to let it go. But I do know that I desperately want to.
Chicago
Calissa exploded at the funeral home.
Evidently the director’s kind attentions and the soft music did not have their intended effect on her. She flounced about on the cushy armchair as if it had tacks on the seat.
Sheridan sat back and watched the conniption fit without comment, but with plenty of distress. What was it she had considered earlier? Something about Calissa having a heart for people? Hogwash. Only her vocabulary had changed. She’d become much more creative with four-letter words, adding prefixes and suffixes, using them as different parts of a sentence.
“Mr. Ford!” Calissa resembled a barking terrier with frosted, spiked hair. “Do you have any idea who my father was?”
Sheridan certainly hoped not. The distinguished gentleman may not want the body of a criminal lying about, fouling his lovely home.
Mr. Ford bowed his head slightly, not bothering to reply to the ridiculous question. They’d already covered Harrison’s career, which of course he knew about because he had voted for the man time and again.
Calissa went on. “Then why in the world would we hold a visitation here? Thousands of people will be paying their respects to my father. There is no way this place could accommodate such a crowd.”
Sheridan stopped listening. Calissa had always referred to
my
father, never
our
father. She wondered, not for the first time, if it was significant. Was she Harrison’s daughter? Maybe it would come out now. No, she wasn’t. Their mother had had a torrid affair with a very nice man. That would be welcome news. What if this imaginary man were still alive?
Mr. Ford stood. “I’ll give you sisters some time alone to discuss these matters. Just give a shout when you’re ready to view the coffins.”
Sheridan could have sworn his eyes twinkled at her when he said
shout
. She gave him a little nod as he left the room.
Shouting will not be a problem.
“Well,” Calissa said. “What do you think?”
Sheridan realized every muscle in her body was tight, as if prepared for a blow that was to come. She couldn’t speak.
“You sit there, Sher, and you don’t say a word. I’m a little tired of always making the decisions. At least you managed to get here in time from the other side of civilization. The least you could do now is help figure out the funeral.”
“Is he my father?” She interrupted the blow.
“What? Who? Him?” Calissa wiggled her thumb toward the door.
“Harrison. Is he my dad too?”
“Sheridan! What an awful thing to say!”
“You always say ‘my father’ like he’s only yours.”
“Maybe because you never claim him.”
“Why would I?” Sheridan’s voice rose. “You know what my most vivid memory is growing up? You talking at me like I’m a moron because I don’t see life the same way you do. And then there was Dad.” She nearly spat the word. “He disapproved of everything I ever did. I was never good enough to be called his daughter. He treated Mamá the same way. It’s no mystery why she checked out.”
“You checked out too, just not as permanently. And don’t you dare blame him for her death. As despicable as he was, he never would have stood by and watched her die from an asthma attack. Whether she chose that way out by deliberately not taking the meds, we’ll never know.”
Much as she wanted to blame Harrison, Sheridan had to agree. They’d have to resign themselves to not knowing exactly what happened.
Calissa’s tirade wasn’t over. “She was unhealthy and physically weak. You were too young to know how much he didn’t do because he had to take care of her needs.”
“Well, excuse me for being born seven years after you. Or ever.”
“Well, excuse me for being the oldest and knowing more than you.”
“You are such a shrew, Calissa.”
“Shrew? Mamá left us, Sheridan! She chose to leave us. Who did she think was going to take care of her precious little girl, hm? Dad had no clue. He planned to ship you off to . . . Oh, my gosh, I did not say that.”
Sheridan stared at her in disbelief. “He planned to ship me off where?”
“A boarding school.” She muttered one of her favorite four-letter words. “Maybe you would have liked it better than having a shrew for a stand-in mom. But somehow it just didn’t seem right to me. I couldn’t let him do it.”
“He really didn’t like me, did he?”
“You reminded him too much of Mamá.” Her voice grew quieter. “The parts he loved about her and couldn’t control.”
They sat for a few moments. Sheridan felt her muscles relax.
“Liss, you were always on my case. It seemed like you went out of your way to make my life difficult.”
“I was twenty years old. I quit Stanford. I moved back home from California to take care of you. I didn’t have any warm fuzzies to give you. On some level I’m sure I resented you, blamed you for ruining my life. Instead of dating I was driving you to volleyball practice. Instead of hanging out with friends I was making sure you kept curfew, making sure no one took advantage of you, making sure you kept up your grades. You had your master’s before I finished my undergrad degree.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Sher, it’s not your fault. It just was.”
Sheridan imagined herself as a thirteen-year-old going off to a boarding school somewhere, wallowing alone in the grief of her mother’s death, trying to fit in with a whole group of strangers. Not living under her dad’s or Calissa’s thumbs did not make that scenario as attractive as she would have guessed.
“Liss, thank you.”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “I should thank you for being born, especially seven years later. When I moved back home to torture you, I started working with Dad, really working, grown-up style. That was the true beginning of my career. I couldn’t have done it any other way.”
“God worked it out.”
Calissa shrugged.
“Mamá would have prayed before . . .” Sheridan ached at the thought of her mother’s last minutes. She could not comprehend the anguish that she would have experienced. “Liss, I know she would have asked Him to take care of us. She may have given up, but she knew He wouldn’t.”
“You’re starting to channel her with all this God talk.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“It is not.”
“Okay, it’s not. So what do you need from me? Honestly, I figured you and Dad would have had the arrangements all made in advance. Obit written, casket chosen. Invitations sent to distinguished guests. Buffet lunch at the club with his staff.” She smiled.
Calissa gave her a small one in return. “He was egotistical to the point of not believing he would die. Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is going to take a while.”
Sheridan went over to her big sister and gave her a hug. “I’m here for as long as you need me.”
* * *
Wilmette
Seated on a bench in the backyard, Sheridan made the requisite phone call to Mercedes’s aunt with funeral details. She told her there was no rush to deliver the message to her husband.
Sighing, she closed the phone. Eliot might have his own meltdown when he heard that the funeral was scheduled for her tenth day away. That was the date she had told him she would return.
“Sheridan.”
She turned and saw Luke walking across the lawn. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He sat down beside her and looked out toward the lake. “This is an amazing backyard.”
“Apparently paid for by money laundering.”
“It’s still amazing.”
“I suppose.”
It
was
amazing, and especially beautiful on a sunny afternoon. A small, sandy beach lay only a few yards from them. Lake Michigan reflected the blue sky and its whitecaps were few. The breeze carried birdsong and scents of spring. Some leaves had opened, flecks of celery green on dark branches.
“What will you do with it?” he asked.
“Sell it as soon as possible. We would have needed the money for his attorney fees and spin doctors, but he took care of that nicely, didn’t he? Now that he’s gone, he can’t be prosecuted for what he did.”
“Nope.”
“I would love to give the money back to the people hurt by the whole operation, but where would we begin? Maybe with those poor women like my mother in Caracas, working for criminals.”
“I think you already helped some of them in similar situations, didn’t you? With Reina and the job-training courses you two had going, I’m sure you impacted women who could have been involved with the drug trade in some way. Women who didn’t have a choice but to work for the underworld.”
She nodded. “If Reina were still there, I could . . .” She let her voice drift away.
If, if, if.
“How did things go at the funeral home?”
For once she was glad for his change of subject. “There was a catfight.” She gave him a silly rendition of her and Calissa’s squabble and filled him in on the schedule details.
“Will there be a memorial in D.C.?”
“Yes, at some point.” She didn’t even want to consider attending such an event, where she’d have to listen to his name extolled. “Calls have been pouring into his office. Calissa got a list of names. I always was surprised at the people he knew, people with big names. My sister actually talked personally to the president.”
“Impressive. Will Eliot come for the funeral?”
“It’s not possible. Just riding into Mesa Aguamiel is too hard on him. He’s incapacitated for at least a day.” She thought of Eliot’s voice mail. It bothered her to remember his animated voice, his description of buying a gift for Mercedes, his errand running with Padre Miguel, his new canes.
“What did you say?” Luke asked.
She turned to him. “Hm?”
“You said something.”
“I did? Oh, I must be talking to myself again. Calissa’s been accusing me of it.” She paused. “Eliot left a voice mail the other day.”
“That’s why you needed the password.”
“Yes, it wasn’t Mercedes or her aunt. Do you remember telling me that if you were in Eliot’s shoes, you’d want your wife right beside you?”
He nodded.
“In his voice mail he sounded happy. He sounded great. He wasn’t faking it. He just was fine. He was even interacting with people. Mercedes drives him up the wall at times and he bought her a gift. He avoids Padre Miguel, but he was out doing errands with him in Mesa Aguamiel.”
“That’s good news.”