I stifled a laugh. Despite our initial meeting, I was really beginning to like Olga. She cared for her brother and she was funny.

“Anyway, Olaf didn’t care,” she said, shrugging. “At all. So she just got mad and stormed off. I heard around town that she was telling everyone the same thing. Who knows if it was even true?”

“Any idea who it was? I mean, if it was true?”

She shook her head. “None.” She put her hands on her hips and looked at me. “So what do you think?”

I thought for a moment. “I honestly don’t know what to think, Olga. My encounters with Helen have definitely been strange. I can’t believe Elliott went out with her when Olaf worked for him. But I’m just baffled as to how Olaf ended…where he did.”

She pointed at the body on the table. “I meant what do you think about Sally.”

I felt my cheeks color. “Oh.” I stepped closer to the table. Olga had transformed the woman on the table from a waxy figure to someone who looked warm and peaceful. She didn’t look fake or artificially beautiful. She looked like someone’s wife, a person that people would miss. She looked real.

I smiled at Olga. “I think she looks beautiful.”

Olga offered me a smile in return. “Everyone deserves to look beautiful at their own funeral.”

I couldn’t have agreed more.

THIRTY ONE

I pulled into the lot back at the church to pick up the kids from their 4-H meeting and my mood took a turn for the worse when I spied Thornton’s car parked in the lot.

My mood dipped even further when I saw him sitting in the car. He gave me a half-wave when he saw me.

I drove past him and parked at the other end of the lot. I shut off the car and took a deep breath before I got out to go see what the heck he wanted.

He was already halfway across the parking lot by the time I got out of the car. Thornton Bohannan was a little over six feet tall, with an ever-expanding beer belly and hair that he kept trying to grow out  in an attempt to look hip. He wore a red AC/DC t-shirt over a long sleeved gray t-shirt and both looked one size too small on his ample gut. His expensive-looking jeans were turned up at the ankle over expensive looking black shoes. He liked to think that he had a good sense of fashion, but it always came off as a guy in his forties who was trying to look two decades younger. And failing.

He held up his hand again in greeting. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I said. My breath puffed white in the air. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I knew the kids had 5-H this morning, so I figured you’d be here.”

“4-H,” I corrected.

“Right,” he said dismissively. “Anyway, I had the morning off, so I just figured I’d cruise by.”

My radar went into high alert. Thornton never just cruised by.

“Okay,” I said. “What’s up?”

He leaned against my car, his hands shoved into his jeans,and his shirt rode up, exposing his belly. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t have a jacket on. “I heard about what happened at your house.”

“You and everyone else.”

“Kids okay?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

“I don’t know,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “I just thought…” His voice trailed off.

“They’re fine,” I told him curtly.

“Good, good.”

I stood there for a minute, waiting for him to speak. He didn’t.

“Thornton, why are you here?” I asked. “You could’ve texted me if you were worried. Or, you know, called them and talked to them.”

“Right, right.”

I frowned. The double word talk had always driven me nuts.

“So…?” I prompted.

“I just thought I should check in on them.”

It wasn’t normal to hear him say things like that. He’d always been a bit disconnected from the kids. He rarely attended their activities and his work schedule had pretty much dictated that he didn’t spend much time with them. It wasn’t that he didn’t love them. I was pretty sure he did love them in his own way, even if he hadn’t been crazy about having them. But he could rarely see past his own nose and his wants had always come before mine or the kids’. So it always rubbed me the wrong to hear him express concern for the kids, even when I knew he meant well.

“Well, they’re fine.”

I turned to go but he reached out a hand to stop me.

“I know,” he said. “I…I just wondered if maybe they should come and stay with me for awhile. You know, with everything going on over there.”

He said the word ‘there’ like it was the hills of Afghanistan and there were hordes of Al Qaeda members waiting to take them out.

I gaped at him. “Are you serious?”

“Well, yeah.”

I took a deep breath and tried to maintain my cool. “They are fine.”

He stared at me for a minute and I shifted my gaze so I was looking at his shirt. It was one of about a thousand music T-shirts he owned. He’d grown up believing he’d be a bassist in some famous rock band. When that hadn’t panned out, he’d stayed in music, working for a large music retailer. He was now a manager and able to set his own schedule most of the time, which enabled him to still play gigs with his band. Unfortunately, their venues hadn’t moved past dive bars and the Elks Lodge. They hadn’t turned up on the marquee at the Legion next to our house but I was pretty sure it was only a matter of time.

“Are you sure?” he asked, brushing the brown locks away from his eyes. “I mean, that had to be pretty scary for them.”

Our custody arrangement was such that he saw them one weekend per month. That was his decision when we divorced, as he claimed he wasn’t sure what his schedule was going to look like. It pissed me off at the time, but I was also selfishly happy. I didn’t want to share my kids. And in the time we’d been divorced, he’d never asked to have them for more than that single weekend a month. So to have him asking if the kids should come stay with him for a while? It definitely raised my hackles.

“ Jake and I handled it,” I said. I couldn’t resist adding, “Like we always do.”

“Yeah, but if you’ve got the cops and stuff at your house, is that really the best place for them?” he asked.

I felt my blood begin to boil. “Are you questioning my parenting?”

“No, Daisy, I just—”

“Good, because that would be a huge mistake on your part,” I said. “Considering you have them for about 60 hours a month and don’t really have to do much parenting, I don’t think you’re in much of a position to be questioning me or how I’m handling their well-being.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “Alright, alright. I was just asking.” He pushed off the car and readjusted his hands in his pockets. “And, uh, there’s something else.”

I sighed. “Okay.”

He cleared his throat and stared at the sky. “I’ve, um, met someone,” he said.

I looked up, thinking maybe he’d found Jesus. He’d never been the religious type, either.

“And it’s serious,” he continued. He cleared his throat again. “She’s become very special to me.”

So he hadn’t renounced his atheist ways.

“Oh,” I said,not bothering to hide my surprise. “That’s…great.”

And it was. Despite my complete frustration with him as a husband, I didn’t want him to be alone or unhappy. We’d reached the point where we were semi-friends again and he was still the kids’ father, regardless of whether or not I agreed with how he played that role. He’d struggled mightily trying to find someone to date after we’d divorced and the kids were always reporting back about his bad luck.

“So I, um, just wanted you to know,” he said. “Because I’m going to introduce the kids to her next time I have them.”

“I’m sure they’ll be excited.” I tried to inject some enthusiasm into my voice. They’d never shown any excitement about his past attempts at finding companionship. “They worry about you being alone.”

“We’ll probably be moving in together soon,” he said. “She has kids, too. Twin boys.”