“On the floor? You’ll do no such thing, Mr. Hilroy. We have a guest house. I only need to fetch the key and make up the bed. Now I wanted to show you these blinds, but that can wait.”
She would ask the auxiliary to help with finding him a wardrobe and some toilet items, she thought as she dragged poor Mr. Hilroy around, and on his last legs too. She arrived back in the meeting room to find only Mrs. Yamamoto.
“Mercedes and Mr. Peter have gone to fetch Mr. Harrison.” Mrs. Yamamoto smiled at Mr. Hilroy when Edith introduced them and nodded approval as she dug the guesthouse key from her knitting bag. “Take your time. I will let the social committee know that the house is occupied.”
Outside, they met Mercedes leaving the golf cart. Edith had a vague thought that it was odd the men weren’t with her, but she was just so relieved to see Mercedes. “Mr. Hilroy, let me introduce you to our manager—”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Garvey,” Mercedes said in a faint voice. The hand she closed over Edith’s arm was icy and painful in the way she gripped her. Her freckles stood out against her pale face. “I have to get my protocol notes and meet the cor—” She choked on the word, then got it out. “Coroner.”
“No,” Edith breathed, looking to the cart empty of Peter Dolinski and—
“Harrison,” Mercedes murmured with a nod, eyes blinking to hold back tears.
“No.”
“I’m sorry,” Mercedes said, finally releasing the claw-like grip on her arm. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Hilroy. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
Mr. Hilroy. Edith glanced up at him.
He wore a deeply sympathetic expression. “If you could just give me the key to the apartment, I’ll go lie down.”
“No, no,” Edith said, too stunned to think beyond doing what needed to be done. “The house is just over here.”
The tiny house was stuffy, despite the lowered blinds holding out the heat. She clicked on the air conditioner and opened the linen closet, finding the sheets and carrying them into the bedroom. She didn’t bother with the light. Enough filtered sunshine came through the cracks in the blinds.
Mr. Hilroy followed and stood on the far side of the bed, helping her tuck the fitted sheet onto the mattress, billowing the flat sheet and placing it just so. When she reached for the comforter, he stopped her.
“I don’t even have a tissue to offer, just...” He plucked up the fabric of his shirt. “I’ve already left a few of my own tears on it.”
“I’m crying?” She touched her cheek and found it damp.
Mr. Hilroy gently turned her and lowered her to sit on the end of the bed. “I’m too tired and out of sorts to keep standing,” he said.
Manners, she thought, distantly admiring them.
And Harrison. Oh, Harrison.
“What a terrible thing,” Mr. Hilroy said into the gloom.
“Yes,” she agreed.
He reached to take her hand and pressed it between his own. It was a familiarity she never would have allowed at any other time in her life, especially from a stranger, but right now, she was unspeakably grateful.
Oh, Harrison.
L.C. was trying to master the use of a semi-colon per Edith Garvey’s instruction when Mercedes let herself into his side of the duplex.
He glanced up only long enough to identify her, not surprised she hadn’t knocked. The kids had started walking in like they owned the place since last week, when his lessons with Dayton had started.
Mercedes had admonished them, but L.C. genuinely didn’t mind. The neighborly visits of folks walking by, bringing toasters and motorized scooters for repair, were growing on him. Weirdly, he was discovering a sense of place and belonging he’d never known.
She lowered herself onto the second-hand, paint-spattered kitchen chair across from him, her sleek legs just inside his field of vision. And sniffed.
L.C. lifted his gaze.
Mercedes raised her hand, pushed her hair out of her eyes. Wiped a tear.
His heart stopped. “What’s wrong?”
Silence. Just a look that closed his throat.
“Not one of the kids?” He couldn’t bear it. He really couldn’t.
She shook her head, twisting her hands in her lap. “Harrison.” Her chin crinkled up and her tears rolled. One fell off her jaw. She swiped at it, sniffing again.
L.C. closed his eyes. He waited, praying she’d say something else, something that would take back what she’d just told him. He ground his teeth, holding back the flood of pain. Of anger. Harrison was old. It shouldn’t matter. But it did. He really liked that guy.
Fuck.
“He didn’t come to the board meeting,” she said in a cracked voice. “So Mr. Dolinsky and I went to check on him. The coroner is on the way, but it looks like he collapsed making his coffee this morning. I got his meds, though. The other day when he asked. You heard us, right? I went by his house and gave them to him that day so I don’t understand how...”
“It’s not your fault.” He opened his eyes to see her looking so lost and tortured, it tore something open in his chest.
“I, um...” She rubbed at her wet face. “I have a lot to do. I’m going to call Zack to get the kids, but I wanted to come tell you myself.”
“I can get the kids.”
“Can you?” Her hands kept twisting and twisting in her lap while her gaze hit his with apology, but with shadows of tough realism in the bottoms of her eyes.
He snorted, reminding himself never to underestimate her intelligence. The craving for alcohol clawed at him all the time and was roaring into a fury of need as he fought accepting this news. Please, please let some terrible mistake have been made, because once the truth really sank in—
“This is the one part of my job that totally destroys me,” Mercedes murmured, gaze dropping. Another tremor shook her lips. “He didn’t have any family. Pete Dolinski wants to do the eulogy, but he’s so upset.”
“I’ll go see him.”
“You don’t have to. Not if it will be hard for you.”
If he would get drunk with Pete, she meant. She looked at him like she knew he was mentally picking up his wallet and finding the quickest route to the nearest bar. It was only three blocks. He thought of it every day. Walking would take longer, but he could stop at the corner store for cigarettes. The thick, hot smoke would burn away this tightness in his throat.
“I have to go. People are waiting.” She stood. “I just wanted you to know.”
“I’ll call Zack.” He climbed to his feet so he could dig his phone out of his jeans pocket. While she waited, he left a message telling Zack to phone Mercedes on her number as soon as he was out of class, to confirm he could get the kids and watch them for the rest of the day. What else could he do for Harrison’s Mercy-girl?
The corner of Mercedes’s mouth lifted in a half-smile of gratitude. She reached for his hand, drawing it to her cheek so his knuckles pressed into the damp track of her tears.
“I wish I could stay with you, but this is my job. Will you try to hang on? Please? I have a lot to get through and I’m going to need you later.” She kissed the inside of his wrist and looked up at him, asking the impossible.
“Yeah,” he said, having no idea if he could.
She nodded and walked away, leaving him rubbing the damp of her tears into the back of his hand. Leaving him dying for a drink, thinking, Damn you, Harrison.
Mercedes came home late, silently opening her front door, emotionally numb, mind blank.
Zack slept between the kids on the pull-out, still dressed, his big body sprawled on top of the covers. Ayjia had curled into the hollow between his upraised arm, and his crooked knee. Dayton had his back to Zack, but his small body was tucked as close to Zack’s as possible without actually touching.
Mercedes reached to touch Zack’s bare foot, intending to shake him awake, but hesitated. She wasn’t ready for a fresh bout of questions and sorrowful looks. She wasn’t ready to face the children if they woke.
Moving to shut the patio door, she noticed L.C. next door, his silhouette black against the hill that rose up behind their duplex.
Instead of closing the glass door, closing him out, she went through and carefully closed it behind her.
He didn’t say anything. In the pale light cast by the single lamp he’d left on inside his own unit, she saw grief had etched lines into his shadowed face.
Remorse stabbed at her. She shouldn’t have left him alone all day. It hadn’t been fair. Grief was a sharp, cold knife for him, she was sure.
He didn’t move, but his arm reached out, a request for solace.
Silently opening the iron gate between their concrete pads, she slipped through and let him draw her into a one-armed hug.
Her arms reached to encircle him, her need for human contact acute. She’d been embracing frail bodies all day, careful of brittle bones and thin, loose skin. She’d been offering comfort and now took some in the hard strength of L.C.’s broad shoulders and muscled chest. In the deep, healthy breath he drew that expanded his chest under the side of her face.
Pressing her nose into the scent of him, his laundry-softened T-shirt and warm hard pecs, she felt the sadness that she’d been stifling all day catch in a welling sob.
His other arm came around her, cradling her close. His hand clutched the back of her head. His arms jerked in a convulsive way that suggested both taking and giving of comfort. Shared grief.