She sipped her iced coffee. “So, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…”
“My mother is my priority. I can’t lose sleep over whether Elec is coming.”
It was all I could think about.
That night, Greg and Clara had me and my mother over for dinner. They insisted I get her out of the house since I’d told them she spent most of the day crying in her room while random people dropped off food.
During dinner, Mom was quiet and barely touched her chicken and dumplings. She drank copious amounts of Zinfandel wine instead.
The wake was scheduled for the day after tomorrow. The pit in my stomach was growing by the second.
I just needed to know.
I finally asked, “Have you contacted Elec?” I swallowed the lump in my throat in anticipation of Clara’s response.
“Yes. I spoke to him today. He was despondent when I told him, and it wasn’t clear whether he would be coming.”
Just knowing that she’d spoken to him had made my heart beat even faster. “Where is he?”
“He’s still living in California near Pilar.”
“Did you have his phone number?”
She looked over at her husband and said hesitantly, “Um…Greg’s kept in touch with him. We know he and Randy had a horrible relationship. Greg had tried to intervene some years back. Elec and he sort of bonded in the process. Randy actually never really knew about that.”
I looked over at Greg as if he were holding all in the information in the world that mattered to me. “What is he doing now?” My voice was shaky.
“He graduated from college, got his social work license. He’s working with disadvantaged youth. The last time we spoke was probably about six months ago.”
“Really…”
Wow.
That was more information than I’d gotten in years. It made me both happy and sad at the same time to know that he was doing well—sad only because I didn’t know him anymore and hadn’t ever met the man that he’d become.
I cleared my throat. “So, you don’t know if he’ll be here?”
“No. He wouldn’t say,” Clara said. “I think he was in shock. I gave him all of the details so that he’d have them.”
My heart tightened in agony at the thought of what might have been going through Elec’s mind wherever he was at that very moment.
***
The smell of lilies made me sick. Everyone seemed to be sending the Stargazer kind that stunk the most. I offered to drive a bunch of the arrangements that had been sent to the house over to Thomas’ Funeral home.
The service would be starting at four, but before then, we were supposed to be going over to Greg and Clara’s again for a light lunch.
My mother accompanied me as we laid out the flowers in the corners of the room surrounding the spot where the coffin would go. We also dropped off pictures of Randy and us from over the years. It made me sad that there wasn’t one photo of Randy and Elec.
The funeral home smelled liked a mix of musty wood and air freshener. I wasn’t looking forward to coming back later and having to see Randy’s body or my mother’s reaction.
On the drive back to Greg and Clara’s, I held my mother’s hand. She was doing better than expected, although I was fairly certain she’d taken some Xanax to take the edge off.
When we got to the house, I was relieved that there were no cars that I didn’t recognize out front. That meant it would just be the four of us for lunch.
My relief turned to panic almost immediately when I entered the house and spotted a black suitcase outside of the closet in the foyer.
Clara hugged my mother as I looked around anxiously.
Too nervous to ask the question I wanted to, I stood in silence as my chest tightened. Then, finally, I took a deep breath in and out and asked, “Whose suitcase?”
“Elec is here, Greta. He’s upstairs.”
My heart started to pound furiously, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I suddenly needed air. “Excuse me,” I said, walking out the back door and into their yard.
Unprepared to face him, I stared over at the red tulips in the flower garden. A part of me truly didn’t think he’d be here because of his volatile relationship with Randy, although the dread I’d been carrying around the past couple of days was proof that another part of me was readying for it.
I didn’t know what I was going to say to him.
The cool spring air blew my hair around, and I looked up at the sky as if to shun the universe for dropping this bomb on me. Perhaps, I got my response because thunder rumbled in the distance.
Call it intuition or instinct, something made me turn around and look up at the French doors on the second floor balcony that overlooked the garden where I was standing.