The Good Wife(2)

She wasn’t panicking yet, but she took a swift step down and teetered, which didn’t help her sense of self-control.

Maybe she should stop drinking. Maybe she needed to pay a little more attention to her own family.

Weaving through the guests packing the entry hall, she was heading to the living room when a hand reached for her.

“Sarah.”

Sarah turned and felt herself be drawn against a big, maternal body, enfolded into a particularly uncomfortable hug.

“I’m so sorry, my dear,” the woman whispered in Sarah’s ear as she patted her back. “So very, very sorry.”

“Yes,” Sarah murmured, juggling the wineglass while attempting to detangle herself.

But the woman wasn’t ready to release Sarah and the hug continued, as did the firm pats on Sarah’s back. “I just adored your mother. She will be very missed, my dear.”

Sarah sighed inwardly, giving in to the hug, because that’s all she’d been doing for days. Accepting condolences. Speaking of her spirited, wickedly funny mother in hushed, reverent tones. Speaking of her lively, loving mother in the past tense.

I absolutely adored her . . . She was just wonderful . . . She will be so missed . . .

Sarah blinked hard, willing the lump in her throat to go away. “Thank you for coming,” she said huskily, successfully pulling away even as she injected the right note of warmth and appreciation into her voice. As the youngest, Sarah had been able to watch her mom in action the longest, and her mom, a nurse who had returned to school to earn her MBA in Hospital Administration, was brilliant with people. She had a soft touch that belied her steely core.

And then the woman was gone, and Sarah was back on her mission to find her daughter, and she squeezed through the crowd, into the living room, searching chairs and small corners in case Ella had found a quiet spot to sit.

But no Ella here either, and trapped as she was by the mantel with its profusion of flowers and framed photos of Mom, Sarah’s head spun, her stomach churning from too much wine on an empty stomach and the cloyingly sweet scent from the Stargazer lilies filling her nose.

My God, but the living room smelled like a mortuary.

Suddenly the tears were falling and Sarah faced the mantel so no one could see her cry. She couldn’t bear it if someone approached her now, trying to comfort her. She didn’t want to be comforted, not when she hadn’t even truly begun to grieve. And how could she grieve with hundreds of people reaching for her, talking to her, trying to keep her from feeling whatever it was she was feeling?

But maybe funerals weren’t for grieving. Maybe funerals were just a thing you did, a way you marked an occasion, passed time.

Maybe once she returned home to Tampa Bay, maybe once she was with Boone, she could let herself feel . . . let herself hurt . . . let herself need . . .

“There you are,” Meg Roberts said, pushing through the crowd to reach Sarah’s side, with another sister, Brianna, in tow. Sarah had three sisters and Meg was the oldest and married with three kids, while Sarah’s fraternal twin sisters, Brianna and Kit, were both forty, single, and committed to their respective missionary work—Kit, teaching Catholic school in Oakland, and Brianna, working as an infectious disease nurse in Africa.

“Kit was looking for you earlier,” Meg added, tugging gently at the severe neckline of her black dress and fanning herself. “She wanted you to know that she’s taken your two and my Gabi to the park, thinking it would be good to get the younger kids away from the house for a while.” Meg exhaled hard, cheeks flushed. “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?”

“It’s hot in here,” Brianna said. “Somebody needs to turn down the heat.”

“Good to know it’s not just me,” Meg muttered, lifting a hand to wave at a couple across the room. “Can’t remember their name. Friends of Mom. I think the woman used to work at St. Mary’s—”

“Lorraine O’Neill, and her husband, Charlie,” Brianna said, glancing over her shoulder. “I’ve already spent a half hour talking to them today. Lorraine is taking Mom’s death really hard, and she’s quite emotional. If she nabs you, you’ll end up comforting her.”

“Don’t want to do that,” Sarah said. “Don’t want to do any of this. When are people going to go?”

“Soon, I hope,” Meg said. “I’ve got a terrible headache.”

“I do, too. I think it’s the flowers.” Sarah slid her empty glass onto the mantel, where it clinked against a vase, and then against a metal frame. All week Aunt Linda had been gathering pictures of Mom, turning the living room into a shrine. Mom, the swaddled newborn. Mom, the wary toddler on a red tricycle, and then again as the serious, knobby-kneed five-year-old in her plaid uniform on the first day of kindergarten.