* * *
We were late in pulling up to the rural industrial building used as the Gilcrest Church of the Lord because, being distracted by chatting with Betty, I’d missed my turn and had to backtrack on an ill-advised detour along back roads. Before that we’d been stuck in town by a long train holding up traffic, something that happened at least ten times a day because the Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks ran right through the middle of town, often delaying me and the rest of the world. Caught by one, you might as well just turn off your engine and be prepared to sit and wait—which is what Betty and I had had to do. Then I felt pressured to make up time, and that led to the distraction and the detour. Perhaps we had left home a little late, as well, preoccupied as we were in our rushed schedule of the morning.
Slipping in the back of the church so as not to disturb anyone, Betty and I took our seats on metal folding chairs. Hannah had been waiting for us and looked relieved when we sat down next to her. Standing on the podium at the head of the room, a sweating man in a shiny tan suit was already into a sermon. There was a scattering of people in the audience, mostly older, grey-haired women, and I was surprised not to see any of Shannon’s contemporaries. The man started going on about GOD-dah and Our LORD-dah and how everyone’s a sinner, but he didn’t mention Shannon at all. After a while I couldn’t stand it. I needed air.
I whispered to Betty that I’d be outside and quietly slipped through the rear doors. As I tried to exit through the vestibule, a woman standing there frantically motioned me over to sign the guest book.
“Be sure to give us your address and phone number so we can contact you!” she requested in a perky whisper.
That stopped my signing hand right there. “Isn’t this the guest book for Shannon Parkhurst’s funeral?”
“Oh no, lovey. Her funeral was yesterday. This is our usual ‘Saturday Service of Remembrance of Our Lord. ’ The Reverend Jackson preaches a powerful Word, doesn’t he now? Mrs. Thorton requested that he pray for her poor grandniece’s soul at the beginning of the service today.” She looked down the long waxed linoleum hallway, gave a dry sniff, and pushed her glasses farther up her thin nose. She gave me a look like she’d just explained the Second Coming.
Perhaps that clarified the lack of young people at this service; it wasn’t Shannon’s funeral. It had seemed like a funeral notice in the newspaper, but I’d been wrong. I didn’t really need a sermon either, so after I lied to the woman that I’d be back to sign her book, I went outside to sit under a tree by the car and wait for Betty and Hannah. I waited a long time in the scorching afternoon—long enough to feel guilty about ditching the service but not guilty enough to go back inside.
Finally they both trudged up to the car, and Hannah threw herself into the backseat with a groan. Tall and blonde, Hannah was a younger version of her mother and sometimes even sounded like her.
Betty got in the front and started looking for her water bottle. “Honey, you need any water or anything?” she asked Hannah. “Do you have any food to eat when you drive back? Do you want some snacks?”
Hannah laughed her mother’s laugh, “No, Mom, I’m okay! Really! I think I can make it back to Greeley! Really! And hello, Lily! Good to see you!”
“Hey, Hannah!” I said to her in the mirror as I started the car so I could turn on the air- conditioning, cranked up full blast.
“I wish I’d known this was going to be like church! Ugh! It was so long! This wasn’t even her funeral!” Hannah folded her suit jacket, laid it on the seat beside her, and flopped her arms up and down to air out her blouse.
“I know, I made a big mistake, Hannah. I thought it was but—”
“It’s okay, Lily. At least I made the effort, and I could give my sympathies to Shannon’s aunt. I didn’t even see the boyfriend. It actually makes me feel better knowing that it wasn’t Shannon’s funeral—I was feeling pretty sad that more of Shannon’s friends weren’t here. I mean, we weren’t that close after college, but she was a great girl, and I know she must have had lots of friends.”
I twisted around in the seat to talk to her. “Yeah, I had the idea that she had quite a few friends here when she worked with me years ago, but—”
“Well, I bet they were all at the funeral. Shannon just had that touch, you know, around people? She seemed to make friends wherever she went …” Hannah’s voice trailed off. Through the windows I could hear the loud cawing of a pair of large crows perched on a snag in a nearby tree. Hannah looked out her window at the sound, the back of her hand wiping her cheek.
“You know, I feel like, maybe, I could have done something,” her voice wavered, “helped her, talked to her. Something …”
“Oh, sweetie, you didn’t even know she was here! You couldn’t have done anything—really, honey,” her mother answered as she reached out for her daughter’s hand. “I know you feel sad. I do, too.”
“I might know how you feel, Hannah. The same thoughts have been going through my mind, that maybe I could have talked to her or something. But your mom is right. Shannon didn’t let either one of us know she was here,” I said.
“Yeah, but—I dunno—I wish I could have talked to her. She just didn’t seem to be the type to commit suicide; that’s all!” Hannah said firmly. Betty turned and glared at me as if I had been the one to bring the subject up. So much for shielding her daughter from disturbing thoughts.
“What about you, Lily? Do you think she seemed like she’d ever kill herself? Did she seem the type?” Hannah queried curiously.
“No, she didn’t,” I answered.
Hannah sighed and fanned herself with a church bulletin she had pulled from her purse. The air-conditioning had finally cooled the car down to an agreeable level in the front seat, but the backseat was still uncomfortably warm. Young Hannah was still sweating profusely, despite the holy fanning material, as she looked out the window across the sun-baked prairie.
“Oh, I don’t know—I’m not thinking straight. I guess they’ll investigate and everything. I’m probably wrong. What do I know? Maybe she changed? I guess I’ll never know. I guess that’s the hard part,” Hannah said, “not knowing.” She shook her head in sorrow and then started to gather up her jacket, purse, and the bottle of water Betty had thrust upon her. I felt this was probably a time to keep further suicide suspicions to myself, since I knew no more than Hannah did.
“I know, honey, I know,” Betty said soothingly, “I really don’t think you could have done anything. Are you going to be okay to drive home? You gonna to be okay?”
“Yeah, Mom, I’m okay. I’m sad—Shannon was a sweetie; I’ll miss her! But I’m okay,” Hannah said as she started to climb out of the car.
“Oh, Mom, I almost forgot—do you need my help with what Mrs. Thorton needs moved, or will you and Lily just do it by yourselves?” she asked.
“Move what by ourselves?” I inquired a bit suspiciously. “What did you volunteer us for?”
“Now wait, Toots. When we went over to talk to Mrs. Thorton she just asked me if I could do her a favor. I couldn’t get out of it, really. And it’s no big deal anyway. You and I can do it—easy.”
I groaned.
“Well, time for me to be off!” Hannah broke in. She gave her mother and then me a hug from the backseat and pushed open the door. “We’re leaving really, really early in the morning, but I promise we’ll call you as soon as we get to Las Cruces! Love you, Mom!”
Betty got out of the car to wave good-bye and to tell her daughter to be careful for the hundredth time, and I thought no matter how many times we want to say to our beloved, “Be careful, be safe, come back to me,” the words never seem to be enough protection.
When Betty got back in, I said, “Give me the story about what the aunt needs.”
“Okay, I told you that we went up to give our regrets after the service, and Mrs. Thorton—Bernice is her name, and she’s actually Shannon’s great-aunt—latched onto me and started in on her woes. What was I supposed to do?
“I’d only met her once, years ago, at something the girls were doing together—I forget what. That was the only time I met Shannon, too. Anyway, today Bernice was upset, of course. She seemed overwhelmed with trying to pack and move Shannon’s stuff out of the rental and back to her own place in Timnath, since I guess she can’t drive and has no way to transport all of it. When Hannah mentioned I was visiting someone in town, Bernice asked—no, pleaded—for me to take a trunk back for her nephew to pick up.”
I remembered that Betty had said that the one time she had met Bernice, the poor woman spent the entire time bending Betty’s ear about how she had tried her best with her “hellion” niece Shannon—abandoned by her drug-addicted mother and dumped at age ten on Bernice’s doorstep—but I didn’t remember mention of a nephew.
I started to question some of Betty’s information. “But—”
Betty glanced at me and said, “Oh, come on, Lily! Don’t roll your eyes at me! You know you would have done the same damn thing if she’d asked you. So don’t give me any crap.” I shut my mouth and looked innocently out the window.
She smiled and continued, “Anyway, I guess he really wanted the trunk, but he’s having car trouble or something. She thought she’d save him the bother of coming all the way out here.
“Guess she thought it would be easier for him to get it in town. I thought it would be all right, so I told her we’d pick it up and take it to your place. Hope that’s okay?”
I groaned again, this time to myself. Betty Huckleston, kind soul that she is, was always volunteering to do some favor for someone. That woman would go without shoes to give them to someone else, I thought. I wasn’t quite that altruistic, although I could learn from her largesse.
As I remembered Bernice Thorton from Betty’s impression of her in the past, I hoped that her I-can’t-do-a-thing hand-wringing wouldn’t, in the long run, lead to me having to lug a probably heavy trunk out to her place in Timnath—because, I generalized, Bernice’s young nephew would be unreliable, would miss appointments, wouldn’t show up on time; I’d have to wait for hours to no avail and then, in the end, would take the trunk out to her anyway!
Wait, there you go again; you’re making that up, I chastised myself. Making up stories. Everything will be just fine. Jeez, the woman’s suffered a horrible loss. Be generous; be charitable. Just do what it takes.
So I kept my mouth shut, smiled weakly, and said, “Yeah, sure. Where do we pick it up?”