Chapter 18: The Umbrella

Cora's POV

My old patient died at ten past four that afternoon, with his daughter holding one hand and me holding the other.

He was ninety-one, and he had told me the men who write things down are the ones hiding something.

That last day he looked at me and said, "Never mind. You're all right."

I closed his eyes myself.

I did not cry until I got to my truck, and then I cried for ten minutes with my forehead on the wheel.

His funeral was two days later, in the rain.

Before that, there was the yard.

The foreman had asked me to come the next morning, and I stood in the steam shed with him and Cliff while the oak hissed on its forms.

"She keeps a second set of books," the foreman said. "Everyone knows it and nobody says it."

"Where?"

"The blue binder in the office, behind the false panel in the green cabinet. Your husband's father built the panel himself."

"You've known that for thirty years."

"I've known a lot of things for thirty years." He wiped his hands on a rag. "I was paid not to."

Cliff had his notepad out.

"Will you say that on Founders' Day?"

The foreman looked at the planks for a long moment.

"If she's standing there," he said, "I'll say it to her face."

I put the binder in my bag and carried it out.

On the day of the funeral I drove to the church with my coat buttoned over my stomach and found that I'd forgotten an umbrella.

It was coming down hard on the lot, gray and cold, and the mourners were crowding under the awning.

I stood at the edge of the gravel, getting wet.

An umbrella opened over my head.

I didn't have to turn around to know whose hand held it.

"I'm not touching you," Anders said. "It's the umbrella."

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