The driver called his boss. The boss called Tamra at nine-forty. Forty-five minutes before mourners would start walking down those basement stairs.
There was no lunch coming. Full refund, of course. She was terribly sorry. But there was simply nothing left to deliver.
Harold called Louise because Harold, bless him, didn’t know what else to do. His wife had been gone eleven years. He’d never once in his life organized a meal for more than himself and a dog.
“Louise,” he said. “I don’t suppose there’s any way—”
He didn’t even finish the sentence.
He didn’t feel he had the right to ask. Not after what the church had done to the five of us two months before.
Louise called me.
I called Wanda and Marge while Louise called Eunice. That’s how we’d always split the calls. Thirty years of habit moving faster than thinking.
