DevilMayRide

18
After Thuggy left, Sadie adroitly backed the behemoth van out of her driveway while punching in her mother’s phone number on her cell.
“Can I talk to Dawn?” she asked her mother.
“Hello?” Dawn greeted.
“How’s it going?” Sadie asked her sister.
“Great. It’s been really nice visiting like this.” Her voice was light, but Sadie could hear the underlying tone of desperation. Spending time refereeing their mother and Aunt Lynn could make a person crazy.
“Aunt Lynn’s not so bad,” Sadie said.
“Auntie Lynn is a real hoot,” Dawn replied with forced cheeriness.
“That’s me,” Aunt Lynn shouted in the background. “I’m a hoot.”
“Stop shouting,” Sadie heard her mother’s voice hiss.
“And that’s your mother,” Aunt Lynn shouted again even louder. “The wet blanket.”
“Tell me you’re coming to rescue me,” Dawn said through clenched teeth.
“Not unless you want to come with me to a double-death decomposition scene.”
“Even the words make me feel like losing my lunch,” Dawn replied. “But it might be worth it to get out of this place,” she added on a whisper.
“I’m sending someone to keep an eye on you,” Sadie said.
“Really? Who? Is it Zack? Man, I could use some eye candy right now. Just looking at that man makes my insides all gooey.”
“It’s not Zack. It’s Thuggy.”
“Thuggy?”
“He’s kind of a coworker and he’s done security before. Zack said he’s okay, so I’m trusting him. He’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
“Is he cute?”
Sadie thought about that.
“If you find refrigerators or small mountains cute, then, yeah, he’s a real cutie-pie.” She gave Dawn a description of the muscled man. “He’ll give you a ride home and stay with you until I get there.”
“Fine, but if he’s not here shortly, I’ll leave without him and you’re going to owe me big-time,” Dawn said. “I’m talking back rubs and foot massages and loads and loads of free babysitting and diaper changes.”
“Don’t get carried away,” Sadie said. “I’ll offer to babysit when the kid hits puberty and understands what I do for a living.”
“Great. You’re already a pillar of support.”
“Sorry. Tell Mom that Terry is trying out new recipes for a wedding, and she may want the recipes because the food would blow her socks off.”
“Why would I tell her that?”
“Help me out. I need brownie points here. You’re having her grandbaby, so you can do no wrong. I’ve done wrong based on everything else in my life. It’ll help if she thinks I’m actually working on this shower thing.”
“Fine. Gotta go. I have to pee. I always have to pee. Oh, Auntie Lynn wants to talk to you.” There was the rustling of the phone changing hands before Sadie’s aunt came on the line.
“I was just telling your mom and sister about how Uncle Glen really loved spending time with you girls when you’d come for two weeks every summer.”
“Uncle Glen usually made us play board games for three days straight,” Sadie said with a smile, and she bit her tongue so she wouldn’t add, Then in the middle of the night I’d hear him talking to himself as he paced the floors and he scared me to death.
“He never forgot those days,” Aunt Lynn said. “Even just before he passed away, when he had one of his clearer moments, he said he wanted a rematch of your Monopoly game.”
“It was a nice weekend,” Sadie said. “It was just before he . . .” Sadie’s voice trailed off.
“Yes, before I locked him in the loony bin.” She sighed. “Sometimes I think that was what sent him over the edge. Just because a person hears voices doesn’t mean they have to be locked up. I wish I’d kept him home.”
Sadie thought of the voices of the dead in her own life and shuddered. She hoped nobody got it in their head to lock her up.
“You did everything you could,” Sadie assured her. “The doctors said it was for the best.”
“Maybe.”
“I have to go now. I’ve got a meeting with my staff,” Sadie replied quickly, and they said good-bye as she steered the van into the neighborhood of Queen Anne.
The heat was unbearable. She had the AC on high and still it seemed to make little impact inside the large expanse of the van. She dialed Thuggy’s cell and got his voice mail. She gave him all the addresses he needed and told him to hurry his ass over to her mom’s.
When she parked the vehicle a block down from the El Diablo coffee shop, she was fifteen minutes early. Sadie glanced in the rearview mirror and cringed as she caught sight of her reflection. She looked like she’d already sweated a bucket and then dumped it on her head. She dug around in her purse for a comb but came up empty. Ditto on the lipstick. She ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair, hoping to spike it and give it some lift. It lay limply against her scalp as if she’d just stepped out of the shower.
This was ridiculous. Why did she give a rat’s ass what she looked like?
Sadie gave up and climbed from her van, hoping the air-conditioned coffee shop would remove some of the sweaty gleam from her face. She walked through the wall of heat up the street to the coffee shop and noticed Zack’s Mustang parked at the curb. He was early too.
This is good, Sadie thought. We’ll have a chance to talk before Jackie gets here. I can tell him that I honestly don’t care if he’s sleeping with her.
“Where he unzips his pants doesn’t matter to me,” she murmured as she pushed open the door to El Diablo’s.
A blast of icy air hit her and goose bumps immediately cropped up on her forearms, but it felt good. She stepped into line behind a few others in need of their coffee fix, and she scanned the clientele for Zack. She finally spotted him perched on a stool at a counter near the wall that boasted the devil-girl mural, the shop’s mascot. Between Zack and the devil sat Jackie. Both had their backs to Sadie.
Sadie’s teeth clenched at the sight of them together. She repeated a mantra of it-doesn’t-matter, it-doesn’t-matter in her head while she waited in line to order her coffee.
She wanted a Cubano coffee, but she needed to cool off and not just because the thermometer said ninety outside. She ordered a piña colada batido and stepped aside to wait for it.
From the corner of her eye Sadie watched them. Zack was leaning left and speaking intently in Jackie’s ear, but it didn’t look cozy. He looked pissed. When he stabbed her shoulder with his index finger, Jackie flinched and nodded curtly in response.
It almost looked like Zack was telling her off about something. Then again, there was a very good chance they were just comparing stories and trying to decide how to handle Sadie and the impending meeting.
The barista handed Sadie her icy fruit shake and she stirred it once before taking a big breath and walking toward Zack and Jackie.
Be calm, she told herself. You need them to stay on as employees. Things will be fine as long as you don’t reveal your inner jealous bitch.
With an impassive look pasted on her face to hide her anger and trepidation, Sadie was at their counter before either of them looked over.
“Good. You’re both here.” Her voice was clipped. “How about we move to a table.”
“Sure,” Jackie said swiftly, swinging her long legs off her stool and snagging a nearby empty table.
“Good choice,” Zack said, nodding at Sadie’s fruit shake. “It’s hotter than a ten-dollar pistol out there.”
They sat then, the three of them sipping their various drinks. Sadie knew she had to be the one to break the silence.
“I just want to say,” Sadie began, pulling her chair closer to the table, “that I’m okay with . . .” She stumbled a little and used her hand to motion from Zack to Jackie. “With the two of you doing . . . I mean, being together.” She cursed the blush that crept up her neck, and sipped her shake.
“Look, it was a onetime thing,” Zack said. He looked at Jackie, his eyes challenging her to say otherwise.
“He’s right,” Jackie said, and added hurriedly, “I was at the bar and had too much to drink and I called Zack to come and give me a lift, but then I convinced him to have a few drinks too, and, well, one thing led to another and we shared a cab.” Her face reddened as she spoke and she fluffed her hair with her fingers to distract from her embarrassment.
“Could we please skip the details?” Sadie said, blinking away the repulsive visual of a drunk Zack and equally inebriated Jackie slobbering all over each other.
“Sorry. I just wanted to make sure you knew it was, like, you know . . .”
“A onetime thing,” Zack said.
“Right,” Jackie agreed.
God, this was positively painful!
“Look, I’m not a prude,” Sadie said. “I’m not going to fire either of you for, um, ending up together and—”
“It’s over.” Zack’s voice was louder than it should’ve been and other people turned to look over at them curiously.
“Um, okay.” Sadie was feeling increasingly more uncomfortable and struggled to regain control of the conversation. “Actually, what I really thought we should talk about was what Zack told you about me.” Sadie looked pointedly at Jackie.
“We don’t need to talk about it,” Jackie said. “I’m good.”
“No. We really do need to talk about it. Zack told you about my . . .” She groped for the words and lowered her voice to a mere whisper. “My way of dealing with spirits.”
Jackie’s lips threatened a smile, but Zack looked positively miserable.
“What’s done is done. It couldn’t have stayed a secret forever, but I can at least answer any questions you have,” Sadie said to Jackie. “I’d rather you hear it from me, and it would be good if you at least didn’t feel like you were working for a complete lunatic.”
A quick flash across Jackie’s face said that no matter what Sadie said, Jackie already had made up her mind Sadie was crazy. However, Jackie recovered her facial expression and changed it to bland.
“It’ll just take some getting used to,” Jackie said with a shrug. “But, hey, you can do whatever you do with, um, ghosts, and it doesn’t change what I do, right?”
“No. Of course not,” Sadie said quickly. “Your job doesn’t change. Zack’s job has never changed because of my, um, ability. I don’t know that he’s ever gotten used to it, but at least he’s stopped complaining about me talking to spirits around him when he’s working a scene.”
“It still freaks me out when she starts talking out loud and we’re on a scene,” Zack replied, his tone half-joking.
Sadie shot him a don’t-push-your-luck look.
“I don’t expect you to believe in ghosts or that I speak to the dead. I hardly believe it myself sometimes,” she said ruefully. “So if it’ll make you feel better to think you’re working for a nut or somebody who’s eccentric, I’m okay with that.”
Jackie offered her the first glimpse of a smile.
“But here’s the thing, and it’s a big thing,” Sadie said seriously. “This topic does not go beyond the three of us. I mean it. I need you to promise you won’t talk about this to anybody. You can understand how damaging it would be to Scene-2-Clean if this kind of thing got out.”
Jackie looked like she was about to say something, then thought better of it, and shook her head.
“Well?” Sadie demanded.
“I get it,” Jackie replied, looking down at her hands. “You don’t have to worry. It’s not like I’m going to run around telling people I work with a ghost whisperer.” She snorted and downed the rest of her coffee.
“Okay, and I’ll make sure you get that advance on your pay you asked about,” Sadie said, slurping from her drink. “Now let’s move on. We’ve got a big cleanup ahead of us. You probably heard about the case in North Queen Anne? The one with the eighty-year-old twin sisters who shared the house?”
“Sure. They both died at home and nobody noticed for almost two weeks,” Jackie said. “It’ll be nasty.”
“I’ve got the van loaded up,” Sadie informed them. “Let’s go.”
They drove the two miles until they were winding down the narrow street and Sadie parked her van in the sloped drive of an old Victorian home. On either side of the house stood modern multileveled homes squaring off for the best views. Zack and Jackie each parked at the curb and came to help her unload the van.
An old man across the street ran over to greet them just as Sadie was about to take supplies out of the van.
“I’m Bill,” he shouted, thrusting his hand at Sadie. The old man had a full round face layered with so many wrinkles he looked like a Shar-Pei dog.
“Bill Doyle?” Sadie asked as her hand was enveloped in a hardy handshake.
“Yes.” He nodded. “I called your company to do the job.”
“Nice to meet you, Bill. I didn’t know you would be meeting me here today. Do you live in the area?”
“Right there.” He pointed proudly across the street to a small, old cottage-style house.
Sadie made introductions.
“Zack and Jackie will be working with me on this house,” Sadie explained to Bill. To her employees she explained, “Bill is the heir to the twins’ estate. He was their good friend and, apparently, neighbor.”
“Wanda and Jean had nobody else,” Bill admitted, looking terribly sad. “It’s a shame what happened to them.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “A real shame. If I hadn’t been visiting my daughter in Maine, I would’ve noticed they hadn’t left the house. Every single morning Wanda and Jean would be out in their garden tending the roses.”
He pointed to the dense, thorny bushes that lined the drive so close they nearly scratched Sadie’s van.
“They’re beautiful,” Jackie said, smiling warmly at him.
“I just can’t believe they’re both gone at the same time. The medical examiner said Wanda fell down the stairs and the fall killed her instantly, and then Jean’s heart gave out, probably after she saw her dead sister, and Jean fell over the railing.” He sighed and shook his head. “I guess they were meant to be together forever.”
Sadie was an expert at handling the bereaved, but even she found this one a little hard to take.
“Yes, I guess we should be glad that they’re still together, right?” Sadie stepped aside and Zack opened the van door to take out supplies while she dealt with their client.
“Yeah, everyone’s been telling me that it’s nice they went at the same time, since they lived together for nearly fifty years. I guess that’s a good way to look at it, but it doesn’t sound right. Near the end they were talking about each getting their own place. They’d finally gotten fed up with living together.”
Guess Mr. Death put an end to that idea, Sadie thought drily.
Sadie put her hand on his shoulder.
“How about if we go over to your place and I’ll get you to sign the documentation and get the insurance papers from you, and we can chat while Zack and Jackie do the initial walk-through?”
“Good idea,” Zack said. “We can get started.”
“Jackie, would you mind taking the pictures? My camera’s in the van,” Sadie asked.
She left them then and walked across the street to the small home directly opposite.
Bill made tea and Sadie forced herself not to feel overly nauseated as she drank it. She hated tea. Why did grieving people always drink tea? He put a plate of stale cookies in front of her too, and Sadie politely took one.
“So you were away visiting your daughter?” Sadie asked as she delicately nibbled a cookie and watched as Bill looked over the Scene-2-Clean contract.
“Yes. She’s going through a divorce and wanted me there to tell her everything would be okay.” He looked up sadly. “Since my wife passed on a few years ago, it’s been up to me to make sure the whole damn family doesn’t fall apart. I do my best, but, hey, they’re spread all over the entire country. One in Maine. Two in Portland.” He sighed and sipped his tea. “Of course they all want me to move to where they are, and nobody gives a rat’s ass to the thought that this is my home!” Then he looked apologetic. “Sorry. You don’t need to hear about my garbage.”
“That’s okay,” Sadie assured him. “It must be hard without any relatives nearby.”
“We moved in on our wedding night.” He nodded across the street. “Wanda and Jean were already living across the street.” He picked up his mug and downed the remaining fluid. “They used to exchange recipes with my wife, Marge. When she passed, they took over feeding me too. Of course that was mostly Wanda. Jean never liked to cook.” He got up and opened the freezer portion of his fridge to reveal stacks of neatly labeled casserole dishes. “I’ve prolly got twenty meals still in here from those gals.” His voice broke with emotion. Bill closed the freezer door and sat back down. “It’s not the food I’m worried about. I can open a can when I need to. It’s just that nobody else in the area is very neighborly at all. Mostly Chinese and who knows what else living in these houses now. Some of them don’t speak a word of English, and they keep tearing down small houses like mine and building monster-sized mansions. They have families of three and four people living in five thousand square feet!”
“I’m sure if you reached out to your neighbors, you’d find a lot of them are really friendly,” Sadie said.
“Screw ’em,” he replied angrily, then added, “Pardon my language.”
“I understand you really miss Jean and Wanda. It must’ve been great to have ladies your own age to talk to.”
Suddenly Bill looked kind of flustered. He made a big show of getting up to get another pen when his didn’t work. Then he signed Sadie’s contract and ushered her out the door after she promised she’d let him know when the place was cleaned and ready for him to list for sale, if that was his choice.
When Sadie crossed the street to her van, Zack and Jackie were just stripping out of their hazmat suits and Zack handed Sadie the camera.
“It’s ugly,” he said, but he smiled when he said it. “Is it wrong for me to be glad we’re mopping up decomp from two old ladies instead of cleaning a meth lab?”
Sadie didn’t respond.
“The sites are close together. One at the bottom of the stairs,” Jackie said, “and the other a few feet over. I guess from the one who went over the railing. Lots of glass embedded in the hardwood there. Something broke.”
“I was told there was a large antique console table with a glass top under the landing. They figure Jean was standing looking over the railing at her sister dead at the bottom of the stairs. She keeled over the railing and landed on the glass console when she had her heart attack,” Sadie said matter-of-factly.
“Wow, they lived together all these years and then died together,” Jackie said. “Makes you think that they were just always meant to be together. It’s kind of sweet really.”
“Yeah, well, when I go, I don’t want it to be in ninety-degree heat and then left to rot at the bottom of my stairs for two weeks,” Sadie replied as she glanced through the digital display of the photos Jackie had taken.
They all suited back up just inside the back door. Sadie wished she’d had a chance to go through the house on her own. She told herself that it really didn’t matter. That she was going to be fine. But the minute she stepped inside the old house, she knew she was not going to be fine at all. Things were going to be more than a little stressful on this scene.
“Oh, for damnation, Wanda, just shut the hell up!” came a shout from down the hall.
Sadie, Zack, and Jackie walked toward the scene. They were in full hazmat gear including face masks. The pungent stench of death would’ve curled their hair otherwise.
“You don’t tell me to shut up, Jean! You’re the one who should shut up. For fifty years you’ve been telling me to be quiet and I’m not going to do it anymore!” squeaked an elderly lady’s voice.
When they reached the spirits making the noise, Sadie saw the two ladies just as clearly as she could see Jackie and Zack standing in front of her.
One of the eighty-year-old women was in a floor-length nightie, her neck was bent at an odd angle, and the left side of her head was smashed in with blood caked to her wiry silver curls. The other ghost had on merely a pantie girdle of some kind. Her steel-colored hair was in rollers, her face was peppered with embedded glass fragments, and her left arm was dangling uselessly at her side.
“Great. Just great,” Sadie murmured behind her respirator.
Sadie usually saw the dead as they appeared when they passed. When we’re talking eighty-year-old twin ladies with pendulum breasts swinging to their navels and no bras on to hold ’em up, it wasn’t pretty.
Jackie and Zack had brought in the medical waste bins. Zack was in the foyer using emulsifiers to soften dried tissue and decomp fluid by the front door, and Jackie was taking a utility knife to the carpet at the base of the stairs.
“Shit,” Sadie mumbled behind her respirator.
She tried to ignore the two ladies, but they were bickering loudly. Sadie grabbed a bin and began picking up glass, while Jean, the old lady with glass in her face and rollers in her hair, shouted at her sister.
Sadie concentrated as best she could. She carefully picked up shards of blood-covered glass with her gloved hands. Maggots protested and crawled after the pieces as she removed them. Maggots were determined little buggers. They were already annoyed that the main source of food, the bodies, was gone, but they would’ve happily gone on to swim in the decomp fluid and multiply as long as possible.
“Just look what you did to that console table,” the old woman referred to as Wanda complained. “I looked all over for one that fit that spot perfectly, and your big ass blew it to smithereens!”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Jean exclaimed. “I fell from the second floor. If you hadn’t hidden my heart medication, ya crazy ol’ bitch, my heart wouldn’t have given out just after you fell down the stairs!”
“I didn’t fall down the stairs, you stupid ninny. You pushed me!” Wanda screeched. Her broken neck had her head tilted in an odd angle like she was looking up at the ceiling.
“I wouldn’t have pushed you if you hadn’t said you were going to go and move in with Bill!” Jean shrieked. “How could you do that to me after all these years together?”
“For God’s sake, I just wanted to live! Is that so wrong? We’ve been together for all these years. . . . I just wanted a chance to be with a man. You robbed me of that!”
The two women wailed and screamed at each other like toddlers having a temper tantrum. Sadie pointed a gloved finger at first one and then the other.
“Knock it off!” Sadie hissed. “Stop it right now or so help me, I’ll leave your beautiful home a disaster.”
They stopped cold and looked at Sadie.
“Is she talking to us, Wanda?”
“Why, I believe she is, Jean.”
Both women inched toward Sadie, who looked over her shoulder at Zack and Jackie. They too had stopped what they were doing and were staring at her. Sadie cleared her throat and got back down on her knees to begin tossing out glass. The old ladies crouched down to Sadie’s level.
“How can you see us?” asked Jean.
“Maybe we’re not dead,” suggested Wanda hopefully.
“Have you looked in the mirror, honey?” Jean said, exasperated. “Trust me. You’re dead.”
“You don’t have to get so snippy,” Wanda sniffed. “I tried looking in a mirror, but there isn’t nothing looking back. Guess that says it all, then. Oh, Lord, I don’t wanna be dead!” She covered her face with her hands and began sobbing.
Jean went over and began patting Wanda’s back.
Sadie ignored them, or did her best to. When they’d been at the cleanup job for close to three hours, Zack suggested they all take a break.
They doffed their gear quickly. Sadie’s T-shirt was nearly soaked through with perspiration. Jackie looked like she had a fine mist on her.
“Want to grab a bite to eat and come back?” Zack asked.
“It’s too hot,” Sadie said. “Let’s finish tomorrow. They aren’t going anywhere.”
“Who?” Jackie asked.
“I mean this job. It’s not going anywhere,” she added quickly. “Why don’t we pick up where we left off in the morning bright and early before the heat hits? I’ve got lots of paperwork to do on the next meth lab and I want to try and talk to Egan again.”
“What’s up with Egan?” Zack asked. “Is he ever coming back?”
“Soon,” Sadie said.
She took her time putting her gear away. Jackie and Zack were gone and she considered leaving herself, but there was only one way she’d be able to come back tomorrow and that was if she dealt with the women today.
She suited back up and went into the house to deal with Jean and Wanda. The problem was, it was difficult to speak to them through the respirator. The dead liked to hang where they passed. They didn’t travel well unless they’d been left for some time. Then they sometimes got more limber. Using some elaborate hand gestures, she was able to convince Wanda and Jean to step out the back door and onto the deck. Sadie knew she was taking a chance the neighbors would see, but the yard had the protection of a lot of mature trees.
Removing her headgear, she got down to business. “You two are dead,” Sadie said matter-of-factly. “I can see and talk to the dead and I can help you move on.”
The spirit known as Jean crossed her arms, thankfully blocking the view of her droopy breasts, and shook her head full of curlers.
“I’m not going anywhere. If I go, Wanda will just haunt Bill and I’ll be all alone.”
“Isn’t that a fine how-do-ya-do?” Wanda snorted. She turned so that she could glare angrily at Jean, but with her head twisted at her broken-neck angle, she only looked like a pretzel. “Even after you kill me, you still don’t let me have my way!”
“I didn’t kill you on purpose!” Jean shouted. “You’ve always worn your nightdresses too long. Look!” She pointed at Wanda’s feet. “You’re stepping on it right now. It should come to your ankles so you won’t step on it. I told you I’d hem it, but no-o-o.”
“I wouldn’t’ve stepped on the damn thing and tripped down the stairs if you hadn’t pushed me!” Wanda shrieked.
“Okay, enough!” Sadie shouted, then cleared her throat and tried to regain some calm. “Neither of you can stay in this house forever.”
“Well, I’m not leaving,” Jean insisted.
“Me either,” stated Wanda.
Sadie groaned.
“Okay, let’s start from the beginning. From what I’ve heard, you were in love with Bill.” Sadie pointed at Wanda.
“He made me all tingly,” Wanda replied, pointing low in her nightie. “Down there.”
Sadie thought of Bill, the old guy who looked like a Shar-Pei dog, and tried to shake the visual of the two old fogies together.
“She was making a total ass of herself,” Jean hissed. “Always going over there with food morning and night. Suggesting they go off together for a weekend.” She clucked her tongue. “It was disgusting!”
“Why?” Sadie asked, holding up a hand in a stopping gesture.
“Why what?” asked Jean.
“Why was it disgusting?” Besides the obvious that they were as old as dirt and shouldn’t be thinking romantic thoughts. “Why would it bother you if your sister got some happiness in her golden years?”
“Because she’s not my sister. She’s my wife!” Jean spit, and her anger dissolved into tears.
Sadie just stood there with her jaw hanging open.
“It’s true,” Wanda said quietly. “We lived together for over fifty years in that way. We had no living relatives, so, well, to the world we were sisters. The twin spinsters who never married.” She turned her body so that her tilted head could look Sadie in the eye. “We don’t even look alike but nobody ever questioned it. We weren’t like you young people nowadays all living free with gay pride, you know. Things were different then. If you were a woman who liked other women, it wasn’t like you’d tell the world. You’d become a spinster. We would’ve been run out of this neighborhood back in our day.”
“Oka-a-ay,” Sadie said, unsure of what else she could say.
“We were happy. Then after fifty-three years you decided to throw yourself at another right in front of me as if I meant nothing. And, of all things, you went after a man!” Jean wailed.
“There. There.” Wanda put a hand on Jean’s back and patted it gently. “I just didn’t want to go to my grave never having experienced a man. Can’t you understand that?”
“No,” Jean replied stubbornly. “I can’t. You were my everything. I never wanted anybody else.”
They clung to each other then, a mess of silver hair, bloodstains, and undulating breasts. Ugh.
Sadie cleared her throat to get their attention.
“Look, since we can’t change what happened,” Sadie said, “how about we just change the future. You two won’t be happy here.” She looked at Wanda. “Bill can’t see you and he certainly can’t”—she waved at Wanda’s broken body—“satisfy you in any way.”
Wanda nodded reluctantly.
Sadie turned to Jean. “Can you accept the fact that Wanda loves you but wanted to try, um, a different flavor before she died? That doesn’t make what you had for all those years any less, um, special.”
“I guess,” Jean replied.
“I’m sorry,” Wanda said, reaching her hand out to her mate.
“Me too,” Jean replied, pulling her into another hug.
“Good. This is good. If I’m lucky, I might get home in time to wash this entire day away with a martini.” She blew out a breath. “You two are ready to move on. Close your eyes and think of the happy times you’ve had.” Both ladies smiled dreamily and closed their eyes, their hands still locked together. “Now think of living those special times together with all those who’ve gone before you. You’ll be accepted on the other side. No more lies.”
“Oh, that’ll be nice,” Wanda said.
The edges of the couple began to shimmer. Before long they were a luminous and transpicuous shape. Then they were gone in a flash, but the flash was real. Sadie whirled her head just in time to see the glint of the hot sun as it sparked off a camera lens.
“That’s all we need,” Scott Reed said to his cameraman. To Sadie he shouted across the yard, “Good to see ya, Sweets!”
Sadie felt nothing but a white-hot rage.