David Bell - Never Come Back

“Okay,” she said. “They’re finished in there. You can go on in.”

As I approached the door to my mother’s bedroom, a handful of people filed out, including the person wearing the ME Windbreaker. None of them looked me in the eye or said anything as they passed. Perhaps they thought I was radioactive. When everyone was gone, I stepped into the room.

Both the overhead lights and the bedside lamps glowed, almost hurting my eyes. Like the rest of the house, Mom’s bedroom was the picture of order. Bed made, clutter absent. The décor looked out-of-date, as though nothing had been changed or revamped in more than a decade. Only one thing looked out of place.

In the narrow space between the bed and the dresser stood a stretcher with my mother’s body lying on top of it. Her eyes were closed, and a sheet covered everything except her head and shoulders.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I jumped at the sound of the voice. It was Detective Post, and she reached out her hand and placed it on my shoulder. “Do you need anything from me?”

“I’m fine,” I said. I always told people I was fine. Okay. No problem. No worries. It wasn’t always true, but I said it. I’d never been less fine, looking at my mother’s dead body.

“You don’t have to see her like this if you don’t want to,” Detective Post said. “The funeral will be a different environment, if you want to wait.”

“Has somebody told my uncle?” I asked.

“Your uncle?”

“My uncle Paul,” I said. “My mom’s brother. Her only relative besides us. I guess I can call him and tell him what’s happened.”

“What’s his full name?” Post asked. “We can make the notification.”

“Paul McGrath,” I said, happy to be relieved of the burden. I gave the detective his phone number. “He’s very close to Mom and Ronnie.”

“But not you?” she asked.

“Me too,” I said. “I’m just not around as much these days. Why don’t you let me make the call? He should hear it from me, not from a police officer.”

“I think you have enough on your mind,” Post said. She nodded in the direction of Mom’s body, then stepped back, leaving me alone in the room.

I hesitated a moment, then moved forward until I was sitting on the bed next to the stretcher. Mom’s mouth was pulled back in a tight line, something just short of a grimace. She didn’t look, as the cliché has it, peaceful in death. She looked like someone who had died in pain. Mom wasn’t a fashionable woman. Everything I learned about clothes and hair and makeup I read about in magazines or heard about from my friends. But Mom always looked good for her age. She remained thin and fit as she aged, and only a few streaks of gray ran through her hair.

I leaned forward and placed my hand on her shoulder. I avoided contact with her skin. I didn’t want to feel it if it was cold. That would be too much—too real and harsh. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I didn’t know what else to do, so I said what I wanted to say.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry I couldn’t just say what you wanted to hear me say.”

I squeezed her shoulder, then cried as I hadn’t cried since Dad died.

I don’t know how long I cried for, but twice I thought everything had come out of me only to find a new round of sobbing rising up from my chest and shaking my whole body. When it finally seemed to have stopped for good, I removed my hand from Mom’s body, pulled some tissues from a box on the nightstand, and wiped my face. I took two deep breaths before pushing myself off the bed and stepping back into the hallway where Detectives Richland and Post waited with a few of the others who had been in the bedroom. They could no doubt tell I’d been crying, had no doubt heard me, and they all shifted their feet uncomfortably and averted their eyes as I passed.

Detective Richland cleared his throat. “We’re just finishing up here, Ms. Hampton.”

I knew what he meant. They needed to remove the body from the house.

“There’s some paperwork you’ll have to go over with the medical examiner,” he said, his hands moving again as though he were turning a crank. “It’s pretty routine. Your mother’s body will be transported for an autopsy, and then it will be released to the funeral home of your choice. Did your mother specify any plans for her funeral?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably. She was a careful planner.”

“We contacted your uncle and told him what happened,” Post said.

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“He was shaken,” she said. “But he seemed to be holding it together.”

“I’ll have to call him. He’ll be good with Ronnie.”

“Speaking of that—” Richland leaned over and looked into Ronnie’s bedroom. He tilted his head toward the living room, indicating I should follow him, which I did. When we were there, he asked, “Do you know why Ronnie was at this Mrs. Morgan’s house tonight?”

“No,” I said.

“Did your mother have plans?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She never went anywhere.”

“Mrs. Morgan isn’t answering her phone.”

“She’s ninety,” I said. “And deaf as a stone wall.”

“Had your mother been having any problems?” Richland asked. “Money trouble? Disagreements with anyone?”

“I don’t know.”

Richland appeared to sense my impatience with his questions. He scratched the top of his head, then said, “Make sure you and your brother are around. We may have more questions to ask you both.”

“We have a funeral to plan,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll be going on any cruises.”

When it was time for them to bring Mom out of her bedroom, I went and sat with Ronnie. I placed my arm around his shoulder again and held him tight. But I didn’t close the bedroom door. We sat next to each other, watching in silence, as the two paramedics wheeled the stretcher past Ronnie’s bedroom door, the sheet pulled up and covering Mom’s face.

I felt better when Paul showed up.

After the police and the paramedics—and Mom—were all gone, having finally finished with their endless photographs and poking around the house, I called Paul. He answered right away. I didn’t have to say anything to him. I couldn’t. Just hearing his voice made me want to cry again.

“Paul…” I managed to get out. Just that. My voice sounded as if I had swallowed a bullfrog.

“I heard,” he said. His voice was hollow and distant. He was sitting in his house, absorbing the blow all alone.

I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. I expected him to be stronger than me. I needed him to be stronger.

“Can you—?” I tried to ask. The words were caught in my throat.

“Are you— Do you want me to come over now?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Are they… the police and everything… ?”

“They’re gone,” I said.

“Let me get dressed,” he said.

Paul was two years younger than my mom and also her only sibling. He’d been divorced a long time, since before I was born, and he didn’t have any children. I suspected Ronnie and I filled that role in his life. He treated us like adults, as if the things we said were important. And I know Mom leaned on him a lot.

When he came through the door, just thirty minutes after they’d removed Mom’s body, I couldn’t have been happier to see anyone. We hugged a long time, and when we finally separated, I saw the tears in his eyes. He looked all of his sixty-seven years. He ordinarily seemed so youthful, so energetic. But that night, he suddenly looked like an old man.

“Ronnie?” he said.

“He’s in his room,” I said. “He seems okay. But he was the one who found her. He called the police. They told me they think—”