Lynda Curnyn - Killer Summer

I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me more—the way Tom was practically groping Sage, the way Sage was letting him or the way Vince was gazing speculatively at Sage. I’d already pegged Tom as a wacko, but Sage? Hello? I mean, yeah, Vince was hot—dark-eyed, dark-haired, with rough-hewn yet exotic Italian looks, but this wasn’t some pickup spot in the meat-packing district. This was a fucking wake.

People grieve in different ways. If this was grieving, then maybe I should start attending more funerals. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do with my Saturday nights these days.

I felt relieved at the sight of Nick loping through the door, but whether it was because this happy little threesome had forgotten I was there, or because I didn’t exactly want to be remembered by them, I wasn’t sure. I slipped away—not that any of them noticed—and intercepted Nick at the door.

“Hey,” I said, looking up at him and noticing his dark brown hair looked a little more unkempt than usual, his eyes tired.

“Hey, Zoe. Did I miss anything?”

Oh brother. “Not much. I think there might be some supermodels left for you to hit on.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” I studied his dark eyes. “So how are you doing?” I knew at least Nick had experienced some of the shock I had, judging by the way he kept replaying his final conversation with Maggie about the ill-fated dinner plan. I understood what he was going through. I had played Maggie’s last voice mails back at least six times, listening to her cheerfully rattle off the ingredients she needed and trying to grasp how a woman could go from a clawing need for coriander to floating in the tide in the space of one evening. I wasn’t sure if it was guilt that drove me to it, or my own need to somehow grasp how she could be there one moment and gone the next.

“Not good,” he said, blowing out a breath.

I reached out, taking his hand. “Tell me about it.”

“Well, I just had a meeting with Lance—you know, my Web site developer? Anyway, it looks like he’s going to bail on me due to lack of funding.”

I dropped his hand, biting back a sigh. I guess life was made for the living. Clearly Nick had let go of whatever angst he had felt over Maggie’s sudden death.

“I thought you said you’d found a big investor.”

Nick dropped his eyes and nearly blushed. Actually, the tips of his ears turned red, which is what typically happened whenever he was embarrassed. Or angry. “Uh, she dropped out at the last minute.”

“She?” I asked, remembering that Nick’s forte was landing women, not investors. Like Bernadine, whom he still kept dangling on a thread. I wondered if maybe he’d pulled a little too hard on that thread and hit her up for a little funding. After all, she was reportedly a big shot out at a software firm in San Francisco now. “Anyone I know?”

His eyes widened, then he shook his head. “Uh, not really.” He glanced around, “Where’s Sage?”

“Over there applying for the role of wife number three,” I said, waving one hand blandly at the intimate grouping of Sage, Tom and Vince. I saw her lean in to whisper something in Tom’s ear, her gaze fastened on Vince as she did. Nah, not wife number three. If there was one thing I was sure about with Sage, marriage wasn’t her goal. I had a feeling, judging by the way she was looking at Vince, that she had just found her latest prey. I suppose I couldn’t blame her; he was good-looking. Though a bit older than she usually went for. Maybe things had gotten desperate even for Sage. I mean, here she was making flirt time at a wake for chrissakes.

Speaking of which…“So you want to go up and see Maggie?” I said.

Now Nick was grabbing my arm, looking around as if Maggie might step out from behind one of the tasteful drapes with a freshly baked Bundt cake in hand. “What?”

I rolled my eyes, gesturing with my chin toward the coffin at the front of the room, decked in flowers. As if he could miss it. “To pay your respects.” Clearly Nick hadn’t been to many wakes.

“Oh, right,” he said, nodding his head as if this made some sort of sense to him, though he didn’t let go of my arm.

“Come up with me?” he pleaded.

For the second time that evening, I found myself kneeling before Maggie Landon, Beloved Wife—as the flowery banner at the end of the coffin declared her. I glanced at Nick, who kneeled beside me, though he seemed to be looking at everything but the overly made-up face of Maggie. I couldn’t blame him. Dead people freaked me out, too. And Maggie especially, considering I had seen her dead before the makeup job. I followed Nick’s gaze, which now wandered over the line of flowers leading to the coffin, and took some heart. If the amount of money the local florists had collected on Maggie’s behalf was any indication, she clearly was loved, despite the jolly ruckus her dear husband was creating in the back of the funeral home. “Those are the flowers Sage ordered from us,” I said, pointing out the tall display of lilies, so huge it practically dwarfed the two baskets of mixed flowers it stood between.

Nick’s eyes widened. “It looks expensive,” he whispered and I knew the question of how much his share of the cost was going to be was floating through his mind. It had floated through my mind, too, as Sage pointed the flowers out when we arrived. I guess that’s the way Sage grieved—expensively. I would have preferred to shed a few more tears. There was a good chance I wouldn’t be eating next week after I forked over my share of the bill for that bouquet.

Oh, God, I was just as bad as the rest of them.

“We should probably say a prayer,” I whispered, but whether I was reminding myself or Nick of why we were here, I wasn’t sure.

I closed my eyes, only to open them again immediately. I never knew what to pray for in these situations. Eternal salvation? Yeah, I’d been raised a Catholic, but I wasn’t sure what I believed in anymore. Now, as I looked at Maggie’s dead face, the way her lips seemed pulled into the kind of smile I’d never seen on her face in real life—closed mouth, knowing and a bit too pink—I felt the same disturbing emotion as when I had found her on the beach. With a shiver, I looked up at the photos that had been placed in the casket. Maggie as a baby, with one too many ribbons in the short tuft of blond hair. Maggie standing next to Tom at some black-tie event, beaming at the camera. Maggie standing proudly before a berry tart. Maggie tossing a stick to Janis Joplin on the beach.

I closed my eyes again, expecting comfort to come, but instead a new reel of pictures flashed in my mind: Myles dressed in a dark suit standing stoically by his mother at his father’s funeral, his eyes damp with tears he refused to shed. Another of his face across the pillow from me, his eyes fixed on mine. “I don’t know what I would do without you in my life, Zoe,” he had said, pulling me close.

Apparently he did. Because I was no longer in his life.

Now I felt, for the first time since this whole tragedy, a sob rolling up. But there was no relief in it. Only deeper sadness.

I wasn’t crying for Maggie, I realized, once I opened my eyes and remembered where I was.

I was crying for myself.

“You done?” Nick asked, already beginning to stand.

“I guess I am,” I said, getting up, knowing that I was at heart no better than the rest of them. Wondering if anyone really cared about anyone more than they did about themselves.

Myself included.

Sage

It’s good to be the queen (again).

They say you can’t take it with you.

It was the first thing I thought when I walked into the offices of Edge the day after the funeral, my eyes roaming over the pale gold that Maggie had chosen for the walls, the frilly little pillows she’d tossed about the couches in the lobby, the hideously sentimental pastoral scene she’d hung above the reception desk.