Sledgehammer (Hard to Love 2)

“I want to pay you back, Cal, I really do, but I don’t have that kind of money right now.”

Sharing a look I can’t decipher, Camilla takes the sleeping baby out of his arms while Calvin stalls the rest of my speech with a raised hand.

“Why do you think I posted bail?”

Is this a trick question? I glance at Cam, and find her wearing a carefully neutral expression. A prickle of unease slides up my neck and over my scalp.

“Because you love your wife and she would’ve had your nuts if you didn’t?” Obviously.

Head shaking, he says, “No. I mean, who told you I posted bail?”

“Ethan did.” Calvin’s black brows quirk. He glances at Camilla again. “Enough with the googley eyes at each other. What the heck is going on?”

“I called Ethan that night to get a referral, but he insisted on going to get you. He posted bail. I’m not paying him anything, Amber. It was all him. ”

The door to Calvin’s office swings open and the man in question steps out. One by one, his eyes scan the three faces staring back at him. His smile drops. “What’d I miss?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I’m innately suspicious of anything good. A priori it smells like bullshit until I deem otherwise. While I’ve been having the best sex of my life and happier than a pig in slop, I’ve also had one ear to the ground waiting for something to inevitably come along and screw it up. A phone ringing in the middle of the night is never a good thing.

The second the fog of sleep clears and I conclude that I’m not dreaming, my stomach clenches. I fumble around the nightstand for a while before my hand lands on the hard square that is my iPhone. My heart rate jumping, I turn away from Ethan so the cold light of the screen doesn’t wake him. It reads Sunnyvale Assisted Living and I’m hit with the knowledge that something terrible is about to happen.

With my heart thundering under my sternum, I press the number while the dread pooling in my gut tells me to prepare for the worst.

“I’m so sorry,” the doctor on-call murmurs. One I’ve never met because before this day my grandmother never had any health issues––aside from the Alzheimer’s that had stolen her away from me a small piece at a time.

The doctor is still speaking in what sounds like a foreign language, though rationally I know it isn’t. I catch the two most important words––massive stroke. He says a lot more but I’ve already tuned him out.

Next to me, Ethan stirs awake. His warm hand on my shoulder both grounds me and makes me weak.

“My grandmother’s dead.”

Moments later he picks me up off the bed and helps me dress. I’m catatonic, my mind incapable of processing anything. He asks me things––where my phone is so he can call my mother, what I want to wear. I can’t answer, can’t recall anything.

Twenty minutes later we’re in the car headed to the assisted living facility. I have no recollection as to how I even got in the car. The doctor on call greets us at the entrance wearing an appropriately solemn expression. He talks to me and Ethan responds. We’re led to a small room where they keep the bodies before the funeral home or morgue comes to retrieve them. I have yet to utter a word.

Ethan’s arm has been around my shoulders, securing me to him, since we got out of the car. He holds me tighter as the doctor lifts the sheet off my grandmother. It’s not the first dead body I’ve seen. Not by far. Growing up in a funeral home goes a long way to dispelling any fear of death one may have. It’s her––but it isn’t. She looks small. Smaller than I remember. How can an entire life be contained by so little? It doesn’t seem possible.

I don’t cry. I don’t scream. I don’t really feel much except detachment. I’m a spectator, reading a story in the third person. I nod at the doctor and he lowers the sheet. He says something about arrangements, asks which funeral home the body should be sent to. Ethan responds. I’m not sure what he answered; I find myself not caring.

My grandmother made arrangements to be buried on top of my grandfather. A double decker I remember her calling it. It’s all in the will. The person who bought her business is to handle the funeral––a funeral that will only be attended by myself, Eileen, Audrey and Dan.

Camilla and her parents will want to attend but I don’t want them there. I don’t want the joy of the birth of their first grandchild tainted by death.

Eileen and Dan rush in. Immediately I notice that she took the time to put on makeup and real clothes. I’m in my pajama pants and a sweatshirt. It’s three am for fuck’s sake and she’s wearing lipgloss. A spike of anger is the first emotion I register since I got the phone call.