Ignited (Roman Holiday 5)
Page 6
Ashley glanced at the boxes lined up along the trailer walls. Eleven of them, each labeled with her name in permanent marker.
“No.”
“There could be a note or something.”
“She had the hospice people pack it all up. I don’t think there’s anything personal.”
“Look anyway. And call me later today to tell me, okay? I’m going to work the environmental angle more. I left a message with a lawyer on Friday who’s supposed to be a big expert.”
“Okay.”
“All right. Bye, darling. Love you.”
Ashley hung up and set the phone beside the sink.
She poked a box with her toe and imagined an envelope with her name on it inside. A long, handwritten letter that would provide careful, soothing explanations for all the disappointments suffered by Ashley over the past weeks.
I didn’t tell you I was sick because …
I wanted to call you in Bolivia, see how everything was going, but …
I know you hoped to inherit Sunnyvale. However …
Here’s why I didn’t want a funeral. Here’s why I asked your father to retrieve my ashes instead of you.
Here’s why I acted like I didn’t care very much, Ashley, even though I loved you more than anybody.
Here’s why.
She wrapped her arms around her stomach and kicked the box hard enough to dent the side.
Whatever was in there, it couldn’t hold in this shapeless pain.
No explanation could make it go away.
CHAPTER TWO
Stanley cleared his throat.
“Cut,” he said.
“Right.” Ashley reached for the cards and pulled a stack off the top, setting it down to the right of the deck on the concrete picnic table. “Sorry.”
He put the pile back together and dealt. Ashley tried to refocus on the card game. Her mind was a wayward child today, constantly wandering off to find Roman. Dragging her gaze along with it like a bedraggled security blanket.
Stanley hadn’t said anything, but she knew he’d caught her straining for a better angle on the action over at the campsite. For a seventy-something guy, Stanley didn’t miss much.
She needed to stop looking.
A crow landed on top of the next table over. Stanley reached behind him into a bucket and tossed a handful of feed onto the ground. The crow hopped down to peck at it.
“One of your pets?”
“Broken wing,” he said. “Few years ago.”
Stanley was like the Dr. Doolittle of eastern Pennsylvania. Animals came to him, and in some mysterious, nonverbal fashion he figured out what they needed. She’d seen him feed owls, pet deer.
He was animal-like himself, actually—a great big bear of a man in a red flannel shirt, with a few days’ white stubble and the growly manner of someone who’d been disturbed in his hibernation.