Page 5 of Road Trip
The boy’s lower lip trembled, his cheeks reddening from the effort not to cry, and he nodded.
“Come along then,” Donovan said, starting the truck’s engine.
Kathleen grasped her brother’s face with both hands and kissed his cheek. “Remember me,” she repeated, before climbing back into the truck. “I’ll send for you as soon as I can.”
Donovan reversed the truck, and she hung her head out the window, watching as the figure of her little brother, the last living reminder of her past, her family, slowly receded in the distance. A soft rain had begun to fall, and she was grateful for the feel of the rain on her face, the drops merging with the torrent of her own tears.
CHAPTER 1
Savannah, Georgia, 2025
The church was packed to overflowing, the altar crowded with flower arrangements. Two priestsanda monsignor to co-celebrate her funeral Mass, just as her mother had stipulated. Mary Helen Sullivan Dunagin would have beamed with pride, Maeve thought.
Everyone was kneeling in preparation for communion when they heard the doors opening at the rear of the church, and then the thud of heavy shoes, like boots, on the wooden floor. Her cousin Jeanette turned to look, sucked in her breath, then muttered, “Christ on a bike with Mary on the handlebars! Would you look at what the cat dragged in?”
Maeve’s backbone stiffened but she kept her eyes on the altar as the footsteps grew closer. Then, someone was poking her shoulder, hard. Finally, she turned. Sure enough, there stood Therese, dressed in a short black skirt, beat-up black leather motorcycle jacket, black tights, and Doc Martens. Her chestnut hair had been chopped short and stood up in spikes. She’s put on weight, Maeve thought, with a hint of grim satisfaction.
“Shove over,” Therese demanded, louder this time, poking her again with a talon-like purple-painted index finger.
“Shhh!” Maeve hissed, but she glanced at her aunt Bernadette, sitting beside her, and Bernie and her daughters Patsy and Denise obligingly scooted sideways in the pew. Aunt Frannie was in the pewbehind them, flanked by Uncle Keith, who sat on the aisle, and her cousins Dylan and Shane.
Instead of kneeling with the rest of the family, though, Therese plopped her butt down on the worn oak bench, arms crossed defiantly over her chest. And when the organ music swelled with “Faith of Our Fathers,” the communion hymn, instead of making the decent, universally accepted gesture of standing and stepping into the aisle, Therese sat there, unmoving, forcing everyone, including their half-crippled aunt, to awkwardly climb over her and those goddamn army boots of hers.
Maeve wanted to pinch Therese’s arm hard, the way her mother had their whole childhood when their behavior in Mass was less than acceptable. She wanted to poke her older sister in the back, tell her to stand up straight, for the love of God, or at the very least fix her with their mom’s patented laser-like stink-eye. But she did none of these things. Instead, she closed her own eyes and concentrated on going through the motions, the rituals, of consigning Mary Helen Dunagin’s earthly remains to a higher, better place.
CHAPTER 2
Seven Years Ago
When she hit the age of sixty-five, Mary Helen drafted a plan for her own funeral.
“It’s not morbid at all,” she’d told her daughters, who were frankly aghast at the idea. “I’m doing this to save you girls a lot of time and trouble. I’ve got money set aside for it, and I’ve included a little extra, you know, for inflation.”
They were sitting at the counter at Clary’s, the neighborhood diner across the street from Dunagin’s Pharmacy, owned and operated by their uncle, Keith Dunagin, but mostly run, for the past thirty years, by his highly efficient sister-in-law Mary Helen.
Their chicken salads and iced teas had just arrived when Mary Helen whipped the file folder out of her purse and spread it out on the counter.
“Mama,” Therese protested. She’d blown into town for the weekend, from Florida, where she’d been cast in a small indie movie (or so she said). “Eew. We don’t want to talk about your funeral at lunch. Besides, you’re healthy as a horse.”
“Esther Culpepper was dancing up a storm at her granddaughter’s wedding, and then two months later she had a slight cough, and when they operated they found out she was eaten up with cancer, poor thing. All they could do was sew her back up and call Fox and Weeks,” Mary Helen said, sketching the sign of the cross in the air. “We just never know when our time will come.”
“Esther Culpepper smoked two packs of Marlboros a day her entire life, and besides, she was what when she died? Ninety?” Maeve said. “For once, I agree with Terri. Let’s just have a nice lunch and enjoy our time together.”
“Iamenjoying myself,” Mary Helen said. “It gives me peace of mind having everything set down in black-and-white. Now. First of all, the coffin. I’ve picked mine out: walnut, brass mounts. Dignified but not showy. Burial, of course, beside your daddy at Bonaventure. The coffin and plot are paid for, and Brian, at the mortuary, has everything in his file, and of course I have my file too.”
Maeve and Therese rolled their eyes in unison.
“Next, the viewing,” Mary Helen said, tacitly ignoring her daughters. “Night before, chapel at Fox and Weeks, family and close friends for rosary. For after, just some light refreshments, cookies and those little tea cakes from Gebharts, maybe some cheese straws and coffee and punch. If you girls want to have wine, I suppose that’s okay, but I amnotpaying for hard liquor for this. Not after what went on at your uncle Joe’s wake.”
Maeve’s mouth twitched as she tried to suppress a guffaw, knowing her mother was referring to Therese’s antics at their uncle’s funeral seven years earlier.
Mary Helen sipped her iced tea. “I’ve decided against doing anything graveside. Bonaventure is lovely, but if it’s summertime those gnats will chew you alive, and your aunt Fran can’t be expected to go tramping around a cemetery with her arthritis.”
“Thanks for that, at least,” Therese said.
“But what if you outlive Fran?” Maeve asked. “And you die in the winter?”
Their mother ignored both these comments.
