Stories

Prologue

I don’t know how long the phone rang. I was in a deep sleep. So deep it took a while for me to come back to wakefulness. Drifting up from the blackness, the ringing phone became a part of my dream.

In my dream, I couldn’t find the source of the annoying, incessant beeping. “What is that sound?” I wondered as I wandered from room to room, so I could turn it off.

Finally, I woke. My cell phone sat across the room, on my dresser, ringing. Why was it over there? Usually I plugged it in next to the bed in case clients called during the night. 

Bolting upward, I looked at the clock. It was way past midnight. Calls in the middle of the night are never good news. 

Probably a client. I got home late, which was why I was fuzzy headed. Another sweet soul departed this world with only me there to see her off. Those goodbyes always left me filled with sorrow.

Flipping on the light, Jack lay sound asleep next to me. Nothing, but nothing, ever woke him. 

Stumbling out of bed, I ran to grab my phone. Fumbling, I dropped it. Take a deep breath. I bent over to pick it up.

“Hello!” I practically shouted into the phone. “Who is this?” Since I didn’t have my contact lenses in, I couldn’t see the screen.

Sobbing came over the other end of the line. “Oh, Rose.” It was Ivy, blubbering. “Oh, Rose.” She couldn’t say any more. She was crying too hard. “I… I… don’t… know what…” She couldn’t speak coherently. “It’s… too awful...”

I heard Phillipe, her massage therapist, in the background saying, “Ivy, give me ze phone. Let me talk to Rose.” Part of my mind wondered what he was doing there in the middle of the night and why he was still using that phony French accent.

The sounds of Ivy crying grew fainter, though the sound of her shouting in the background was still audible. “No, oh no! It can’t be true.”

“Rose,” Phillipe said, “this eezz Phillipe.”

It was all I could do not to scream, “I know who the hell it is!”

“Ivy just got a call from Elaska. It eezz bad news. No, it eezz terrible news. I don’t even know how to tell you.”

Terrible news? From Alaska? Had something happened to William? Or Margie? Or God forbid! Not Fern. Please God! Not Fern.