The Last Maharajan (Romantic Thriller/Women's Fiction)

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The Last Maharajan (Romantic Thriller/Women's Fiction) Page 13

by Susan Wingate


  “Eu, I just couldn’t get here. I’m sorry. Let’s not do this now. Okay?” Her sister walked over to see their mother.

  Euly looked at her. She looked weathered and older today, harried and unkempt.

  “I’m sorry, sis.” Euly held her hand out for her. Enaya walked in stolid steps over to Belle and grabbed her hand. She squeezed it once and then let it go. She bent over and kissed Belle’s forehead.

  “Mom,” Enaya paused and then whispered. “I tried so hard to get here. Really I did.”

  “She knows.”

  Euly stood and pressed closer to her sister. She grabbed Enaya around the waist and pulled her closer. Enaya turned into her face into Euly’s shoulder and cried. It felt odd, her older sister always weakened when dealing with family issues. Somehow Euly realized her sister’s weakness grew out of fear. She couldn’t face the pain and so Enaya hid, escaped, ran away from to distance herself from the torture and grief. Euly remembered she had done it when their father died. She patted Enaya’s back and squeezed her tighter.

  “Enaya. I told her you would be here and here you are.” Enaya buried her head in her sister’s shoulder and they stood by Belle, the three women of the family together again. Then, she lifted her mother’s covers. “Come on. Let’s get lie next to her one last time.”

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  They filled out all the necessary paperwork and collected the last bit of their mother’s belongings. They were zipped up and handed to them in a large plastic see-through laundry bag. Geoff showed up and helped them get most of her things for them.

  Euly held the bag. From what she could tell, it contained the clothes her mother was wearing when she passed, a notepad and pens, her slippers and a silver chain holding a key. While she scanned it she wondered how many people had done the same thing in this very spot. She looked at the floor where she stood.

  “Is that it then?” Enaya handed back the papers she’d signed to the administrator.

  “That’s all. We’re so sorry for your loss.” The woman’s standard dismissal moved Euly and Enaya away from the desk and down the hall. Euly wanted to offer a snide retort but halted. What else could the woman say? It was just a job to her. She was probably a mother herself, thinking of her own children, wanting to finally go home.

  Even so, it felt funny leaving for the last time. Euly figured she’d miss the place and her visits there.

  Enaya and she didn’t speak until they got outside.

  “I’ll follow you home.”

  “Okay.”

  The two women hugged each other longer than normal then broke away and walked to their cars. Euly noticed a young boy and his mother walking toward her. He had a small nosegay with silver and gold balloons attached. It had bright pink cartoon lettering reading, Happy Birthday, Gramma! The boy chirped away asking his mother a question and she gave him in what seemed to be the standard response, her answer. “Yes dear.” She ignored him for the most part as they passed. The woman stared at the doors to the hospice without a trace of emotion. Euly stopped and turned to watch her while she pushed the boy along with one hand on his back. His small feet worked double-time to hers. Her right hand was hoisted in the air, keeping her purse slung into the crotch of her elbow. Steps away she heard her say again in her robotic tone. “Yes dear.” She continued to hum and repeat as they walked until they entered the hospice and disappeared inside.

  The sun was battling clouds low in the morning sky and the air was damp with mist. Euly turned her face to the gold rays. It felt warm while the mist filled the every thread of her clothes and sending a chill sweeping over her skin and making it pop. A shiver ran down her back.

  When Enaya beeped the horn, Euly jumped.

  She put her hand to her chest and took in a breath. Enaya lifted her hands in a question. Euly rushed to open her car door, tossed in the plastic bag and said, sorry, to her.

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  Excitement seeped in for the first time since their mother died. Euly felt it bubbling up as they decided where Enaya would sleep.

  “You’ll be more comfortable there at Mom’s. We won’t be bumping into each other. You can poke around in all her stuff. I have. You’ll have fun.”

  “I don’t know. You won’t mind?”

  “Why would I mind?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t want you to think I didn’t want to stay with you.”

  “Did you ever consider the possibility we don’t want you to stay with us.” Her ribbing went unappreciated.

  “Well, I kind of want to.”

  “Want to what?”

  “Stay at Mom’s.”

  “You should. I’ve been through her stuff so many times I’ve lost track. Besides, when was the last time you were here?” She watched her sister as she tried to remember the year. “Stay at mom’s. It’s really sweet.”

  Enaya smiled. She seemed to get a little giddy about it.

  “Come on. I’ll get one of your bags. Why did you bring two suitcases? Where did you think you were staying, the Hilton?”

  “Shut up. I always pack like this.”

  “It’s just a week.”

  “Drop it.”

  “A week, Enaya, not a month.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

  The house was bright even though the sun had now been consumed by thick low-hanging clouds again. It was a time of year when the sun could not be relied upon.

  Enaya opened the door. She was happy when her sister mentioned it first.

  “Oh my God. That smell.”

  “Isn’t it great?”

  “It smells just like mom.”

  Enaya dropped her bag in the doorway partly blocking Euly. She padded her way into and through the cottage like a kid entering Disneyland. She walked over to the rustic wooden stairs leading up to the loft.

  “She climbed these?”

  “Up until she moved into the hospice although I think there might’ve been about a week where she stayed on the couch. But, yeah, she climbed them.” Euly pushed the bag with one foot into the house and closed the door.

  “Jeez. Look at this place.”

  “I know.”

  Enaya grabbed the makeshift rope railing and stepped onto the first step. She climbed with her head angled upward staring dead ahead. “Ohmygod.” She said it out loud but hadn’t intended it for anyone else but herself. Euly smiled. She understood her sister’s anticipation. She hadn’t been there in four years, not since the fight. There were ghosts up there.

  “I’ll make some tea.” But Enaya didn’t answer as she walked up the stairs.

  Euly pulled out two of her mother’s favorite teacups and the pot that matched them. She ran hot water into the teapot. The water clanged against its metal bottom until it reached a deep enough level. She placed the pot on a burner and remembered the gas needed to be lit with a match. A long red lighter was next to the stove on the counter. She flicked it on and held it to the burner. It belched out a flame that subsided as quickly as it had lit. She adjusted the setting to high and went to the cupboard where Belle kept her tea. Squatting down to see, she spotted five hand-painted tins with labels each marking the blend within – Earl Grey, Paris, Green Mint, Orange Spice and English Breakfast. Euly decided to treat her sister to the Paris blend this morning. It was the one Belle had told her was for special guests. She didn’t think she’d mind this one time and who could be more special than her sister right now, right there.

  The tin bloomed out a fragrance that wafted up in sweet tones of vanilla and jasmine when she opened the lid.

  “Oh God.”

  “Are you all right?” Her sister called down from the loft.

  “Fine. Sorry. This tea is haunting.”

  “She was amazing, huh?”

  “Yep.” She wanted to tell her she had missed a lot but didn’t. It wasn’t necessary.

  Enaya’s footsteps creaked above her head and she smiled. It reminded of visits to her mother’s in the p
ast when Euly would help herself to her favorite tea then. It was as if her mother were still there. The thought stopped her in her tracks until she hear her sister coming back down the stairs.

  “Wow. How many boxes did you guys pack?”

  “Oh, several.” The pot hissed lightly where a light stream of steam escaped. It jiggled from the water inside as it began to boil. “Tea’s almost ready.”

  “Mm. It smells delicious. What is this one?”

  “Paris.”

  “Uh-oh. Mom’s best blend. Are you sure we should?” Enaya sounded like a kid.

  “Hmm. I don’t think she’ll mind. I don’t think she ever minded really.”

  “She went a little crazy in here didn’t she?” She laid her hand on the design their mother had painted on the walls.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It seems she’s painted every hard surface in the place.”

  “Well, yeah. So.”

  “Stars and moons. They’re everywhere.”

  “It was her cosmic stage – her universe stage. She would tell me, ‘Keep positive vibes flowing out to the universe and they’ll flow back to you threefold.’ It was as if she were excited about dying. She somehow welcomed it. Does that make sense?”

  “Well, she sure seemed to suffer there in the end.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe not. She had a smile. Did you see?”

  “Yeah.” She blew on her tea. “The colors in here are so cheery. You’d be hardcore to get depressed in this place.”

  “Her house was her biggest piece of art. She loved this place. I mean, she loved Phoenix too, you know, the warmth in the winters but she thought this place was the closest she’d ever been to Heaven.”

  “Well, it looks as though you’re right again. I’m going to love staying here.”

  “Can you stay longer than a week?”

  “There’s work and the kids.”

  “The kids are teenagers, Enaya. Anyway, aren’t they staying with Jimmy’s parents?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do they do okay with them?”

  “Oh God. They hate to come home after being there.”

  “Would his mom and dad be okay if you stayed a little longer? God knows you packed for it.”

  “Shut up. I don’t know. We’ll see.”

  “There’s a small washer and dryer upstairs in the loft. You’d never be without clothes.”

  She shook her head but smiled at her sister’s teasing. “I’ll check with Jimmy when he gets here tomorrow. It would be nice. Anyway, he doesn’t have to stay longer if he doesn’t want, right? I mean, he could go home and take care of the kids for a few days without me. Right?”

  “Right.” She grabbed hold of her sister’s hand and squeezed.

  “I’ll see what I can swing.”

  “I sure do miss you Enaya. It would be so great to have some time together after the funeral.”

  “Well, like I said, I’ll see what I can swing.”

  “We have a lot to do tomorrow.”

  “It’s not going to be fun.”

  “No.”

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

  Dreams from early morning were more like visitations than dreams. She’d had them before but none so crystallized or succinct with people and surroundings as in this morning’s dreams. The “visitations” were as if people came to her in the nighttime lying there suspended in her semi- hallucinogenic state seeming more like cameo appearances by old dead actors from black and white movies. But, once awake, they remained in Euly’s head as though she’d just turned off a movie with the plot dangling in her memory and fixed in her subconscious long after it ended.

  It all started with a dead friend calling her. Her ex-husband was there. He answered the phone and said, “Hold on, hold on, she’s right here.” It seemed he needed to scream into the phone. When Euly grabbed the phone her voice echoed loudly into the mouthpiece, “This is Euly!” She was yelling too over the din of television noise in the background.

  “Hello! They’re holding it for you right now!” Someone said on the other end, but the blaring noise of the TV made it impossible for Euly to hear him.

  “Hold on, I can’t hear you. Will you repeat that?” Euly covered one ear.

  “They’re holding it for you.” He repeated. “Wait, oh I’m sorry Andy, but it’s loud in here. Let me walk into the other room.” But she walked outside instead. “Okay, there. I can hear you now.” And as clear as day, she was talking to her friend who had died two years before.

  “They’re holding it for you.”

  “They’re holding what?”

  “They’re holding a spot for you.” And although the conversation was disjointed, Euly understood. When she thought about her dream later, she knew the dream was about life. It was interesting to her that the message was delivered by a dead friend and lacked a sense of foreboding.

  The morning’s dream stayed with her as she heated water in the microwave, as she steeped her tea and added her creamer, and as she sipped it and curled into the arm of the sofa. The clouds rolled in and rolled out skipping across, covering and revealing an iridescent blue sky, stealing then offering each spotting breathlessly. No matter what, days continued to fall off the calendar. Time, she’d heard, heals broken parts of hearts. Still, as clouds passed through and her days would step further away from these moments, the pain remained as it did that millisecond, in their final moment together. The moment they held each other one last time, took that one last breath together. And, she knew she merely existed in a daze of days.

  Tears streamed whispers down her cheeks. She wondered when the well would run dry, when she’d no longer find herself going under in a pool of tears. It was a two weeks before Thanksgiving. She always felt sad around the holidays but this season would be sadder because their mom died yesterday. She hoped her sister would stay with her longer than she’d planned to.

  Euly asked Enaya if she wouldn’t mind if she wrote the obituary. Her sister agreed that she could. Her first task of the day however would be a simple act, an act that seemed to overwhelm her just thinking about. She needed a shower.

  Later, Enaya and she were to meet with the mortician about funeral arrangements and, after that, they were to visit the priest. If they had time, they would begin selecting songs and photos and decide on cards and flowers and needed to make a list of people to whom they would send announcements. The day was already full but Euly was thankful she had help – her sister was there with her.

  She cleaned off a spot on her wooden library desk. It sat in the center of a lovely large bay window that looked out over a sprawling grassland behind the house. The swale led to an area that had become a refuge for animals near the pond about three hundred yards off in the distance. In the early morning it filled up with deer, raccoons, fox, eagles, geese, mallards, and the occasional snoopy mink. The days always seemed to start out this way, foggy and misty, and lazy and it seemed that’s how they ended too.

  This day, however, the fog hung thick over the pond, whipping cream thick, in clumps like ice cream floating in a punch bowl. From her view, Euly thought she knew what Heaven might look like, what it might feel like.

  But, then, she felt weak. Her stomach quivered and her jaw tightened. The desk was covered with paper, papers about dead people. One was a man who’d died in an auto accident who left behind an aging wife, four children, and seven grandchildren. Another was a child who died of leukemia – her family found it important to mention her love of movies about Dracula and had only one best friend. She left behind her grieving mother, father, sister and brother. Another was a woman, a wife and mother. She died of breast cancer. Her children were barely teenagers.

  Euly wondered why she did it, why she wrote obituaries. The practicalities were valid – the money was good, but why obits. Was it a sense that reading about other people’s death made her feel alive? She wasn’t sure anymore. She wasn’t sure about anything except that she had to write her mother’s obituary today �
� now before her shower. Everything else would wait.

  Euly sat down and stared at a blank page that blinked on the computer. She rested a pair of reading glasses on the bridge of her nose. She angled her head up to see the words then down so she could see farther off. She sat with her hands in her lap. The screen pulsed, anticipating her words. She heard the whirring of the disk spinning inside its chassis. Nothing came to her.

  She gazed over toward her mother’s cottage. The wooden sign Belle had painted swung lazy in a soft breeze and dripped from the wetness brought in by the fog.

  Art is Life, Period.

  Belle had painted the words in big bright crimson letters. It hung on brass chains above her door that squeaked when it was windy. Euly imagined the noise it was making now as she sat at her desk watching the sign quake in a light rhythm and seesaw in the morning’s wind.

  Bird droppings trailed down in a line under the eave from swallows of springs past and looked as if tears down a clown’s face. Her mother had gone so far as to buy mealworms for the birds. She’d attached a dish close to a window so she could watch the birds eat.

  Euly smiled when she thought about that day – about the ladder that leaned against the wall and Belle balancing on a rung as she reached over her head swinging a hammer. She wore a leather tool belt with a loop that held the hammer. It had a pocket for nails that snapped close. It was odd to see her aging mother still doing the things she used to do when she was younger.

  “Mother, what are you doing?”

  “Putting up a bird feeder. I have swallows!” She was so excited when she said it and Euly remembered her thinking her mother was crazy.

  “Swallows can ruin your eaves.”

  “Well, then when they leave, I’ll fix the eaves. No harm. No fowl! Get it? No fowl?”

  And, Euly responded in an overly casual tone,

  “Yes, mother. I get it.”

  But today, Enaya was there, inside Belle’s home, possibly rising or having coffee, reminiscing or preparing, possibly crying. She never understood her sister – never got her – how she removed herself, how she stayed above the action of family business. She wondered if Enaya was that way with her own children or if they weren’t subject to her submerged emotional state. But mostly Euly wondered if they too would perpetuate that same sense of reserve and coolness so prevalent in her sister. When she thought back, she couldn’t remember if Enaya was that way when she was younger or if she’d developed it after she’d gotten older.

 

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