“What do you want to do?”
Kassie imagined that question floating over Annie’s head like a word balloon. She let it linger, wishing she could roll back the days to a week ago. Couldn’t she start her vacation all over again? Create her own Groundhog Day, but stop short just before Monday when Mike’s heart began to fail?
“Honestly? I want to crawl back under the covers and wait for Alexa to announce it’s noontime. I want this all to have been a bad dream.”
“Ain’t gonna happen. You making a list?”
“Started.”
“Do your thing, and call me later. I’m here for you. I’ll kiss your cat.”
Kassie hadn’t the faintest clue whether Karen would be as industrious as Annie at that hour. Yet, if she were going into the office, perhaps she would be up and getting ready. She took the stairs down to the second floor, allowing herself more time to think than the elevator ride would afford.
Kassie knocked three times on the door. No answer. I’ll knock again. No answer? I’m outta here. Just as she raised her fist, Karen appeared four feet in front of her, wearing a three-quarter length black silk robe that looked familiar. Kassie had been searching for that among her things at Annie’s, figuring she’d left it at the house when she’d moved out. Never imagining Karen would steal it.
“Nice robe,” Bad Kassie said, unchecked. Kassie pursed her lips.
“You left it behind, like you did Mike, so I claimed it and everything else you discarded. Mine now.” Karen barred the threshold, her left arm clamped onto the door as though she was ready to slam it in Kassie’s face given half the chance.
Kassie swallowed hard and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. With all the tears she’d already shed, how did it not occur to her to pack tissue in her pocket?
“May I come in? We need to talk.” She hoped her red eyes would offer Karen a clue something was up. She wasn’t a friendly neighbor needing to borrow a cup of sugar.
“At this hour? You’re not serious. You are weirder than weird. I saw you pull in late last night. You two have a lovers’ quarrel?” Surprisingly, despite her protestations, Karen gave more than an inch and showed Kassie into the entryway.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but Chris and I are engaged.” She flashed the ring, still on her right hand.
“So I’ve heard. A little bird . . .” Karen stood like a barricade in the small hallway between Kassie and the living room.
“What little bird?” As soon as she said it, an image of Charlie flashed like the Instamatic camera her father had given her for her ninth birthday, the year before he died. “Never mind. We’re out now, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Shows how self-centered you are to get engaged even before the ink is dry on your divorce papers. Did you ever consider what Mike would say?”
“He knows. I mean, he knew.” There. She did it again, opening her mouth a mile ahead of her brain. “Karen, I think we should sit down.”
“Don’t get it in your pretty little head that I’m offering you coffee.”
“It’s okay. Anyway, I drink tea. But then, you should know that with all the tea I left behind in the kitchen.” Down girl, you’ve got a job to do.
“If you came down here just to tell me you and Chris are engaged—” Karen rubbed her hands together and made cracking noises with her fingers as she sat on the edge of the chair opposite Kassie, who’d chosen the couch.
Something’s got her spooked. Is she worried I had my own little bird whispering in my ear about Charlie? Is she gearing up for a confrontation? Don’t go there. Now’s not the time.
After she reassured Karen she wasn’t there to discuss Chris, Kassie let it rip. There was no way to sugarcoat it. Karen could handle it. She’d seen her husband die almost in front of her eyes on a ski slope; she certainly should be able to handle this news.
“Mike had a massive heart attack a couple of hours ago.” She paused, counted to let that sink in. One Mississippi . . .
Karen just stared at her. Is she deaf . . . and a numbskull?
“KAREN,” Kassie said, “Mike didn’t survive this one.” Don’t make me shake you.
“What do you mean?”
Oh, God, she’s really gonna make me say it? “He didn’t survive, Karen. I mean he died. Mike is dead.”
Oops-a-daisy. Kassie read Karen all wrong. She flipped a gourd, jumping off the chair and pacing first around the living room, then the bedroom, back to the living room. For some reason, she bounded into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, and slammed it shut. The coat closet got the same treatment, as did the bedroom closet.
“Oh, no. Can’t be true. Can’t be true. This is not happening,” Karen said over and over to no one in particular. She bent down, tossed her red hair into a frenzy, then threw her head back toward the ceiling. Did she forget Kassie was still sitting there?
Kassie was unsure how long to let her vent before intervening. She sympathized with her. Kassie’d been through the death of a loved one before with her father’s sudden death and her mother’s terminal illness. She’s in denial. This too shall pass.
But there were no tears, only questions. A slew of them in rapid succession.
“How do you know? When did it happen? Were you with him? Was anyone with him? What were his last words? Why did they call you?”
Kassie answered the best she could, encouraging Karen to please sit down. But Karen wasn’t done.
“Why couldn’t they save him? I saved him. Why couldn’t they?”
“Don’t do this to yourself.” Kassie tried to feel her pain, which had to be different than the torture Kassie was enduring, sitting there absorbing Karen’s wrath. But she tried. “It was his time, apparently.”
“His time? What would you know about his time? It was going to be our time. You’re not the only one engaged, ya know.”
“Yes, I know.” Without thinking, Kassie swapped her rings. Maybe if she fed Karen a crumb, a fondness about Mike she could cling to in her time of hysteria, she’d snap out of it.
“Mike told me about your trip to Provincetown.” Kassie stopped short of revealing the doubts Mike had shared with her and his reasons for having second thoughts. Now’s not the time. Her mother’s voice inside her head reminded her the value of saying nothing. A chill traveled up her arms and down her legs, competing with the rash that had almost healed.
Kassie rose to leave. What more was there to say? “I need to get to the hospital. Make arrangements.”
“Just like that. You come in here—”
“Not sure what else I should’ve done. I thought you’d want to know before you got to the office. Would you really have wanted to hear this from Bill?”
Karen said nothing.
“By the way, it’s perfectly all right for you to take the rest of the week off. And probably most of next week, depending on when the funeral is.”
“Excuse me? You have no right. You’re not my boss.”
“Actually, I kind of am.”
41
Initial Reactions
On the way over to Boston Clinic, Kassie and Chris caught each other up on the calls they’d made. Chris went first. He reached Bill before he left for the office. Good thing too. The letter Mike gave him on Saturday was in his bureau. If he was already at the office, he would’ve had to go home to get it.
“Was that his first reaction?”
“Kind of. Mike had instructed him to open it in case of his death.”
“Boy, people do react strangely when people die.”
“Not everyone is like you, KO. There is no prescribed checklist for how to behave when someone you care about dies. Cry for five minutes. Make arrangements. Have lunch.”
The air flew out of Kassie’s lungs. Is that what Chris thought of her? Had her father’s suicide and her abusive childhood conditioned her to be unsympathetic?
“Survival, Chris. It’s how I’ve survived. I didn’t have an Ozzie and Harriet upbringing like—”
> “Ozzie and who?”
She shook her head, the ten years between them showing.
Chris told her Bill was indeed upset and wanted to know the details, because when you’re given a letter from someone on Saturday, and they die in less than a week, you kind of want to read the letter as fast as possible.
“We did, right?” Chris said
“And what did his letter say?”
“The same as ours. He’s grateful Mike left him part of the business, but that wasn’t his focus.”
“What was?”
“That you’re now the owner, the majority owner. So now Bill and I work for you.”
“What a difference a day makes.” Kassie stared out the window.
Bill told Chris he’d inform the staff that morning. Whoever wanted to go home, he’d let them. He asked Chris if he thought Kassie would be okay with that.
“Of course. I’ve got my hands full right now. You and Bill have got to step in.”
“Understood. But . . .”
“But what?”
“We’ll need a communications plan for the media and clients.”
“Isn’t that what you all are good at? Or do you need to hire my team at Calibri to handle this for you?”
“You’re joking.”
“Yes, kind of. Let’s see how today goes. Let Bill know we’ll meet with him tomorrow and, if that goes well, the staff right after.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Boss? Hmmph.” She wondered if she’d be able to be boss on both sides of the Charles, let alone the Atlantic?
They were a block away from the hospital when Kassie gave Chris a mini version of the scene with Karen.
“Not that anything Karen says or does should surprise me, but something doesn’t square.” Kassie scratched her head.
“How’s that?”
“No tears. Not one teardrop. A lot of door slamming, whatever that was about. And red hair flailing about.”
“If she’s in denial, like you said, tears will come later.”
“Maybe. She said some odd things.”
“Odd in general, or odd for Karen?”
“Odd is odd. She said, ‘This is not happening.’ In the present tense. As if something disrupted her plans. Like if you got a flat tire on the way to the airport.”
Chris told her he thought she was being a bit overly judgmental and suggested Kassie cut Karen some slack.
“That’s not all. She seemed baffled that the doctors didn’t save him like she did. As if she was all powerful, above them. That she’d made the ultimate sacrifice, and now it was their fault he was gone.”
“You got all that in fifteen minutes?”
“Ugh. Is that all it was? Felt like an eternity on steroids.”
As they entered the hospital, Kassie hoped it would be the last time for a while. She’d had enough of antiseptic smells and color-coded scrubs to last a lifetime. As she held out her left hand to take his, he lifted it, winked, flashed her an ear-to-ear grin, and kissed the ring.
Standing in front of the elevator doors in the lobby, Kassie swayed from side to side.
“There’s one thing she didn’t ask I would’ve thought would’ve been top of mind.”
“And what’s that?” Chris put his arm around her as if to steady her.
“Other than saying she’d heard you and I were engaged, she didn’t ask. She didn’t ask about you. She didn’t ask how Mike’s son was doing. Odd, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t read much into it. Like I said, people behave differently.”
“Oddly. They behave oddly,” Kassie said as they arrived on the fifth floor. They made their way past patients’ rooms to the nurses’ station. Chris informed the only nurse around why they were there so early in the morning. The pretty little nurse looked up at him and smiled, of course. I rest my case. Odd.
They only waited five minutes in the relatives’ lounge. Kassie knew the drill. She’d been there, done that two years before when her mother passed on a different floor, similar room. But this time Chris was with her, not three thousand miles away. She thanked God for this big favor.
The hospital’s cardiac doctor arrived, gave his condolences, and explained in as best layman’s language as he could what had happened.
“The body can only take so much wear and tear. Mr. Ricci’s worked exceedingly hard over the last few years keeping him alive. I’m sorry there was nothing we could do.”
Kassie and Chris sat side by side on a couch that was not made for lounging. Obviously they didn’t want grieving families hanging around the hospital very long. The couch reminded her of a futon she once had where she swore the slats of the bed frame were permanently imprinted on her back. She’d have Chris check for track marks on her butt later on. He’d like that.
Focus, Kassie, focus. You owe Mike that much.
When a hospital administrator joined the doctor, Kassie knew the fun was about to begin. Well, not really fun, but the nitty-gritty of moving Mike’s body out of the hospital to a funeral parlor. She scrolled through her phone. How many people have a funeral parlor listed among their contacts?
There it was. Kelly and Colombo Funeral home in Newburyport.
“Oh, yes. We’re very familiar with them with all the Irish and Italian families we serve,” the administrator said.
“Precisely why Mike and I chose it for ourselves. For when it was our time.” Kassie noticed the woman’s blank stare. “I’m Irish. O’Callaghan.”
Four heads nodded.
“And we thought they sounded more like cops than funeral directors.” Kassie laughed.
Three sets of eyebrows lifted.
“But they’re not cops. They are very professional, caring caretakers. They’ll be expecting Mike. Well, not really expecting him. But making arrangements shouldn’t be too difficult.” Kassie was babbling. Why, she didn’t know. Things weren’t going well, and her eyelids reminded her she’d had less than four hours sleep. And boy did she have to pee. She excused herself for five minutes.
The break gave her time to get her act together and analyze what was gnawing at her, what was causing her now to be the odd one. Bingo. They hadn’t asked her the big question yet. Autopsy.
As she washed her hands—Annie would be proud—she looked at herself in the ladies’ room mirror. At her eyes. Into her soul, as honestly as anyone could. She tried to put herself in Mike’s shoes, ridiculous as it sounded, even to Bad Kassie. What would Mike want? He hated hospitals, and his body had been poked, prodded, and carved up enough over the last year and a half. She recalled from conversations they’d had on the topic that he had no desire to donate any of his body parts. If they were as damaged as his kidneys were, they’d be of no use to anyone else. Fact was, he’d had a massive heart attack. Wasn’t that enough information? Why’d they need to know anything else?
Decision made, she returned to the relatives’ room.
Boy, had Kassie predicted that right. A Consent and Authorization for Autopsy form sat on the small coffee table between three chairs and the couch that made her butt ache. And apparently while she was otherwise engaged, voluptuous young Cecilia joined the circle. Kassie touched her shoulder as she passed her, returning to her rightful seat next to Chris.
“You okay?” he asked.
She inhaled deeply and nodded. She couldn’t help but notice the tissues piled on Cecilia’s lap along with a large plastic bag with the name of the hospital imprinted on it. Mike’s possessions. Probably clothes, shoes, whatever he had when he showed up in the ambulance. He hadn’t been there long enough to acquire much stuff. Thankfully.
The lady administrator started her spiel about the autopsy, the pros and cons, including organ donation and tissue transplantation. Everyone accepted Kassie’s decision about organ donation, especially because he’d suffered a cardiac death. She didn’t quite understand the nuance surrounding the cause of death but was more than relieved when they skirted that topic. On the other hand, the possibility o
f tissue transplantation was still on the table. Not according to Kassie. Ain’t gonna happen.
They acquiesced and moved on. The doctor pressed for a post-mortem; the administrator seemed neutral. Especially given Mike’s medical history, it could provide valuable information about not only the exact cause of death but also whether his kidneys or other organs were involved in his quick demise.
Why was he pressuring her? She hated feeling backed into a corner. She touched her chest just below her neck. The heat started there and climbed up her throat, around her ears. Her forehead dampened.
“His heart. I was married to him for thirty years. His heart killed him. I can vouch for that. Surprised it took so long.” Bad Kassie blurted out, “No autopsy needed.”
Four jaws dropped.
“Could you excuse us?” Chris lifted Kassie’s arm, leading her out of the relatives’ room.
She figured she was in for a good tongue lashing. Deservedly so. Not only had she criticized Bill for his reaction to Mike’s death, but here she was behaving her snarky best. While sad and brokenhearted, she’d be damned if she’d be forced to play the role of the distraught wife when she was two months removed from being the ex.
“You divorce for a reason,” she mumbled, preparing to defend herself to Chris.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m sorry I said what I said. You know my lawyer warned me. I can’t wait to call her and tell her about this change in plans.” Kassie rolled her eyes. “She warned me years ago when I first made noise about divorcing Mike. ‘You better do it soon. If you wait too long, he’ll end up sick or impaired, and you’ll be stuck in a marriage you can’t get out of.’ I thought I’d escaped that life sentence. But no, here I am being judged by people who didn’t know Mike, don’t know me, and don’t know the shitshow our marriage was. And now you’re going to tell me to tone it down, right?”
“Uh, no. I get you. You know I have your back.”
“Then, why . . .” Kassie raised the palms of her hands in the air as if to ask, What’s this all about?
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