Numbly, I nodded.
“Now help me,” she commanded, beginning to drag the plastic milk crates we used for storage over to the door. Books and sports equipment spilled from them as she stacked them in front of the exit. “Come on. Help me. Please. Before . . .”
I shivered at the ominious before and began grabbing blindly at objects to add to the barricade. “Before what? Is someone else in the house?”
Lanie shuddered and mumbled something indistinct.
“Tell me,” I insisted desperately, catching at her arm. “What happened? Is Dad really . . . ? And why are you so sweaty?”
“Let go of me!” she whispered, shoving me away roughly. I tripped over a loose book and smacked my head on the bedframe, igniting a flurry of stars in my vision. I cried out in pain, and clutched a hand to my head.
“Shut up,” she hissed wildly. “Shut up!”
I held my hands over my mouth to hold in any inadvertent squeaks. “Is someone else in the house?”
Lanie grabbed me by my arm and pulled me into the closet, pulling the door shut behind us. We huddled together on the floor in the pitch-darkness, straining to hear anything out of the ordinary, but any noise was drowned out by our thundering hearts and ragged breath.
“Someone’s in the house,” I whispered, no longer a question. “Lanie, we have to call the police.”
“No,” she whispered fiercely. “We can’t.”
“But—”
“No,” she insisted, squeezing my hand so hard I thought my bones would break.
“Why not? What happened?”
“Dad,” she said haltingly. “I should . . . I shouldn’t . . . I have to tell you.”
“Tell me what? What happened?”
“Downstairs. Dad. I shouldn’t . . .” she trailed off. “It’s my fault.”
“Lanie?” I whispered, my stomach plummeting.
“God, Josie,” she whimpered. “We’re all fucked.”
Fitful sleep finally came around five in the morning, only for me to awaken suddenly an hour later, panicked about the people I would see at the visitation. I was well aware of the gossip my family had once inspired; I could only imagine the podcast and my mother’s death had revitalized old rumors and whipped them into a fever pitch. I pulled the covers over my head as a defense against the impending morning, and must have fallen asleep again because the next thing I knew it was noon and Ellen was tugging the covers off me.
“Get up!” she commanded, clapping her hands together sharply. “The family viewing starts in thirty minutes.”
Startled, I sat up in bed. “I swear I set my alarm.”
“Well, you either didn’t or you turned it off. No time for a formal inquisition. Just get up and get in the shower.”
I swung my feet over the side of the bed obediently and paused as a wave of nausea swept over me. “Ugh,” I said, clutching my head. “I think I’m sick.”
“Do you see this black hair dye under my nails?” Ellen said, holding up a hand. “I look like some sort of tragic emo kid. I didn’t ruin a perfectly good gel manicure for nothing. Get up.”
“I’m getting up,” I insisted. “I’m just . . . ugh.”
“Listen,” Ellen said, sitting down on the bed, her voice softening. “I get it. This sucks. In so many ways. But we’ve got to go to this visitation.”
My chest tightened and my eyes stung with tears, and with a start, I realized this wasn’t sickness: this was grief.
“I can’t imagine my mother wanting us to gather in some stodgy funeral home to remember her,” I sniffled. “I’m sure she’d rather we be outside, spreading sunshine or whatever.”
“I know, honey,” Ellen said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me close. “But funerary rituals aren’t for the dead. They’re for the living. They’re for my mom.”
With a pang, I remembered the aching sadness in Aunt A’s eyes. I had come all the way to Elm Park; there was no sense in skipping the visitation. “You’re right.”
“Of course I am,” she said, pushing me away playfully. “Now go get in the shower. You stink.”
I emerged freshly scrubbed and smelling decidedly better to find that Aunt A and Ellen had already gone to the funeral home. They had left behind Peter and his daughters, who had arrived from Chicago that morning. Sophie, a girl in her late teens with carroty hair so vibrant it couldn’t be natural, was ironing an unfamiliar black dress for me.
“That’s not mine,” I said dully.
She smiled brightly. “Ellen thought you might want to wear this instead.”
I nodded, ready to surrender responsibility for my appearance to my cousin. It was of little surprise to me that Isabelle, the older sister, the one who wanted to live with her boyfriend, was ready to apply my makeup.
“Wait,” I said as she picked up a mascara wand. “Let’s skip the mascara. I’ll just end up crying and it’ll run.”
“Sorry,” Isabelle said, smiling apologetically. “But Ellen instructed me to insist that you wear mascara. She said, and I quote, people will expect material evidence of grief.”
“She thought of everything, huh?”
“She always does,” Peter said, handing me a tumbler of whiskey.
It was his contribution I appreciated most. I downed the drink in two gulps, the bitter, oaky flavor settling on my tongue and tasting like dread.
On the way to the visitation, Peter fiddled with the radio at a stoplight and for a few seconds a Dire Straits song filled the car. A sudden memory of my mother dancing along to the same song shook me, and I realized I had made a mistake. I had spent the past night obsessing over my father’s death, when I should have been thinking about my mother’s. After all, if the statistics posted on the Reconsidered webpage were to be believed, over five million people were currently focused on my father’s death. Someone had to remember my mother.
More than that, though, someone had to remember her the way she deserved. Poppy Parnell’s fans knew my mother only as a passive victim; they thought of her as a jilted woman, a heartbroken widow, a woman destroyed by her own demons. They didn’t know that my mother was smart, or that, even after she dropped out of college to have Lanie and me, she never stopped studying. It had been our mother’s idea to homeschool us, an idea that our father initially fought, arguing Mom would be in over her head. But she had taken the responsibility seriously, sending away for textbooks and workbooks and developing lesson plans. Even toward the end, when her black moods were arriving more frequently and lasting longer, she remained adamant about teaching us. She was dedicated to sharing her knowledge with her daughters.