Page 20 of Heidi Lucy Loses Her Mind
She’s processing.
Dead.
I shake the word out of my head.
“Sit,” I tell Heidi. I need to focus on her right now. Not on Carmina or my jumbled thoughts. I can freak out later if I need to. So I steer her gently with one hand to her lower back, giving Carmina—no, Carmina’sbody—a wide berth as I lead her to a different table. I pull out the chair, and Heidi sinks into it, that same dazed look still on her face.
In the distance, sirens sound. I sigh, moving back to Carmina’s body. Wordlessly, I crouch down, picking up the contents of her purse. Calvin appears out of nowhere and bends down to help me, and together the two of us get all of her stuff back in the purse—the most cliché bunch of old lady junk I’ve ever seen, mints and hard candies and medicine bottles and packets of tissues. Nothing about the contents of her bag suggests that she was any different from the other old women out there; nothing displays her sour personality or haughty demeanor.
Shouldn’t something about her bag tell us that? Shouldn’t we be able to see those traits—something vindictive in the clasp of her wallet, something arrogant in the flavor of her mints? Or are all humans really the same when it comes down to the contents of their purses, the contents of their minds and their hearts?
Are we all, at our cores and in our purses, the kind of people who could die at a café table, here one day and gone the next?
“Shut up,” I mutter to my brain, rubbing my head. My thoughts are spiraling again, running circles and playing games and bumping repeatedly into the wall they can’t seem to get past: thata woman just died right in front of me.
Dead.
I drag myself over to the table where Heidi is sitting and collapse in the seat across from her. She doesn’t look good—tense, drawn, pale. I’m not sure I look any better. I can hear someone crying—Gemma, maybe—and Mel’s soothing, motherly voice over her. Calvin is pacing by the door, and none of his usual lightheartedness shows on his face. He just looks solemn and anxious.
When Heidi fixes her eyes on me, though, I sit up straighter. It’s instinct.
“Should I cover her body with something?” she says, her teeth digging into her bottom lip. Her gaze darts to Carmina, still slumped over the table, and then back to me.
“It’s probably a good idea,” I say heavily. I hold one hand out when she starts to stand. “I’ll do it,” I say, scooting my chair back with a loud scrape. “Just—rest, please.”
She doesn’t fight me on this; she nods, looking tired. “There are some tablecloths in the storage closet off the kitchen,” she says.
I dig through the contents of the closet with frantic hands; when I hold them out in front of me, they’re shaking. I keep looking anyway, and thirty seconds later I locate two folded tablecloths. They’re plastic, the disposable kind used for kids’ parties, but they’ll do. One of them is bright green with a pattern of confetti and party hats—completely inappropriate for covering a dead body—and the other is a plain sky blue.
The blue will have to do. Still, I offer a silent apology to Carmina as I return to the tables and drape the cheap plastic over her body. I didn’t like her, and I never apologized to her when she was alive, but it sort of feels like I should.
It sort of feels like I should have let her sit in the stupid armchair.
It’s a relief when the police and the EMTs arrive. They burst through the door just as I’m settling back into the chair across from Heidi, and I know I’m not the only person who’s glad to see them.
“Get comfortable,” I mutter to Heidi, watching as they wheel a stretcher in. “I think we’re going to be here for quite a while.”
Somewhere, from the other side of the shop, the parakeet squawks.
* * *
It’sthe longest morning of my life.
They take Carmina away immediately, thank goodness, but the number of people we end up having to talk to is staggering—apparently in my phone call I mentioned Carmina’s claim that she was murdered, although I have no memory of that. No one is very happy that we put a tablecloth over the body or picked up the contents of Carmina’s purse; if I’d been thinking with even half my brain I would have realized we shouldn’t have touched anything. I apologize multiple times, but all I get are disgruntled looks.
Random people show up every so often—Eric storms past the crime scene tape about an hour after the police come, shouting for Heidi. I can’t fault him for rushing over. I’m an only child, but if I heard that someone died in my theoretical sister’s theoretical shop, I’d book it over there too.
“What are you doing here?” Heidi says when Eric barges past the officer trying to keep him outside. Her eyes are wide, her hands on her hips.
“Gemma texted me,” Eric says as he reaches her. He and Gemma are dating, though I don’t know how long that’s been going on. He grabs Heidi by the shoulders and holds her at arm’s length, looking her over. “Are you okay? What happened to your head? Did someone hit you?”
Heidi throws alookat Gemma, but her gaze softens when she sees her best friend—Gemma looks a little worse for wear. She’s sitting on the floor, her knees pulled up to her chest, her back against a bookshelf. Her nose is red, and her eye makeup has stained her tear-tracks dark gray.
“I’m fine,” Heidi says with a sigh. Then she gestures to the table where I’m seated. “Sit down if you’re going to be here. Don’t hover.”
Eric’s jaw twitches, but he nods. The set of his mouth is the same as the set of Heidi’s when she’s not happy about something—that reluctant turn of her lips that says she’s going along with something but she’s not convinced. Eric is a good six inches taller than her, but they look undeniably similar; they have the same hair color, and the same fine features that make Heidi look deceptively delicate serve to make Eric look prettier than most men.
Heidi points to my table once again. “Sit,” she repeats.
