Page 98 of Heidi Lucy Loses Her Mind
“Her husband,” I repeat, pointing at the photo on my phone. Carmina is wearing the locket, clearly looking down at it. “His picture was in this locket, and she had the photo of him under her pillow. That was who her date was with. She wore the necklace with his picture, and she had dinner with him.”
“I…don’t think I get it,” Soren says.
I swallow the lump in my throat. “That’s okay,” I whisper as my eyes return to the photo of Carmina in the cemetery. “I know I’m right.”
I stare at the picture some more. There’s a nagging little voice in my mind as I look at Carmina’s swollen, grief-stricken image, a voice I can’t quite make out; it’s like when you’ve met someone before and you learned their name but now you’ve forgotten it. It’s insistent, a memory so close I can almost reach out and touch it, but try as I might, I can’t pull any details to the front of my mind.
I sigh.
Sad. This is all so sad. And I’m feeling something oddly like pity blooming in my gut, a swelling that rises past my belly button up to my sternum until it’s in the back of my throat—maybe tears, maybe vomit, I don’t know, butsomething.Something strange and uncomfortable, something that makes me wish I had been kinder to Carmina Hildegarde, or at least snuck her an extra blueberry muffin every now and then.
I glance over at Soren; the way he’s grimacing and rubbing his chest tells me he’s feeling a similar sense of regret.
“Why did they put this picture up?” he mutters, his eyes narrowed on the photo. “Isn’t that kind of like kicking a woman when she’s down?” His face flushes when he says these words, and I think he’s realizing how odd it sounds to describe a dead woman as simply beingdown.
“Maybe they wanted to show how important her husband was to her,” I say, but it’s a halfhearted suggestion, one I don’t really believe.
We stay there, looking on in silence, until someone announces that the service is about to start. Then we go take our seats next to where Eric, Gemma, and Mel have already sat down. Some sort of pastor begins to talk, a droning, monotonous blur of background noise that I should pay attention to but don’t. I’m too fixated on Phil instead, and how honestly horrible he looks.
Why does he look so bad now? Why is this the first time we’re seeing him like this? Because his current appearance isn’t something you’d want to fake. No one would ever purposefully make themselves look that bad. So if he feels so awful at his mother’s funeral, why has he been so normal before today?
I glance at Elsie, who’s dabbing at her eyes with a white hankie. Her nose is a little red, maybe, but other than that, she looks the same as last time we saw her.
And what about Carmina’s last words—pickandlock? What was that all about?
I’m startled out of my swirling thoughts when I realize the pastor has finished speaking; Phil is now the one standing in front, talking about his mother.
“It means a great deal to us that you all came out today,” he says in a subdued voice. “My mother would have loved that you took time out of your busy schedules.” He swallows, his gaze darting to the coffin and then to the large, rectangular hole in the ground. “We will always remember your kindness, and as we move forward with this new chapter of our lives, we’ll remember the good people of Sunshine Springs, too.”
I sit up straighter at this, although it takes me a second to realize why I feel suddenly on edge.
Whatnew chapter of their lives? What does that mean?
But my heart sinks as Phil answers my question, going on, “We’ve decided that this town holds too many painful memories.” He scrubs one hand over his mouth and then says, “So we’ll be moving forward someplace else when all of this wraps up. I know my mother would have understood and supported us in this decision.” He nods at the little crowd of us. “Thank you again for everything.”
I look over at Soren, just as he’s looking at me. His expression is as troubled as I expect mine is.
My gaze jumps back to the pictures of Carmina, skating past those of her earlier life and landing on the one of her in the cemetery. And abruptly, so jarringly sudden that I almost gasp out loud, comes an echo of a voice—tired, quiet, and yet also unyielding.
“I know what you did.”
Those five words are faint, but they ring through my mind with such persistence that I know Imustbe remembering.
I saw Carmina that night. I’m almost positive. I might have known she was going to die.
And I think…she might have known she was dying, too.
It’s only when I feel something coming to rest on my knee that I realize I’ve begun tapping my foot. I look down to see Soren’s large, gentle hand there, his skin golden against my black pants, the pressure firm and comforting. On the other side of him, Eric, Gemma, and Mel are both looking over at us, all of them wearing identical smirks.
I shake my head, fighting an inexplicable and highly inappropriate smile, given where we are and what I’ve just remembered.
Soren can clearly tell something’s up with me; he keeps glancing over, and he doesn’t take his hand off my knee. It stays there while Phil wraps up his comments; it stays there while Carmina’s casket is lowered into the ground. And when the service is over, he leans sideways immediately, whispering in my ear.
“What is it?” he says, and I shiver at the feeling of his warm breath against my skin.
“You can’t do that in public,” I whisper back, rubbing my neck and my ear. “That whole ear-skimming thing.”
“I could dosomany things in public,” he murmurs, “if you’d let me.”
