Page 27 (1/2)

In other words, be someplace else when it happened

She’d put a sedative in the old man’s bedtime cup of cocoa, so he’d be sound asleep when she held a pillow over his face And that was that Sweet dreaentler exit than the old man had provided for no end of people over the years

"I can’t say it’s what he’d have wanted," Dot told him later, "because he never said, but I’ll tell you this et like that, Keller, and you’re around, I hope you’ll knohat to do"

He agreed, and she’d rolled her eyes "Easy to say now," she said, "but when the time comes, you’ll say to yourself, ‘Let’s see noasn’t there so I was supposed to do for Dot? I can’t see in on your father," he told Julia "You know, if there’s anything you want to say to hiood tier on," he said, "but for so to be ot to her feet, and went to the sickrooht she went upstairs with hiether in the dark She talked about when she was a girl, along with family history that went back before she was born He didn’t say hts

When she went downstairs he got up and went out onto the upstairs porch It was overcast, with no ht about the faithful old Sentra, rusting away at the bottoht about Dot and his stamps and his mother and the father he’d never known Funny how there’d be things you wouldn’t think of for ages, and then they’d just pop into your head

He stayed on the porch for an hour or so, long enough for her to get to sleep, and he was careful on the stairs, avoiding the board that creaked

Dot had used a pillow Sih, and quick, and the only problees, most noticeably on the eyes That hadn’t ned off with barely a look at the deceased When an elderly person dies of apparent natural causes, you don’t usually have to worry about an autopsy

Nor would there be an autopsy in this house, for a man who’d suffered two strokes that they knew about and was on the way out with liver cancer But the doctor ht take a more careful look than the old man’s physician in White Plains, and if he saw red pinpoint dots on Cleiven hiht not disapprove, he hter, but why should he get to have an opinion one way or the other?

If they’d been allowed to hospitalize hiht have put him on a blood thinner to make further strokes less likely But with his compromised liver, Coumadin, the blood thinner of choice, could easily ht happen anyway, even without Cou in such a death to raise suspicions

Cou, and Keller didn’t have access to it But before Cou in humans, it was called warfarin and used to poison rats; it thinned their blood, and they bled to death

You didn’t need a prescription for warfarin, but he hadn’t even needed to buy it He’d coardening supplies He couldn’t find a sell-by date on it, but thought it would probably still work Why should the passage of time render it less toxic? And it was very likely not pharrade, so you would be well advised not to use it on a huht with Coumadin But this wasn’t a case where he had to worry about impurities or side effects, was it?

He added powdered warfarin to the bag holding the IV drip, stood at the man’s bedside while it dripped into his vein He wondered hoould work, and if it would work

After a few minutes he went to the kitchen There was coffee in the pot and he heated a cup in the microwave If she woke up and came in he’d just say he’d been unable to sleep But she didn’t wake up and he finished his coffee and rinsed his cup in the sink and went back to the old man’s side

The doctor barely exa for a pulse Keller didn’t think he’d have noticed petechial hened the death certificate, and Julia called the funeral director her family used, and fifteen or twenty people, fas and his ere there, and he ar Morrill, and both couples returned to the house after the service The body was cres considered, so there was no ceraveside

The two couples didn’t stay long, and when they were alone Julia said, "Well, now I can go back to Wichita God, the look on your face!"

"Well, for a moas he needed ht away I was never going to leave again It’s hoine you anyplace but New Orleans Anyplace but this house, really"

"There was nothing wrong with Wichita," she said, "and I had a life there My yoga class, roup It was a place to live, but it isn’t a place to return to"

He knehat she o someplace else, and in a couple of months I could re-create a,to puzzle out what Barbara Taylor Bradford really meant But it would be the same life, and my new friends would be the same as my Wichita friends, and just as replaceable when I moved somewhere else a few years down the line"

"And now?"

"Now I’ll have to go through his things, and figure out what to give away and where it should go Will you help me with that?"