The Noel Letters (The Noel Collection #4) - Richard Paul Evans Page 0,15

Bookstore, fire safe, office, South corner, Wendy.

I guess that meant Wendy knew where the office safe was. I went to his bedroom and opened the closet. His clothes—myriad shirts, slacks, and three suits—still hung inside. On the left side of the closet were banker boxes and a guitar case with my father’s Martin guitar. I pulled them away from the wall to reveal the safe, then set the paper with the instructions on the floor.

Home Safe

23 R – 32 L – 51 R

My first attempt at opening it wasn’t successful, which didn’t surprise me. In my experience, safes were hard to get into even with the combination. My ex-husband had a safe and not once had I gotten into it, though I’ve since considered that he had purposely given me the wrong combination. He had secrets.

I spun the dial around a few times to clear it, then tried again without success. I tried a third and fourth time, each time more carefully moving the dial, before finally giving up and deciding to try again later.

CHAPTER eight

A writer’s job is to give us moments that last a lifetime.

—Robert McKee

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31

A funeral isn’t a whole lot different from a book signing—except there are no books, no signing, and not a lot of author interaction. It didn’t surprise me that my father had planned his own funeral. It would have been a surprise if he hadn’t. My father was an event planner extraordinaire. It came naturally to him. One of the quotes he dropped on me from time to time was “Those who fail to plan are planning to fail.”

I remember a book signing my father had held with a new author named James Redfield. Redfield had just released a book called The Celestine Prophecy. My father had an instinct about books, and he had scheduled the signing months before the book became a blockbuster bestseller. By the time the book signing came around, The Celestine Prophecy was the bestselling book in the country, maybe even the world.

More than three thousand people turned out for a book signing at our little bookstore that barely held fifty people. Even the local press showed up. I remember watching the cameramen walk up and down the line interviewing excited attendees.

My father was prepared with extra staff, streamlined book purchasing beneath tents outside the store, and stanchioned-off lines to control the crowds. The event came off flawlessly, and my mother reported that even Redfield claimed to be impressed.

My father had planned his funeral as meticulously as that book signing, though I’m pretty sure he was unhappy about having to pass it off to someone else for execution. That someone was Wendy.

I left the house a few minutes before nine, walking less than a block to the church where his funeral was being held. There was a sleek black hearse backed up to a side door, with the mortuary’s name emblazoned on the side.

To my surprise, there was a line of cars on the street waiting to turn into the church parking lot. My first thought was that the church was simultaneously hosting two events. My father, as I remembered him, had always been a quiet man and a bit of a homebody, less happy in a crowd than reclined in his easy chair with a book. I had no idea my father even knew this many people.

I stomped the snow off my feet then walked into the church. There was already a line of mourners that stretched the length of the main church corridor before disappearing around a corner. I walked up to the door where the line fed into the room with my father’s casket. Standing by the door was an older, silver-haired man wearing a black suit with a gold badge that read BEARD MORTUARY. The man put out his arm to stop me from entering.

“Excuse me, ma’am, the line for the viewing starts around that corner,” he said. “Some of these people have been waiting for several hours.”

I looked at him incredulously. “I’m his daughter.”

“You’re whose daughter?”

“Robert Book’s,” I said. “The deceased.”

The man flushed. “I’m so sorry. Please, go right in.”

I shook my head. Just another reminder that I was an outsider. I pressed my way into the crowded room.

Most of the mourners were my father’s age, but not all. The people gathered were as eclectic as the books he sold. With the exception of somber whispers of consolation, the room was quiet. It was a far cry from the last funeral I’d