The Noel Letters (The Noel Collection #4) - Richard Paul Evans Page 0,17

of my father, my mother, and me. I was wearing a tutu and ballet slippers. I remembered the moment. I had just come from the Nutcracker tryouts and we were going out for ice cream. As I looked at the picture, I felt a hand on my back.

“I’m sorry,” Wendy said. Her eyes were wet. Even more than mine. She handed me a tissue.

“Did you put together the table displays?” I asked, wiping my eyes.

“Your father told me what he wanted.”

“Of course he did,” I said.

“I’ll bring everything back next week.”

A half hour later the man from the mortuary said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come. We’ll soon be closing the casket and moving into the chapel for the service. If anyone would like to pay their last respects, now would be the time.”

I walked back up to the casket. I had returned to Utah to see my father, and here he was. This wasn’t the reunion I’d expected.

As I looked at him, I was suddenly flooded with memories, rising up in my psyche like groundwater. I remembered a hundred moments together, the times he held my tiny hand on walks, the magic of Christmas morning, his slipping the frosting from his birthday cake onto my plate when my mother wasn’t looking. I remembered him tossing me in the air as I screamed with delight and demanded it again and again until his back hurt.

Tears streamed down my face. For the first time since I learned of his death, I felt the anguish of grief, just as I had with my mother. I didn’t want to hurt like that again. I wanted to bolt from the place. I wanted to run all the way back to New York. I took a deep breath and said, “Rest in peace, Dad. I hope you find peace.”

I grabbed another tissue from a box next to the casket. As I turned back, I saw that almost everyone in the room was looking at me. I was embarrassed to suddenly be the center of attention. I quickly moved away.

Someone else came forward—an older woman I had never seen before. It was obvious that she was deeply grieving. But even in her grief, she moved with elegance. She was exceedingly thin, pretty, with short, dark hair pulled back tightly, exposing the graceful curvature of her forehead. Her high-boned cheeks were streaked with mascara and her eyes, even with the pain they carried, were beautiful, large and deep set. She was immaculately dressed, like the well-heeled women from the West Village. She reminded me of Audrey Hepburn in her later years.

The woman reached into the casket and gently touched my father’s arm. For a moment she just looked at him. Then she leaned forward, whispered something in his ear, and kissed his cheek. She slid a book into the casket, then stepped back. I turned to ask Wendy who the woman was, but she was already on the other side of the room. Actually, I was more curious to find out what the book was and why she thought he needed it.

The man from the mortuary looked around to see if anyone else was coming forward, and then he and his associate closed the top half of the casket. There was an audible gasp of emotion. And just like that, my father was gone.

CHAPTER nine

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live… I’d type a little faster.

—Isaac Asimov

The dark-suited men from the mortuary rolled the casket into the chapel, followed by a small procession led by Wendy and me. There was no other family. My father had one sister, but she had come down with MS and had passed away several years prior. I had missed that funeral.

To my amazement the chapel was filled to capacity and the dividers at the back of the room were open to accommodate the overflow. At each of the doors people were handing out programs or ushering mourners inside. One of them handed me a program as I entered the chapel.

“Who are all these people helping?” I asked Wendy.

“They’re from the Sugar House Rotary Club,” she said. “Your dad was a member.”

Everyone stood as we entered the chapel and remained standing until we had walked to the front pew and sat down just a few yards from the casket and the lectern above it. After we were seated a man walked forward wearing the robe of a pastor.

“Good morning,” he said. “My name is Dave Nelson.

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