blinked a few times, then closed her eyes. Lily was fairly certain that it was too late in the day for a nap. The baby would have trouble getting to sleep tonight.
Stop it, she told herself. “I’ll take these things to the kitchen,” she told Sean.
He didn’t respond, so she gathered up the crackers, cheese, soda cans and glasses, making two trips to get everything into the kitchen. She took great satisfaction in dropping the can of squirt cheese into the trash. She spent a few minutes loading the dishwasher and straightening the kitchen. Other people’s casserole dishes, pie plates and Tupperware containers littered the counter. The Holloways’ friends had been generous with their offerings of food. After such an immense tragedy, the gifts seemed both inadequate and completely in earnest.
She finished with the dishes, then decided to sort through the mail. She’d promised Sean she would take care of Crystal’s business, closing her various accounts, canceling subscriptions, submitting bills to escrow. There was something particularly awful about going through Crystal’s bills, seeing her charged purchases for cosmetics and children’s clothing, gifts and gallons of gas for the car. Crystal had not been the most practical person, but she was generous to a fault.
Lily made stacks of bills and junk mail. An invoice from Riverside Medical Laboratories showed Ashley had had a blood test the Monday before the accident. Lily frowned, wondering if the baby was coming down with something. All the personal items seemed to be addressed to the kids, or to Sean and the kids. Most had the oversize shape and weight of sympathy cards. At the bottom of the stack, she found a few large, padded envelopes addressed to Sean Maguire, each in different, loopy, feminine handwriting. They’d been opened already. One was from Kalamazoo, Michigan, another from Long Beach, California, and still another from San Diego. Friends in faraway places? she wondered, studying the return addresses. Kat, Nikki, Angelina.
Quit being so nosy, Lily told herself, even as she threw a look over her shoulder. The largest of the envelopes slipped through her fingers and dropped on the floor, its contents spilling out. Pink stationery, loopy handwriting: Dear Sean, We’ve never met, but I saw in the paper about your terrible tragedy, and I just want you to know I’ll be there for you…. Paper-clipped to the letter was a photograph of a young woman with huge breasts.
Shaken, Lily put it back. Then she peeked into another envelope to find a different letter, different photos. Now that you have all those kids, you’ll be needing a wife…. The picture of Kat made Lily gasp aloud.
“He gets stuff like that in the mail every day,” said Cameron. “Pretty rank, huh?”
Lily spun around, her cheeks flaming. “What?”
“Women sending him letters and pictures. They’re like, all hot for him because he’s been in the papers.”
“Oh.” Lily swallowed. “I…see.”
“It’s totally weird. Who knew this would make him bachelor of the year?”
Lily busied herself with putting the bills in her bag. “I should go,” she said, her stomach churning. This was Crystal’s house, and it was being turned into something else altogether. Yet Lily had no authority to change things, even if she knew what to do.
“See you later,” Cameron said, bending down to explore inside the refrigerator.
As she walked to the door, she tried to figure out what to say to Sean. He sat very still on the sofa, the baby snuggled against him. Holding a balled-up blue nightgown, Charlie leaned against his other side. Late afternoon light fell over them, and she realized all three were fast asleep. Grief was exhausting business; they were discovering that.
She stood for a moment, watching them sleep. Watching him, studying the fine shape of his jaw, the muscles of his arms. She felt an unexpected wave of yearning and melancholy. No wonder perfect strangers were proposing to him.
Lily came home tired and troubled, but on this particular day, an unexpected distraction awaited her. She found her sister’s thirty-seven-foot Winnebago parked alongside her house. As Lily got out of her car, the door of the RV opened and out jumped Violet, her face pinched by strain. Behind her came Megan and Ryan, her children, who were nine and ten respectively. They were a rambunctious pair who always seemed to be either fighting or being best friends. At the moment they were having a shoving contest, and Violet looked too exhausted to discipline them. Before her sister even spoke, Lily knew the news was bad.
“Okay, before