The Widow's Mate Read Free

Amos’s indignation. He looked at Melissa. “Isn’t he working for you?”
    She nodded. Hibbs looked at Amos as if he expected an apology.
    Melissa’s two Flanagan sisters-in-law took turns staying with her during the weeks that followed. Tuttle sought an appointment with Amos but was refused. Amos might be the Flanagan lawyer, but he would have nothing to do with Tuttle. Then, years later, the suspense ended.
    The body had been discovered when one of Flanagan’s trucks had difficulty unloading its burden at a building site. The flow of cement had unaccountably stopped. The driver tried to get it going again, but unsuccessfully. He had to return to Flanagan’s, several acres of land near the airport, pocked with excavations and with huge piles of sand and gravel and other ingredients of the company product. There was no choice but to wash out the contents of the mixer, and that was when the mangled body was found. It was removed in pieces. The left arm was intact, and there was a wedding ring that was the basis of identifying the body of Wallace Flanagan.
    Melissa called Amos when the news was brought to her, and Amos went with her to McDivitt’s Funeral Home, where McDivitt took Amos aside and advised against exposing Melissa to the horror of the remains. In the funeral director’s office the ring was produced. Mellisa cupped it in the palm of her hand, staring at it, her calmness eerie. Then she held the ring up so she could read the inscription inside. She handed it to Amos. MELISSA AND WALLACE. 14.II.76 . Amos could remember the wedding, performed by a trio of Franciscans at St. Hilary’s Church. He stood and put his arm around Melissa, and finally she cried. He felt the shudder of her body beneath his arm; he and McDivitt avoided one another’s eyes. Amos urged Melissa to her feet and led her outside. He held the door of the car open, but before she got in he handed her the ring. She looked at it almost in horror and shook her head. Amos had no choice but to put it into his pocket, get her settled, and drive off. On the way, he telephoned Luke Flanagan.
    â€œBring her to the house.” Luke seemed relieved that Melissa had turned first to Amos rather than her father-in-law in her distress.
    Melissa had continued to rely on Amos during the following dreadful days. He made the arrangements with McDivitt and with the friars of St. Hilary’s, making sure that the Flanagans were kept informed. Father Dowling was on retreat and Mrs. Flanagan, a Third Order Franciscan, wanted the friars. On the day of the funeral, Melissa insisted that Amos sit with her in the front pew. Luke was on the other side of the new widow, then his daughters, then Frank Looney. The ceremony had been penitential for Amos. The friars were in the grip of the new view that the departed could be assumed to be in heaven, even now enjoying the beatific vision. A funeral thus became an occasion for rejoicing rather than mourning, beaming faces, bouncy music, and, of course, eulogies afterward. The homily had already canonized Wallace Flanagan, but now a number of friends gave testimonials about the man whose remains— membra disjecta —were in the huge casket in the main aisle. Anecdotes, jokes—it might have been a roast, and then, thank God, one of the speakers broke down and wept. He could not finish what he had wanted to say and finally stumbled back to his pew. Amos learned afterward that his name was Gregory Packer. Outside the church, Amos went up to him and shook his hand wordlessly, but it was meant to thank him for the grief he had displayed. Packer seemed surprised. Then he grinned. “I don’t know what got into me.”
    â€œCall it a human impulse. And a Christian duty.”
    Packer stared at him. Then once more that unsettling grin.
    At the cemetery Amos mentioned it to Luke.
    â€œHe was a bad influence on Wally.”
    â€œAt least he had the sense to weep at a