We have a customer,” Jette said when Ilka returned to the funeral home. She was in the kitchen, looking for coffee filters. “Leslie drove over to the bakery for milk and kringle.”
It seemed her half sister had taken the hearse for her grocery run, which annoyed Ilka.
A man was sitting in the reception area with her mother. The ladder still stood in front of the door, and Ilka noticed the buckets and rags scattered around the room, the large gold-framed mirror back on the wall. They’d begun cleaning.
Her father came downstairs and greeted the man.
“Eric’s wife is dying,” her mother said, “and he needs our assistance.”
Ilka stood in the doorway, hoping that Leslie would get back soon so they could speak before the police and the lawyer contacted her.
She noticed that the man was older than her father. Quite a bit older, probably in his eighties. The skin on his hands was paper-thin, and the color in his eyes seemed faded. His hand shook faintly when he reached out for her father.
“I can’t understand what my wife says anymore. The last five years she’s been suffering from dementia, but now she’s dying and she can barely talk.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Ilka said.
Slowly, he turned toward her. “Just a glass of water, thanks.” He nodded in gratitude. “My wife has forgotten her second language, we can’t talk anymore.”
His voice was feeble. He pressed the bridge of his nose with two fingers and closed his eyes a moment. Ilka held out a glass of water to him when he opened them again.
“Eric’s wife is Danish,” her mother explained. “She came here with her parents when she was fourteen, and now she can only speak Danish.”
The man nodded.
“Their daughter works at the library, and she saw the notice that Jette and I put up about our Danish evening. She’s the one who suggested Eric contact us. They need someone to be with his wife, someone who speaks Danish.”
Jette appeared in the doorway. “A night nurse,” she said, in Danish. “They need a night nurse who can talk to her so she doesn’t feel alone.”
Eric looked down at his folded hands as she spoke.
Ilka had never considered that someone could forget a language in their old age. That it could disappear the same way as the memory of a loved one. That was about as lonely a situation as Ilka could imagine.
“I want so much to understand what she’s saying,” Eric said. “I just don’t think she knows she’s talking to us in Danish. And I think she’s scared.”
Tears welled up in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, but regretfully we don’t provide a night nurse service,” her father said. He suggested contacting a home care provider.
Immediately her mother piped up. “Of course we’ll sit with your wife.” She took Eric’s hand. “We’ll help, of course we will.”
“And what about when it’s over?” he said, his voice barely audible.
She patted his hand. “We will help with that too. But at the moment, we must ensure that you and your wife can talk to each other while she’s still alive.”
Ilka’s mother had once taught English, and she spoke distinctly in a pleasant British accent.
The man appeared so relieved and grateful that Ilka discreetly wiped a tear from her cheek. He explained that they lived only two blocks away. “I walked over here.”
He wobbled a bit as he stood up.
“Why don’t we walk back with you and meet your wife; then we can see if she would like us to be there.”
Ilka’s father asked if he should go along, but the two newly arrived Danish women clearly had the situation under control. Her mother offered the man her arm, and Jette grabbed his cane.
Ilka followed them out and watched them cross the street. As she turned to go back inside, a car pulled out of their parking lot. She noticed the Lone Star license plate, and when the car turned onto the street, she glimpsed the tense face of Miguel Rodriguez and a shadowy figure beside him, presumably his brother.
She had the feeling they’d noticed her, and she rushed back to the house, but they either weren’t interested in her or had something urgent to take care of. Miguel floored it, and the car quickly vanished.
Her heart pounded so hard that her chest hurt as she ran through the house, flung open the back door, and sprinted across the parking lot. Even before she reached Lydia’s apartment, she saw the door standing open. They’d made no attempt to hide how they’d kicked the door in and splintered the doorframe, exposing bare wood around the lock.
For a moment she stood in the doorway and listened, despite having seen the brothers drive away. When she stepped inside, at once she realized what they’d done. Clothes had been ripped off hangers, the chest of drawers under the mirror emptied, everything flung onto the floor. The living room had been turned upside down, and her mother’s and Jette’s things lay scattered all over the bedroom. Ilka looked around in shock. They’d searched every square inch of the apartment, in broad daylight, while she, her mother, her father, and everyone else had been just next door in the funeral home. She shivered, shaken by how callous and unconcerned they were.
She hurried back to the funeral home and called out for her father. “You have to come over here and see this.”
She held the back door for him. It was as if he already knew what had happened; he strode over to the apartment and barely stopped to glance at the broken door, the splinters of wood lying on the ground.
“We’ll have to get your mother and Jette out,” he said, after inspecting the apartment. “Do you know where their suitcases are?”
Ilka pointed; they’d been ransacked and shoved underneath the bed.
“Call the hotel and reserve a room, then we’ll pack their things.”
He’d leaned his cane against the wall and was standing now, arms at his sides, surveying the chaos. Fear was written all over his face, and he looked feeble again. “They’re still after her.”
Ilka nodded. That much was obvious. They must have found out she’d lied to them about Lydia being in Texas. What scared her most, though, was how they’d taken off like a bat out of hell. Obviously, something was going on—but did it have to do with Lydia? Ilka was afraid they knew where to find her.
She grabbed her phone and texted Jeff. You need to find her now. They’re closing in.
“You and Leslie can’t stay here either,” her father said. “Did you get hold of the hotel?”
Ilka ignored him and googled the hotel’s number.
“A double room,” she repeated. She began packing the two suitcases and Jette’s weekend bag. Toiletries, clothes, shoes. After finishing, she set the suitcases outside and went back in to pick up the worst of the incredible mess. They’d even emptied the upper kitchen cupboards; flour and pasta nearly covered the floor.
“I’ll pick up here. Just take their things over to the funeral home so they don’t see this.”
Ilka whirled at the sound of Leslie’s voice. She hadn’t heard her come in and didn’t know how long she’d been standing in the doorway. Her father had gone back to the funeral home, and now she noticed that he’d forgotten his cane. The break-in had shocked him after all, she thought, and it also must have been a grim reminder of the night he’d been attacked just outside.
“Thanks.” She smiled, or at least tried to; she was trembling all over.
She called Jeff and got his answering service. She left a message, offering him five thousand dollars extra if he could find a way to get Lydia to safety immediately. Not that she had any idea where the money would come from, but at the moment there were fifty-one women sitting on death row in American prisons, and soon there would be one more if Jeff didn’t step up.
She thumbed a final desperate text: Call. Then she stuck her phone back into her pocket and turned to Leslie.
“There’s something I need to talk to you about.”