Back upstairs, we discovered Gizelda Becker deep in conversation with another man.
What the heck? Did she have an unending supply of men? This one was twice the age of Cobra Guy, though.
I surveyed the deeply-tanned, salt-and-pepper-haired, barrel-shaped man, who looked like an ex football player plus four decades, shoehorned into a suit. I couldn't make out his eyes behind tinted glasses. Then I recognized that narrow Becker nose.
I slowed down. Tucker tugged my hand, hauling me forward and waving at them.
The guy glanced up, frowning. Gizelda wheeled toward us, waving the roses in her left hand.
I stopped short, assessing the faint resemblance between this man and Gizelda, in addition to the noses. Maybe it was the way they stood, their shoulders hunched together. Maybe it was their chins. Even though he was taller and stockier than her, something about them matched.
"Dr. Tucker. Dr. Sze," she said, pointing at us with her bouquet.
"These are … our father's doctors?" said the man, with the same accent. He frowned harder, probably because we looked too young and foreign, but he held out his hand to Tucker.
Tucker turned to me.
The man belatedly decided to shake hands with me first and pivoted with his hand still extended. His grip was warm and slightly rough, but he didn't squeeze my hand too hard, and his cologne didn’t make me hold my breath, so I nodded and tried to smile. "Please accept our condolences. We offered your father pre-hospital care. Hi, I'm Dr. Hope Sze."
Tucker took the man’s hand next. "I’m so sorry for your loss. Please call me Tucker, short for Dr. John Tucker. We're Canadian resident doctors visiting Egypt."
"Thank you." The man grimaced and rubbed his left cheek. "Our poor father. We appreciate all you've done. My name is Luke Becker. Phillip's son. Gizelda's brother."
"Oh. I didn't see you on the bus. Did I miss you?" I glanced at his sister, but she'd pulled out her phone, thumbing through her texts as she held the flowers with her other hand.
"I was in Johannesburg. I grabbed the first flight as soon as I heard about my father and the IED. I just arrived from the airport."
"I'm so sorry," I said to both of them.
Gizelda nodded briefly before fixing back on her phone.
Luke pressed his lips together and adjusted what might have been a Rolex before touching his navy tie, drawing attention to his well-cut charcoal suit, gleaming black leather shoes, and gold wedding band.
Meanwhile, I felt like hospital germs pranced across my skin. We'd changed but hadn't showered after leaving our hospital to come to KMT.
"Gizelda," said Luke.
She wrenched her head up, eyes widening as if she’d already forgotten us.
Luke patted her shoulder. "Why don’t you thank the doctors for their help and let them get on with their night."
"Of course! Not only did you help, you gave me these roses. You must think me a mannerless boor." She tucked her phone in her purse. Her knuckles shone white as she clutched the roses with her other hand.
"I think you’re grieving," I said quietly.
A laugh jerked out of her mouth. "Yes. I am."
"Are you okay?" I kept my eyes on her instead of Luke, whom I could see flexing his fingers out of the corners of my eyes. Tucker shifted his weight from foot to foot.
"Yes. All right. I’m trying to process ... our mother and now our father."
"Oh, no. What happened to your mother?" I said.
Luke cleared his throat.
"If it’s too painful—" said Tucker.
"She also … died suddenly." Gizelda covered her mouth, inhaling and exhaling slowly over the roses before she could speak again. "It brings back bad memories."
"How awful." We often write "died suddenly" in an obituary to describe a suicide. I winced in sympathy.
Tucker said, "A loss on top of a loss is very difficult. We're so sorry to hear that."
"We'll work it out. It’s very sad, but we lost her in 2017," said Luke. "We've had a few years to adjust. Other people have dealt with worse."
"That's true." Gizelda's eyes filled with tears, and the roses wobbled in the air as she reached into her purse for a tissue.
Luke threw his arm around her and squeezed her shoulders. "We made it through that. We'll make it through this, too."
She said, so low that I dipped my head to hear her, "Our poor father. Why did he have to go like this?"
"Terrorists." Luke added something I didn't understand, presumably in Afrikaans.
She nodded and blew her nose before balling the tissue in her palm. Now she had no free hands. I felt like offering to hold the roses so she wouldn’t be so burdened.
Instead, I squeezed Tucker’s hand and cleared my throat. "Uh. Is there anything we can do for you? Maybe get you a beverage or a hot meal?" I turned to include Luke in the invitation. "Sometimes a walk outside helps."
Gizelda peered at me for a second, almost like she was trying to decode my face, before she abruptly handed the roses back to me. The plastic made a crinkling noise. "Please. I can’t accept these. They remind me too much of my mother's funeral. Our aunt sent a car made out of roses."
"Oh, no. I've never heard of a car made out of roses," I said, accepting the bouquet. The roses smelled sweet. Up close, I noticed a few more crumpled, decaying petals.
"Is that a South African tradition?" asked Tucker, whose brain contains a constantly-updated encyclopedia comparing and contrasting cultural differences.
"Not at all. It was a gesture of respect," said Luke, hugging his sister against his side. He was so big that he nearly lifted her off her feet.
"Because your mother loved cars?" I ventured. It seemed less likely that a deceased 87-year-old's wife had raced cars, but never say never. Fingers crossed that I'll zoom around as an octogenarian, plus Mrs. Phillip Becker could have been much younger than her husband.
Gizelda Becker made a strange noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Her brother released her as she reached for another tissue. "No. She died in one. A car accident."
Whoa. I swung the roses behind my back. "I'm so sorry."
Tucker made sympathetic noises for both of us.
She closed her eyes. "I didn't go to Luke's with my mother. I should have been driving. My father had a headache, so I stayed with him, but our mother took social commitments very seriously. She missed her grandchildren and insisted on driving herself. The autopsy—"
Luke shook his head and clapped her on her shoulder. "Don’t torture yourself, Gizelda."
She squeezed her eyes shut and visibly tried to calm herself down, even though tears glistened in the seams of her eyelids. "She went through the windshield."
I started to reach for her with my rose hand, but I didn't know her well enough to make contact even if my fingers were free. "You’ve endured so much. I wish we could help."
"She should have worn her seat belt. And our poor, poor father. Oh, God. Why did he make us come back here?" Her knees sagged. Luke caught her.
Tucker looked agonized. He squeezed my hand so hard that it hurt.
"We’ll need some time to process this," said Luke, his voice slightly hoarse.
"Of course. Please contact us if you think we can be of any help. You have our numbers, right?" said Tucker. He let me go so he could enter their contact information in his phone.
Gizelda dug more tissues out of her purse. "Father would have been safe at home. I could have protected him."
"Please don't blame yourself," I whispered.
"You can reach out to us any time," said Tucker. "Please. Day or night. We're still on Canadian time anyway. We're so sorry for your losses. We didn’t mean to intrude."
Luke shook his head. "We should be fine. Thank you. I'll make arrangements for our father."
Shipping their father's remains to the other end of the continent must be an ordeal. I said, "If you need help, I could ask Sarquet Industries for advice. They're an international corporation." Not that EMR software would have much to do with funeral arrangements, but as far as I was concerned, Isabelle and Youssef owed us one.
Luke pursed his lips. "I appreciate the thought. We’ll take it from here."
"Of course," I said, and Tucker and I withdrew together, me leaning forward to hide the bouquet. My stomach churned. Roses would never smell the same to me again.
I bet they wouldn't call. They'd stay locked in their grief. Selfishly, that meant I could never ask Gizelda Becker about the cobra bag, let alone the mysterious man and the Kruger millions.