The Truth About Death by Robert Hellenga

She’d completed a semester in the mortuary science program at the community college in Galesburg and then had gone back to Rome for the summer. But she hadn’t come back from Rome in the fall.
    He no longer worried about Hildi’s brother, Jack, who was now running a very smart restaurant in New York—Bistrot Jacques. But he still worried about Hildi. An old habit. So far away. He’d been getting letters and calls, so he knew she was happy. He could feel it over the phone. He could feel the heat coming out of the receiver, as if it were a blow dryer burning his ear. He knew she had a job she loved, and he knew that she was in love herself. And he knew that she wasn’t coming back, wasn’t going to take over the business. And that was okay, even though he’d already changed the sign. He’d received an offer from one of the big chains—Service Corporation International. Elizabeth wanted him to take it. But he couldn’t get himself to do it. Not yet.
    It was nine o’clock in the morning in Galesburg, fiveo’clock in the afternoon in Rome. Hildi had been killed in an auto accident at two o’clock that morning. Two o’clock in Rome. She’d been dead since eight o’clock last night, Galesburg time. Hit-and-run. Simon was prepared for almost anything from Hildi, but not this. The nervous young man on the telephone, who was probably Hildi’s age, said she’d been hit by a car at the foot of Ponte Garibaldi, where Lungotevere Raffaello Sanzio turns into Lungotevere degli Anguillara—streets running along the Tiber—and had been taken immediately to a hospital on Isola Tiberina. She’d just crossed the Ponte Garibaldi. Lots of things would have to be done. He interspersed the list with condolences. How sorry he was. The papers, forms, arrangements. Simon would have to contact an Italian funeral director. The consulate had a list of funeral directors who spoke English. He could fax or e-mail the information.
    Simon sat in the office for a while, but he couldn’t get comfortable in his oak chair, one that tilted. One arm kept coming loose. He adjusted the chair in his mind and tried to adjust his mind too—or rather to let his mind adjust itself—to settle down. It was like waiting for the waves to stop up at the cottage on Lake Michigan, where they vacationed every year. But of course the waves just keep on coming.
    The last image he had of her was from the veranda at the back of the house: She’s getting into her mother’s little yellow Mazda. Wearing jeans and a silk blouse. She turns and waves, eager to move on to the next thing. Elizabeth will take her to the airport in Peoria. Simon is preparing for a funeral and can’t go with them. He looks out the window now, but there’s no one there. The little Mazda is out of the way, in the big garage. Gilbert is backing out the hearse.
    Simon’s training prevented him from bursting into tears.He continued to stare out the window. November. They needed rain. There hadn’t been enough snow cover the previous winter and the summer had been dry.
    He climbed the stairs to the belvedere. He could hear Elizabeth in her study on the third floor. Bart’s Smith & Wesson was in a desk drawer. He took it out and put it on the table. The center of the town was to the west. He could see the courthouse and the bell tower on the college’s Old Main, and the top of Central Congo—the Congregational Church.
    He sat in his lopsided armchair and looked at the pictures, Elizabeth’s prints. A Rembrandt etching had been replaced by Braque’s Woman with a Guitar ; Picasso’s Aubade by Raphael’s portrait of Castiglione. All clearly labeled with dates. When he heard her footsteps on the stairs coming up after him, he put the gun back in the drawer, but then she turned and went back down the stairs. She was as mysterious as the pictures. She’d been ready to leave him at one point, and at that point, he wouldn’t have minded. But that was long ago now. That was ancient