A Perfect Husband by Aphrodite Jones Read Free Book Online

the rag and the Windex down. She broke into uncontrollable sobs. Lori was upstairs somewhere, but the house was too big for Lori to hear her. Candace wasn’t the type who would want Lori to come and see her crying, especially since she was covered with blood.
    Candace decided the best way to honor Kathleen was to concentrate on her sister’s memory. She wanted to remember the good times. So Candace washed herself up and went to retrieve Lori, and the two of them headed back over to the Berry house across the street.
    Just before she and Lori left, they saw Clayton and Todd using duct tape and a blanket to try to cover the stairwell area. The young men were trying to be helpful. Michael came down and had a look at the job they were doing. It seemed like his sons had the accident all covered. But after a few minutes, the blanket fell. Clayton and Todd tried again, but it was obvious that the duct tape wasn’t going to hold up. Michael was dismayed to see that his sons’ idea wasn’t working.
    Candace just couldn’t spend any more time thinking about it. Caitlin, who had already arrived from New York, and her sisters needed their attention. And their mom would be arriving within hours. It would be a very long day. Candace and Lori felt they would have to put things into proper perspective. They both had hearts of gold. They were used to dealing with touchy situations. Michael had asked Candace to take care of the funeral for Kathleen. Her brother-in-law made it clear that he was in no shape to handle that, and Candace offered to take on the responsibility. Being a conscientious woman, Candace wanted to be sure that her sister had a proper burial. If Michael couldn’t do it, someone would have to pick up the slack.
    Candace, however, was not from the deep South. She and her husband, Mark, lived in the DC area. Candace had only been to North Carolina on visits. She wasn’t sure about the Southern traditions, about the way people in Durham expected things to be done. She was hoping that Michael would have set up the service at the church at least, that he would have organized some kind of banquet hall, or perhaps made some provisions for the two dozen people who were Kathleen’s immediate family.
    But Michael had always left the social arrangements to Kathleen. He was not used to dealing with that sort of thing. His only request was that Kathleen’s funeral service be held at the Duke University Chapel, the neo-Gothic centerpiece of the university’s West Campus. As for the wake, the burial, the flowers, the tea and cake, and even Kathleen’s stone monument, Michael didn’t have the heart to be involved.
    All the grieving people in the world weren’t going to bring his wife back to him. Whatever flowers, whatever country hams or biscuits people wanted to bring, whatever dinners people wanted to arrange, those were things for the living.
    To Michael, everything was Kathleen. All he had was Kathleen. With her gone, he felt dead inside. There was nothing to look forward to—no Christmas, no New Year’s Eve—and the people of Durham who were interested in the public grieving, the people who knew him and his wife because of their local reputation, and even their friends and family, were all just a blur.
    Candace realized she’d have to handle things as best she could. She had her sister Lori there, who would help, and all the neighbors from Forest Hills had come forward, opening their homes, serving up meals, just filled with tears and sympathy. Candace had no way of knowing how many people would be attending Kathleen’s wake, but from the sound of it, Kathleen had so many people who loved her, so many employees and friends, there could be hundreds. It would be impossible to tell how many folks might decide to attend the wake, especially with Kathleen’s death being blasted all over the local news.
    If nothing else, Candace was determined that the funeral