Washing the Dead by Michelle Brafman Read Free Book Online

through our mail slot that morning, while Sam and I were driving Lili to her cross-country meet, or when she twisted her ankle in a gopher hole and fell writhing as her rival sprinted by. It could have arrived while we sat in the emergency room, as I stroked Lili’s hair with one hand and squeezed Sam’s forearm with the other, or while the baby-faced doctor, an Indian fellow, taped her up and advised us to find a good orthopedist. It could have been lying in wait while we drove the five miles home from the hospital.
    When you read about people who have experienced life-altering events, they often say, “Only an hour before, I was fighting with my husband over our Visa bill” or “singing along to Aretha Franklin on the radio.” Me? An hour before I found the letter, I was on my cell phone ordering pizza for the friends Lili had invited for dinner, yammering on about thin versus thick crust, my words crowding out the thought of Lili’s injury potentially decimating her season.
    By the time we arrived home, the Mama Mia deliveryman was waiting for us in the driveway, and I settled up with him while Sam helped Lili into the house. I made a salad, and within twenty minutes Lili’s girlfriends were filing onto the porch we’d recently screened in because Sam insisted, “Everything tastes better when you eat it outside.” The dimming sun bathed Lili and hergiggling teammates in amber light, and although she was smiling, I couldn’t suppress my concern. I wanted to pull her aside and make sure she was all right, but she was too old for that, so instead I watched her play with a loose strand of her kinky auburn hair. She abandoned her first slice of pizza while the other girls demolished the four pies in minutes. They were all petite cross-country runners, yet as Sam remarked, they ate like linebackers.
    “Can they hang out for a while?” Lili asked me, and I said sure even though it was a school night. I’d have agreed to just about anything to distract her from her pain. I loved that our home was the fun house. I always made sure to stock our pantry with each girl’s favorite munchie—pretzels, pita chips, and whatnot—and our fridge with cut-up fruit and pop.
    After dinner, the girls went off to the den, sank into our overstuffed couches, took turns playing with Lili’s crutches, and texted while watching Twilight. They knew every line. I never could figure out the hullabaloo over vampires.
    Sam sat at the kitchen table chatting on the phone with his friend and client, Felix Nezbith, the Milwaukee Bucks’ orthopedist. Sam had been handling his investments for years. I walked up behind him and kneaded his shoulders the way he liked, grateful as heck for a husband who could pick up the phone on a Sunday night and score an appointment for the next morning with the best bone doctor in town. After he hung up, I leaned down and pressed my lips to his hair. Always the optimist, he tilted his head back into my breasts, wordlessly telling me to stop worrying about Lili. I couldn’t help it. Only with exercise—God’s Ritalin, we called it—could Lili focus enough to handle her schoolwork and maintain her equilibrium. Without her daily endorphin fix, she was a hot mess. “You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child,” a mother of one of my students once said. So true.
    I told Sam I’d join him on the porch for a glass of wine after I tidied up the kitchen. I was wiping Italian dressing from the counter when the front doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” I hollered.
    That was when I saw the envelope.
    I assumed it was an invoice from the tree trimmer who’d been pruning our maple that afternoon. I picked up the envelope from the rug under the mail slot and opened the door as one of Lili’s friends ran in from the den to greet a new teammate, Taylor, and usher her back to the rest of the girls.
    I stood alone in the foyer. It was not a bill; it was a letter, on personal stationery. The noise of Lili and her