Doug shuffled a bit in his seat. “Was there anything about Paul’s death that surprised you?”
Now, there was a loaded question. How much to reveal? If Darcy spoke of the inheritance, would Pastor Doug kick right into Building Campaign oh-but-we-need-that-new-nursery-wing mode?
“No.” The minute the word left her mouth, Darcy knew it had too much bite. Now there was no way the good pastor was going to back off his ministries. She took out her regrets on a Mint Milano, biting the crispy cookie rather than indulge the urge to bite off her own tongue.
He reached for a cookie himself, far too comfortable with the silence. His eyes took on just a shade of a faroff look—was he praying for her? Getting God’s permission to pry further? Did he need permission? Wasn’t prying an occupational skill for reverends?
“Darcy…” he began.
Darcy anticipated the patronizing tone of voice, that politely compassionate edge that colored nearly everyone’s attempts to “comfort,” ready to jump down his throat the minute she heard it. “I understand how you must feel…Time will ease your pain, let me tell you about the time my…I’m sure your children are such a comfort to you….” Darcy’d heard it all—and believed about two percent of it. She could smell it coming a mile away by now.
“…are you surprised at how angry you are at Paul for leaving the way he did?”
What?
“I think I would be. Hospice is never as peaceful as we imagine it will be. The dying leave us long before they’re dead. I’d be weary and bitter, and probably more than a little ticked off if I were in your shoes.”
Darcy nearly choked on the cookie. Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, “Are you supposed to say stuff like that?”
Doug inspected the chocolate inside his cookie. “I’m not supposed to say anything. I mostly try to figure out what’s true, and go from there. Near as I can tell, the truth very rarely turns out how we think it’s supposed to be.”
A sharp, white-hot crack split through Darcy’s chest. Yes, she was angry. Livid. And everyone was so busy giving her permission to grieve, to cope, that she hadn’t realized until this very moment that no one had given her permission to be royally ticked off. Except for Jack, who seemed to be ticked off enough for the both of them, forcing her into defending Dad’s indefensible actions. No, nobody had given her a chance to spout off. Like it had at the park, the anger erupted out of her, unbidden and unstoppable. Darcy didn’t really want to be so exposed in front of this man, but the force of what he’d started was more than she could stem. Half in self-defense, she sprang up off the couch to pace the room.
“Yes.” That one word opened the gates full force. “I am. I’m really mad. I did everything a good daughter’s supposed to do. I turned my life inside out to take care of Dad. And I wanted to—I didn’t do it out of some weird only-child obligation, I wanted to take care of him, to keep him comfortable.”
She ran her hand along the fireplace mantel, half gripping it, half wanting to knock things off it. “But he wasn’t comfortable. He was delirious and drooling, and pulling his bedsheets off in fear of something and choking and making sounds like he was drowning and…it was awful. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. He was supposed to have a peaceful end. Meeting his maker and all. Going home to Jesus. But no, it was just nuts. People were running everywhere and everyone was freaking out because of the terrorist attacks so it was like no one even noticed he was dying. Noticed he was gone.”
She stopped, her back to Doug, catching a sob. Her mind replayed the sound of his last breath. The halting, broken rasp. Then, the trailing, endless exhale.
It had been so far from what she expected, what she wanted.
It all had been so far from what she expected.
“How could he let me go through all that and then do what he did? How could he let me do all that disgusting stuff, handle all of those medical—” she searched for the word, trying not to be graphic “—indignities, and then hide his checkbook? How could he not trust me with this? How could he spring this on me and live with himself!”
The illogic of her last phrase, the way death kept winding itself into her speech like some sort of mean joke, stung Darcy.
She turned to look at Doug, half surprised that he wasn’t reaching for his coat and eyeing the door.
“Am I mad? Yes. I’m furious!”
Again, he said nothing, just looked her straight in the eye. No judgment, not even surprise, just looking.
Embarrassed, Darcy plopped back down on the chair, snagging a tissue on the way around the end table. She tried to blow her nose as politely as possible, dabbing her eyes. “Well,” she offered, “you asked.”
Doug folded his hands. “Yes, I did. And I’m glad you answered. You need to talk about this kind of stuff. It will eat you alive if you pretend it isn’t there. It isn’t disrespectful, it’s just human.” He looked up, and for an awful moment Darcy thought he was going to clasp her hand or some other pastory thing, but he simply continued. “Look, Darcy, if Paul left you with debts, we have some people who can offer you some good counsel in that area. It happens. You wouldn’t be the first to find out how expensive it is to die.”
The fiscal cat was practically out of the bag now. Might as well tell it all. Even if it did end up as the Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot.
“No, it’s not that. Actually,” Darcy added, almost laughing, “I think that would be easier. There are no debts. Just the opposite. I went to a lawyer just after Dad died—Dad told me I had to, you know, back when he was still…with us mentally. The lawyer told me Dad had a whole bunch of money he’d never touched. Tons of it. And, well, now they’re my tons of it.”
Darcy looked up to check Doug’s expression. He looked genuinely surprised. That somehow made her feel better. “Well,” he offered, “that is big.”
“Yeah, you’d think. But evidently it wasn’t big enough for Dad. He had to take it a step further.” She took a deep breath before she continued. “Now, not only do I have one point six million shiny new dollars, I have to decide if I’m going to do what he says to do with it.”
Doug paused a long while before he asked, “What did he tell you to do with it?”
Darcy hedged. The Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot and Hospitality Wing played across her vision. But Pastor Doug didn’t seem to be waxing predatory in front of her. She was gaining a sense, unfounded or not, that she could trust him. After all, Dad had.
Well, to a point. Which was as much as he’d been with her. Why not tell him?
“He told me to…he asked me to give it away. It was money won from a lawsuit over my mom’s accident. He didn’t want the money, but he’d promised her he’d keep it. It’s complicated. Anyway, he promised he’d keep it, but since I never made a promise like that, he says I can give it away like he always wanted to.” Darcy felt an odd, nervous laugh slip from her lips. “Death’s a good way to pass the buck, it seems.”
She felt stupid for laughing, uncomfortable at revealing something he could so easily pounce on. Darcy waited, watching for dollar signs to appear in his eyes like some Looney Tunes cartoon. But he kept looking at her. At her. Not mentally calculating the tax benefits of a major donation, just looking at her. It was the weirdly warm smile on Pastor Doug’s face that stumped her most. “Literally,” he quipped.
He quipped.
Darcy was so surprised, it took her a full thirty seconds to get the joke. A joke. Not at her, but with her. Yes! she thought, another person who found the situation absurd enough to joke about. Maybe Doug wasn’t so bad after all. Perhaps the Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot and Hospitality Wing and Community Baptismal