Page 59 of I'll Be Waiting

“It’s fine. I know I’m making it weird.”

“You’re not. It’s perfectly understandable.” He looks at the box. “Cremains mean something different to everyone. My grandfather kept my grandmother’s remains in his closet inside a cookie tin. I was horrified.”

“Did you accidentally open it and take a bite?”

He chokes on a burst of laughter. “Thank God, no, though I did read a story once about a teenager who found a relative’s cremains and thought it was cocaine.”

Now I’m the one trying not to laugh. Then I look at the box. “I don’t think of thatasAnton. His wedding ring means more to me. His ugly class ring means more. The closet of clothing I haven’t cleared means more. This is…” I finger the box. “A responsibility. I haven’t decided what I’m doing with them yet, but it feels like the one last thing I can do for him. Find the right place for his remains.”

“I hear good things about closets. He liked shortbread, right? They make some lovely shortbread tins.”

“You laugh, but Anton would approve. He’d probably also make some really juvenile joke about storing his remains in my panty drawer.”

“Seems reasonable to me.”

I stand with the box. “We’re both tired and a little giddy. Let’s getthis recording done before we wake the others.” I glance through the doorway. “The sitting room would be appropriate, if that works.”

“It does.”

I put the cremains box on a bookshelf in the sitting room and ask Cirillo to remind me it’s there. That’s what I think of it as. “The box” or “the cremains box.” I’m not putting Anton on a shelf. I’m certainly not putting the last mortal remains of my husband on a shelf.

I explain what happened here. First I tell the story. Then I reenact it—getting up and standing in the doorway, proving no one could have slipped in behind me. I show exactly how the doll had been sitting when I was reading and how her head was turned when I sat down.

“And that was a thing Anton did?” Cirillo prods. “Moving around the dolls?”

“We both did it. Just being funny. He did more of it, though, and this doll was his favorite because of the red hair.”

I add for the recording, “I also have red hair. He named the doll Laura Ingalls, because of the pioneer outfit and pigtails. Also the hair, but I pointed out that the character had brown hair and he was probably confusing her with Anne of Green Gables. We kept it as Laura, though.”

“But seeing her head turned last night, you were understandably startled. You interpreted the apology as being for that. Because you leaped up and tripped.”

“Yes.”

“But the apology startled you again, and you heard what seemed like a curse. Also indicating apology, you believed.”

“Yes.”

“In life, how would Anton have reacted if he accidentally spooked you into tripping?”

“Exactly like that. Our sense of humor didn’t extend to people getting hurt in pratfalls.”

He asks a few more questions. Then he says, “Is there anything else?”

I motion to the recorder. He hesitates, but then hits the Pause button.

“There is more then?” he asks.

I think of the footsteps in the attic. The newspaper in the dumbwaiter. No, I’ve explained those away, and if I pile too much on, it’ll dilute the rest.

Instead, I tell him what happened on the stairs and in the bathroom. He listens, and by the end he is sitting perfectly still.

“Two near accidents,” he says slowly. “Potentially serious accidents. Both times, your initial sense was that they felt intentional.”

I make a face. “Not like that. Someone didn’t shove me down the stairs. They plucked at my shirt, and I tripped.”

“Which could have been an affectionate prank gone wrong, like startling you with the doll. But the bathroom rug? That’s not a prank.”

“There was definitely no one in the bathroom. But ghosts don’t pull rugs from under people, right? That’s why I’m telling you. Your job now is to say to me that I’m distracted and need to be more careful in an unfamiliar house.”

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