The answers to the other half of them are extraneous and unnecessary.
I don’t have time to write a fucking biography.
I scribble her birthdate into the first line—February 22.
They already have her death date.
Everything else is irrelevant.
3
Astaire
“Can I ask you something?” Back at Ophelia’s, I slide my empty water glass toward Eduardo. I’ve been sitting here for over an hour now, waiting to sober up enough to go home. “It’s kind of random …”
That isn’t true.
My question isn’t random at all—I don’t know why I said that.
“Sure.” He shrugs, eyeing a couple as they stumble out the door.
“Who was that guy?” I point to the empty bar stool at the end. “The one in here earlier?”
“The one you chased out of here?” He sniffs. I can’t tell if he’s annoyed, amused, or something else.
“He forgot his umbrella …,” I’m quick to defend my actions, “but yeah. Who was that?”
“Shane Bock.” He wipes a speck of condensation from the bar top with his rag.
“Is he from around here?”
“He is.” Eduardo lifts his hands. “But look, whatever you two had going on earlier, I don’t want any part in that. Looked pretty intense.”
“To say the least.” I shake my head, our conversation still fresh in my spinning head. “I was supposed to meet someone here tonight and I thought that was the guy. Didn’t even get a chance to ask him if he was Garrett before he started accusing me of hitting on him. Who does that?”
“Garrett, you said? Some guy was in here earlier by the name of Garrett. He was looking to meet up with someone, but he didn’t wait that long. Think it was around six-ish? Didn’t stay but ten minutes is all.”
My stomach plunges.
It must have been when I was in the bathroom trying to salvage my date-night look.
“Dark hair? Tall?”
“Something like that,” he confirms.
This day can screw itself. Truly.
I check the time on my phone. I could swear I’ve been here all night, but it’s only been a couple of hours at the most.
To be safe, I decide to drink one more glass of water and wait one more hour—because that’s what decent people do, and I’m a decent person.
I’m also decently curious.
“That Shane guy,” I say to Eduardo when he comes by to check on me a while later.
A melancholic Muse song plays over the speakers, and outside a man lights a cigarette for a woman in a red dress. The place grows emptier by the minute.
“Ah. We back to that?” He rests his fist against the bar, feigning annoyance. Or maybe he truly is annoyed.
At this point, it doesn’t matter.
Curiosity’s steering the ship and there’s no turning back.
“You said he’s from around here?”
“Ever heard of Shane Bock Corporation?”
“Nope.” I rest my elbow on the bar top and my chin on my hand, all ears.
“You’re not from here, are you?”
I sip my water. “Moved here a couple of years ago. Took a job teaching kindergarten at Starwood.”
“Adorable,” he says, though I believe he’s being sarcastic. “Two years here and you’ve never once seen a Shane Bock Bridge? Never driven past the Shane Bock Park? Hiked the Shane Bock trail?”
I rack my brain and can’t think of a single instance when I’ve come across a Shane Bock anything. And what kind of man names all those things after himself? Unless it’s a family name? Maybe his grandfather was a Shane, though I can’t imagine that was a common name seventy-odd years ago.
“His family,” Eduardo continues, “is practically Chicago royalty. You sure you’ve never heard of Shane Bock Corporation?”
I shake my head.
“They own that factory on the west side,” he continues, pointing, “the one that makes plastic products. And they own those furniture stores that are all over the state. A national insurance agency, a major league baseball team …”
I lift a palm. “All right. I get it. He’s loaded and he diversifies. But is he always that … extreme?”
I don’t tell him about the funeral home on purpose—hoping Eduardo knows something and will share it voluntarily. I’ll be damned if I tell him I followed him all the way down to the funeral home on the corner. Crazy is as crazy does, but I’m giving myself a pass for tonight.
Eduardo mulls my question, the corners of his thin mouth curling down as he lifts a single shoulder. “Honestly, he comes in here about once a week, and that’s the most I’ve ever seen him talk to anyone. You should consider yourself lucky.”
I laugh because he has to be joking …
… only I’m met with a somber expression.
I’m seconds from responding when something catches the corner of my eye.
A silver logo.
On the umbrella’s handle.
SCHOENBACH CORPORATION
Schoenbach … Shane Bock.
“Anything else I can get you? Another water?” Eduardo changes the subject, his fingers rapping against the counter’s edge.
Gathering a lungful of faded-perfume-and-whiskey-scented air, I shake my head, and the instant he’s gone, I retrieve my phone from my bag. With electric fingers, I type the name “Schoenbach” into a search engine, combining it with words like “obituary” and “Paulley-Hallbrook Funeral Home” and “Worthington Heights, Illinois.”