Free A Theory of Relativity by Jacquelyn Mitchard Page B

that the bookkeeper who embezzled ten thousand dollars to put a down payment on a double-wide be given a chance to keep her job and pay the company back over time.
    Now, glowering, he added, “And they didn’t even take the car seat.”
    “It’s only two miles to Fidelis Hill,” Lorraine comforted, amazed by his anger. “It’s not worth it. She hates the car seat.”
    “And what if someone sees them, Lorraine. There have been enough car wrecks this week, Lorraine. And both of them are probably . . . their blood pressure is soaring. Ray looks like he’s on the verge of a stroke half the time anyhow. The man must be sixty pounds overweight.”
    “Well then,” said Lorraine, “run out and stop them, then.” Mark rubbed his chin. Though he would later not recall having said the precise words, he told Lorraine and Nora, “Nothing would stop her.”
    And it would be at that moment that something in Lorraine, some interior body that had lain supine, put its hands firmly on the arms of the chair and stood up.

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C H A P T E R four
    He felt like a thief entering the condominium.
    He felt like a thief stealing into a tomb.
    Hesitantly, Gordon made his way down the hall, keeping close to the walls, unwilling to leave marks in the thick carpeting. The place was stifling, hot air motionless and thick with smell. Gordon sniffed—lactobacil-lus. One of Keefer’s bottles, probably, moldering under the couch. Ray had not slept here for weeks. It would not have occurred to him, passing through, to crack the windows or to keep the air conditioner turned on low.
    What had made Ray an athlete was his absolute inability to think of more than one thing at one time. Their friend Carl Jurgen used to say of Ray that all guys who play golf keep looking for the zone, the place where concentration is so utter that their swing wouldn’t falter if they stepped on a rake.
    “But Ray’s there all the time, not just when he plays golf,” Jurgen complained.
    Gordon was looking for clues, something to add to the words he had already written, which were clumsy and expected: “Today, we come here to say good-bye to Georgia O’Keeffe McKenna Nye, a long and remarkable name for a remarkable person who did not live long enough to grow into it. And to her husband, my brother-in-law, Raymond Nye, Junior, not such an unusual name, but simply a wonderful person (crossed out), he was simply one of the world’s great guys. We come to say that these two great (crossed out) wonderful (crossed out) . . . good and gentle people, who were blessings in our lives and in their own lives . . .” 51

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    52
    JACQUELYN MITCHARD
    Gordon wasn’t a graceful writer at the best of times. How could he provide eloquence on demand now?
    Georgia had bailed out his butt on every term paper he’d written in high school, and most of college. He’d done everything but dress in drag to take her finals in Chemistry for Poets. Georgia would not have stood for this hokey, half-hearted stumbling around. She would have demanded drama ! Lights, casket, organ music, poetry! That she was not here, helping him out right now, was to Gordon proof that there was no afterlife.
    The hall closet door stood half opened. Keefer’s tiny yellow rubber ducky boots tucked into Georgia’s red clogs, the huge old cardigan Aunt Nora had knitted, a horror of psychedelic pastels, which his sister loyally continued to wear, calling it “my matching sweater,” Ray’s wall of caps, each with the band expanded to the last possible notch. His brother-in-law’s head was so huge Jurgen once said that his golf cap looked like a thumbtack on a pumpkin. All ordinary objects were transformed into relics. One of Keefer’s politically correct wooden toys held down a stack of printouts about the Thisacillin or Thatamyicin doctors were eager to put into Georgia’s veins. Next to the toy was his sister’s tinkly ankle bracelet