Free Family of Lies by Mary Monroe

were holding on to each other and sobbing hard and loud. Nobody had to tell me who those two were. It was Lois’s mother and her daughter, Sarah. A grim-faced usher led them to the front pew.
    About ten minutes later, the funeral finally started. An enormous young woman in a red wig began to play the piano, and a thin young man got up and sang four different hymns in a row. There was a lot of weeping and wailing going on. And before I knew it, I was crying like a baby myself. I hawked into my handkerchief every few minutes.
    After the service ended, everybody went downstairs to the dining area. Nobody was weeping or wailing down there. The way some of those folks were pushing and shoving trying to be the first ones to get to the food, it resembled one of my kinfolks’ family reunions.
    I didn’t have much of an appetite, so I didn’t have to fight with the hungry crowd to get a plate. Lois’s mother and daughter sat at a table near the front of the room. As soon as everybody stopped hugging them, I went over and introduced myself to Lois’s mother. From the way she frowned when I sat down in a chair next to her, it didn’t seem like she was happy to meet me.
    “You the one that fired my baby!” she accused. “She needed that job!”
    “Excuse me, ma’am. I didn’t fire your daughter,” I protested, one hand up in the air. “Lois called in one morning and resigned. That’s all I know. I would have never fired her. She was one of my best employees.”
    “She sent my stepdaddy to one of your stores to buy me my first computer,” the young girl said. “That was last year on my birthday.”
    “You must be . . . Sarah,” I said, almost choking on my words.
    “Yeah. I’m Sarah.”
    “I hope you’re enjoying your computer.”
    “I was enjoying it until somebody broke into our apartment one night while we was sleep and stole it a week after I got it,” Sarah said with a pout.
    “Well, I am sorry to hear that. I’ll make sure you get a new one.” I smiled so hard my jawbones ached.
    “Not unless it’s free,” the grandmother said sharply. “We fixing to get seriously behind with our bills this month. My daughter and that fool she married didn’t have no insurance, so I got to use my little savings and ask for help from the church to cover this funeral.”
    “Grandma, can I go now? This is too depressing,” Sarah whined, already rising and waving to another young girl near the exit.
    Instead of answering, the grandmother dismissed Sarah with a wave of her hand and then quickly turned back to me.
    “Mrs. Cooper, this is not the time or the place for it, but it’s really important for you and me to sit down and talk,” I told her, glancing around. I was glad I had not been approached by another customer who recognized me.
    “What you need to talk to me about? Y’all turned me down when I tried to get some credit, so I know I don’t owe you no money.”

CHAPTER 9
VERA
    I HAD NO LOVE FOR L OIS C OOPER, BUT I WAS SORRY TO READ ABOUT her death. However, I was still angry about her sleeping with my husband and having his baby.
    It made me sick when I thought about all of the new clothes and jewelry I could have bought and how much fun I could have had with my lovers with all the “hush money” I’d paid her the past sixteen years! Only another married woman who had to deal with her husband’s mistress and their baby would know exactly how I felt.
    I didn’t know all the details of Lois’s short life, but I knew enough to determine that she had had a miserable one. She’d been raised by a single mother in a low-income neighborhood and had struggled to get from one day to the next. But then so had I before I landed Kenneth.
    I don’t want to know what might have happened between Kenneth and me if Lois had not disappeared from his life and gone along with my plan. The fact that she was no longer in the picture meant a whole new outlook on life for me.
    The newspaper had reported that Lois’s