Free The Last Odd Day by Lynne Hinton Page B

comment on what she was telling me because in spite of the appearance of my goodwill, I was still trying to find a place in my mind where all of this could settle.
    I was simply trying to figure out who we were to each other, whether or not it was even possible that I could accept her in the midst of such awkward and forced circumstances, whether simply knowing that she existed was already more information than I could handle.
    When I did finally respond to all she had shared, all the reports she had given me, I asked her only how it was to have all of her family dead, to be without a mother and a father, thinking that this was something we had in common.
    She was quiet for a moment and then answered, thoughtfully, decidedly.
    â€œI have sat with so much grief,” she said, “that I feel like I have acquired a new angle on life, that I have finally figured out the unprofessed secret that most folks never fully grasp.” And here she paused again.
    â€œLife happens in a moment,” she pronounced as the funeral home personnel walked around us, trying to appear sympathetic and unobtrusive.
    â€œLove is, at first, always a surprise, and the good things never last so they need to be savored.” She continues as if she had been asked this before, as if she had already planned an answer.
    â€œI understand now that life is quick and unpredictable, so that you need to pay attention to everything that happens because it is somehow intended to shape who you are.”
    I just listened as she went on to say that she believes in something beyond this existence, beyond this life, because otherwise, “our brief stays on earth,” she said, as we sat in tall overstuffed chairs, “are such a flash on the screen of time that they would mean nothing.”
    Another family came in the front door. We both turned toward them.
    â€œThere must be another place,” she added, “beyond this one, for all the dead souls to go.”
    I dropped my eyes away from the other grieving family members and faced the far wall.
    She, of course, had not yet been told about my parents, the baby brother I never met, or my sister. She certainly had not heard the story of Emma. And as she talked on, so doubtlessly, about her thoughts and ideas of life and the hereafter, I wondered what she would do in a house where dead ones would not pass. I wondered if she could make them move on because she was convinced there was another world waiting for them or if she would stay awhile, living with them, like I did, until her ownbreath smelled of theirs. I almost asked how she could let love slip away so easily.
    But I didn’t ask such a question because I knew how it would sound. I knew that no matter how carefully I phrased it, no matter how I accented it with a touch on her arm or a slight, honest smile, it would come out spiteful and poisonous; it would seem like an attack.
    And though I was certainly thrown off balance by her presence, dealing with this new knowledge of the betrayal of my husband, trying to sort through a death and now an unexpected life, I knew that she didn’t deserve the consequences of all that I was feeling. None of this was her fault, her responsibility, or her doing.
    We sat together in the funeral home near the body of a man whose life had touched both of ours, and I realized that she was not there to do me harm. She came to see my husband, her father, without the intention of ruining our marriage or causing trouble. I don’t believe there was ever a single thought of malice in her head or in her heart.
    She simply wanted to see the man her mother loved, tell him that he had never been forgotten, and show him how she was not abandoned or afraid. She thought she owed that to herself, to her mother, and to the father who never knew he had a daughter and who might just want to know.
    In spite of how difficult it was taking in all of this information, trying to let this young woman be a part of my