Elizabeth Zelvin - Bruce Kohler 04 - Death Will Save Your Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

vegetables. Barbara put her arm around Feather and drew her through the door.
    “I just wanted to ask how you were. You must be having a tough time. Here, have a tissue.”
    “Thanks.”
    Feather mopped at her eyes and nose with the tissue and tore it into smaller and smaller shreds as they made their way across the lawn to a cluster of picnic tables. Barbara straddled the nearest bench. Feather slumped beside her.
    “It’s nice of you to bother.”
    “It’s okay. This must be so hard for you.”
    “It’s this place! I’m tired of people telling me Melvin’s on another plane or his spirit is one with the universe until the next cycle of the Wheel. Two people I don’t even know offered to channel him for me, and another woman said he’d come to her in a dream last night and asked her to give me the message that he’s at peace.”
    “Woo-woo,” Barbara said.
    Feather looked shocked, then giggled. “It should be comforting, but somehow it’s hard to imagine Melvin in the tunnel of light.”
    “I know what you mean.”
    “I don’t know what loving relative would be greeting him on the other side, either. Our mother ran off with a dental hygienist when I was six and Mel was fifteen. Dad was a dentist. He got depressed and started to drink. Well, he already drank, but it got worse. Five years later, he killed himself. He left a note saying he had nothing to stick around for.”
    “Mean-spirited of him,” Barbara said. “Suicides really hurt the people they leave behind.”
    “I was only eleven when Dad died. Melvin and Annabel brought me up. They were already living together. I sometimes think they got married because Mel thought I needed parents. Just like he went into his field because he wanted to figure out good relationships. I don’t remember my mother very well, but Mel said she and my father fought most of the time as far back as he could remember.”
    “It’s amazing he was so successful,” Barbara said. “I mean, he was amazingly successful.”
    “Oh, Mel was brilliant. He had it all in his head, and he could write like an angel and speak like—like a god. But he didn’t have a spiritual center. I hoped things would change for him if he only came here, to Aquarius. And they did, but not like I expected. Oh, God, it’s all my fault.” She leaned on the picnic table, head buried in her arms, and sobbed. “I just wanted him to have a little serenity.”
    “It’s not your fault,” Barbara said.
    “It was my idea he should come here,” Feather wailed. “If I hadn’t—”
    “He might still be dead. It sounds to me like you made a lot of allowances for him.”
    “He was good to me,” Feather said, “in his own way.”
    “You can’t go around blaming yourself,” Barbara said.
    “That’s what Madhusudhana says.”
    “Oh?”
    “He says it might be misunderstood,” Feather said. “Mel always promised to take care of me. He never forgave our parents for abandoning us in their different ways, and he swore he would never be like either of them. He made a new will when he and Annabel got divorced and another one when he married Honey. But each time he made a point of telling me I would be okay. He didn’t want me to worry. So, you see, they’ll talk to Melvin’s lawyer and they’ll know I get the money, and—and—I’m scared.”
    “How is Madhouse taking it all? I mean Madhusudhana.”
    “It’s okay. Everybody calls him that except me. He told me not to talk to anyone about Melvin. He says I might say the wrong thing.”
    “So tell him I just came by to offer my condolences,” Barbara said, patting her shoulder. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? He seemed kind of angry.”
    “Oh, Madhusudhana says things, but he doesn’t mean anything by them.”
    Barbara made a therapeutic noise intended to soothe without conveying agreement.
    “Madhusudhana is an old soul,” Feather said. “He’s had many more turns of the Wheel than me. Oh, help, there’s the conch. I’d