Midnight Haul Read Online Free

their conversation.
    He knocked on the screen door (the front door stood open) and a middle-aged woman with a floral print dress and a haggard look greeted him with a suitably sad smile, saying, “We’re so glad you stopped by.” He had never seen her before.
    He said, “Thank you,” and was inside the living room with a dozen other people, who stood in small groups, talking in hushed voices, plates of food and cups of coffee in hand. All the chairs were taken. On the couch, flanked by elderly female relatives, was Mary Beth’s mother. He went over to her.
    It took her a moment to recognize him.
    “This is Mary Beth’s fiancé,” she said, with a weak smile, nodding to the woman on her left and to her right.
    They were all pleased to meet him and he took each offered hand and returned it.
    He looked down at Mary Beth’s mother and again saw Mary Beth’s eyes in the plump face, and impulsively, leaned over and kissed her cheek. It surprised her. She touched her face where he’d kissed her and said, “There’s food in the kitchen.”
    There was food in the kitchen. A table of it: hors d’oeuvre plates, plates of cold cuts, white bread, rye bread, nut bread, banana bread, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, pecan pie, lemon meringue pie, angel food cake. Food. People were eating it.
    There were more men than women in the kitchen. Though it was serve-yourself, a woman in an apron stood behind the table of food, offering help that was never needed. Another woman in an apron was doing dishes: apparently some of the mourners had eaten and run, or perhaps some people were onto a second plate. The men stood with beers in hand, talking softer than the men out on the lawn but louder than the people in the living room.
    Crane took some coffee, sipped at it occasionally, leaned against a wall in the kitchen. No one spoke to him. The bits and pieces of conversation that drifted his way didn’t include Mary Beth’s name.
    He wandered off, unnoticed, into the other part of the house, the upper level of the split-level.
    He looked in at Mary Beth’s room. It was a small room, four cold pale pink swirled plaster walls, a dresser with mirror, a chest of drawers, a double bed with a dark pink spread. There was a stuffed toy, a tiger, on the bed, a childhood keepsake she’d had with her in their apartment. Little else in the room suggested Mary Beth’s personality. This summer was the only time in her life she’d lived in this room. Her mother and father had moved into this house after she’d left home for college. So this was not a room she’d lived in, really.
    But there were some books on the chest of drawers: Kurt Vonnegut, some science fiction, a couple of non-fiction paperbacks on ecology and such.
    And his picture, that stupid U of I senior picture, was framed on her dresser. And a couple snaps of them together were stuck in the mirror frame. He removed them. Put them in his billfold.
    “That’s stealing,” a voice said.
    He turned and saw a plump woman in her late twenties in jeans and sweater. Her hair was dark and long and she looked very much like Mary Beth, but with a wider face, which made her not quite as pretty.
    “Hi Laurie,” he said. He’d never met Mary Beth’s sister before, but he felt he knew her.
    “Hi there, Crane,” she said, and smiled and came across the room and hugged him hard.
    They looked at each other with wet eyes and then sat down on Mary Beth’s bed. She took his hand in both of hers.
    “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.
    “I didn’t see you at the funeral.”
    “I wasn’t there, I had to stay with Brucie.” She gestured toward the doorway.
    “Brucie? Your husband?”
    “No. You’re thinking of Bruce. He was my husband. Emphasis on was. We split up.”
    “Mary Beth never mentioned…”
    “It wasn’t too long ago. Two months.”
    “Brucie is Bruce, Jr., then.”
    “Right. Ten months old yesterday.”
    “I’d love to see him.”
    “He’s next door, in my