In part two of this episodic psychological thriller, Nicole Jeffords. convinced that healer, Victor Goodlove, who disappeared ten years earlier is buried under her studio, continues her search for him, contacting old patients all over Austin and dis...
The funeral was held in a reform synagogue, in a room that reminded me a little of a rec hall. There were maybe a hundred people present. Janet and I took seats at the back where no one paid much attention to us. I felt extremely self-conscious nonetheless because A) I didn't belong there and B) Janet had covered her face and head with the black chiffon scarf which made her look slightly ridiculous, like a standard issue widow from central casting.
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Beneath the scarf, she was weeping. People began to turn around to look at her, and I shrank into myself, embarrassed as she reached under the scarf to wipe at her eyes with soggy pieces of tissue. By then the family had come in from a side room and slid into seats in the front row. I tried to figure out who was who: a pretty blond woman in her early fifties who must have been Roy's sister, Diana; an angry-looking red-headed girl in her twenties, probably Roy's daughter; a number of older women in matronly black dresses, probably his aunts; and three or four men of various ages, one of them Diana's husband, the others probably uncles and cousins.
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Rabbi shakes a hand., Sam Litvin, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The rabbi spoke — a lot of blah blah about what a wonderful man Roy had been. Janet gripped my hand, digging her fingers sharply into my skin. "It's gonna be okay," I whispered. She was the only black person in the room, but it was hard to tell what color she was under the scarf. I found myself searching for Victor in the crowd. What if he was there in some sort of disguise?
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But of course he wasn't, at least not as far as I could tell. After the rabbi, there were several other speakers: an architect who had worked closely with Roy over the years; another man who turned out to be Roy's college roommate; a woman who was an old family friend and who made a slightly inappropriate joke about why the funeral had been so delayed (Jewish law requires immediate burial, but Roy's was ten days late due to the autopsy). And finally a handsome, dark-haired man who reminded me of a cousin of mine and who introduced himself as Eric Schindler. No way, I thought, leaning forward in my seat.
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