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“A lot,” she agreed.
“That’s what I sort of thought. But the funny thing is ...”
Sitting in her red EV, staring at her herringbone-patterned brick driveway, Rebecca waited for Bobby the Sham to specify the funny thing about comas. When the silence endured long enough for her to begin hungering for a second breakfast, this one without kale, she asked, “What funny thing?”
“Maybe a better word is ‘peculiar.’”
“You’re the writer. I leave the word business to you.”
“The peculiar thing about all those people who’ve fallen into temporary comas is ... hard as I try, I can’t name one of them other than Ernie.”
As Rebecca dwelt on that peculiarity, a bird settled on the hood ornament of her vehicle just long enough to decorate it with a large dollop of guano before winging away.
She said, “I can’t name any, either. Isn’t that ...” She was about to sayweird, which was just a synonym forpeculiar, so she said, “... puzzling? It sort of seems to me, too, we’ve known a lot of people who’ve fallen into temporary comas, but I can’t name one, either.”
Although three thousand miles separated them, they shared an intimate and thoughtful silence until Bobby said, “So maybe we’re wrong. Maybe we haven’t known a lot of people who’ve fallen into temporary comas.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange we’d share the same delusion about people in comas? Did Spencer tell you how Ernie ended up comatose? Was he sick? Did he drop off a ladder and hit his head?”
“Spencer just told me Ernie was in a coma, critical condition. Spencer is driving down there from Chicago. He’ll be in Maple Grove this afternoon. I’m flying out from Baltimore in an hour. Ernie’s alone and vulnerable, Becky. We have to be there for him.”
“Alone?”
“And terribly vulnerable.”
“But he’s got Britta.”
“Britta Hernishen?” Bobby sounded incredulous. “You’d trustherto keep Ernie alive?”
“She’s his mother.”
Bobby was as silent as if the line had gone dead.
“For heaven’s sake, Bobby, she’s a professor. She teaches a class on the value of ethics in literature. She donates hours and hours of her time to Save the Alligators and other causes.”
“It’s Maple Grove,” Bobby said.
“So?”
“Do you really trust anyone in Maple Grove other than Ernie?”
“What does that mean?”
After a silence, Bobby said, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“Doyouknow?”
She frowned. “How wouldIknow what you mean whenyoudon’t know what you mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Rebecca quoted the town’s motto. “Maple Grove is ‘picture-postcard perfect.’”
“Is it really, Becky?”
Following an uneasy silence of her own, she said, “That’s certainly how I remember it. Picturesque and boring.”