Read Another Dead Republican for Free Online

from a laser jet printer in the early nineties. “These cover from nineteen forty-four to nineteen ninety-two.” He glanced into the box and took out the next stack of papers. They were about as thick as a ream and a half of paper. He flipped through the first few and the last few. He said, “These go from ninety-two to this year.”
     
    “Strange.”
     
    “No stranger than hunting lodge brochures.”
     
    Forty-five minutes in, I found the tax forms from five years before. It was a start in organizing the income folders, making it far easier. Any company they had income from would have sent a form of some kind, normally a 1099. If he was making money from businesses that didn’t send tax forms, I think he and now Veronica at least peripherally, were in trouble. Taxes were due late next week. My guess was Veronica would need to find Edgar’s accountant or hire one of her own.
     

NINE
     
    Wednesday 8:44 A.M.
     
    I’d just placed the first investment form into the tax folder when the door to the den burst open. Edgar’s father, Charles Dudley Grum, marched into the room.
     
    “Where’s Veronica?” he demanded. His voice was nearly a shout.
     
    I said, “She’s telling the children their father is dead.”
     
    He added a snarl to the loudness of his voice. “What’s taking so long?”
     
    There was a timetable for announcing the death of a parent to children? How cruel? How absurd?
     
    I didn’t really want to deal with this guy right now. Then I reminded myself, for it seemed like the thousandth time already, that he’d just lost a son, and he deserved a lot of slack.
     
    At their wedding, Edgar was drunk from before the ceremony began. He swayed at the altar. I remember glancing at the family across the church aisle. The gargantuan Mrs. Grum slopped over the edge of the pew across from my mother. My sister’s moments-from-officially being mother-in-law’s gargantuan face radiated hate. Not disapproval, hate.
     
    When I met him, I thought Edgar was a fool. When I saw him at the wedding, I thought he was a drunken fool. My sister loved him. Who was I to tell her he was a disaster? And she wouldn’t have listened. She was in love.
     
    During the entire reception, her mother-in-law sat in a corner and barely seemed to alter an ounce of her posture. The dog didn’t move much either. Didn’t the poor thing ever have to relieve itself? The alternative was too odious to consider. I felt sorry for the poor critter.
     
    It wasn’t the drunken Edgar or my sister’s hate-filled mother-in-law, I found most offensive at the wedding. It was Charles Dudley Grum, the father-in-law, whom I found most odious.
     
    At the reception when Scott and I began to dance, one of Edgar’s dad’s minions came over and told us to stop. I knew it was a minion from someone who talked to me later.
     
    Scott’s dancing is a sight to behold. The man is all grace and athleticism on the baseball field. Put him on a dance floor to any kind of fast music, and he looks like a man in the midst of electro-shock therapy in a video where someone keeps pressing the pause button, kind of spastic jerking on steroids. On the other hand slow dancing with him is a joy. His body swaying, dipping, and dancing next to mine, up against mine, pure bliss. And yes, our doing so at such an event is still a political and moral affront to many. Good.
     
    We’d even taken dancing lessons at one point. The lessons didn’t do an ounce of good for his dancing to rock and roll.
     
    I’m afraid I committed one of the great sins at that moment of attempted minion intervention. I was neither afraid, intimidated, or much interested, that was normal. No, the great sin was that I laughed at the minion attempting to remove us from the dance floor.
     
    We didn’t stop dancing. If guests were offended, they did not rush out of the reception screeching in horror. In fact, they all seemed to live through it. So the minion stuff was odd, but not the