Read The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley for Free Online Page B

it open. However unwittingly, I’d wronged this diminishing family, and my intentions now were strictly to arrange the ritual I’d been enlisted to carry out. Get the information, tell this woman what she needed to know about it, and leave her to grieve the loss of her departed parents.
    As I approached the sliding doors, Brigid opened them, looking far more relaxed than when I’d left her earlier. Her tweed jacket was gone, replaced by a navy cashmere sweater, and her hair was back in a ponytail. I nodded hello.
    â€œLet me take your coat,” she said, just like her mother. I took it off and watched her hang it up, noticing she’d inherited her mother’s grace of movement. Then she led me into the kitchen, giving me an unusually strange case of déjà vu.
    â€œThis must be a bit weird for you, having done all this with my mother earlier in the same place,” she said, reading my mind while putting the kettle on.
    â€œI think it’s a bit weird for the two of us,” I said, taking out a fresh arrangement form as well as her father’s one.
    â€œYou look like you could do with a cup of coffee.”
    I’d decided before I’d come in that I wasn’t going to accept any tea or coffee or anything else offered to me, and just get out of there as soon as possible. But something about the way she asked me completely disarmed my intentions.
    â€œWhy not?” I said. Brigid went about getting the good stuff together, not quite as strong as Frank’s brew, but freshly ground all the same, and then sat down at the table opposite me.
    â€œHow far had you got with my mother in arranging my father’s funeral?”
    All sorts of unwelcome thoughts rushed around my head. I swallowed and struggled to remain calm.
    â€œWe’d pretty much covered everything. What your mother had decided upon was to have the removal tomorrow evening and the funeral on Wednesday morning after ten o’clock Mass at St. Mary’s on Haddington Road. And then afterwards to Glasnevin Cemetery.”
    â€œI’d like to stick to her wishes as much as possible. Can we do that?”
    â€œOf course,” I said, wanting to accommodate her. “The only thing you need to take into consideration is the time factor. Your mother and I talked about having the removal tomorrow evening, but that was obviously before she passed on. So, bearing in mind there’s to be an autopsy on her remains in the morning, I’d suggest moving the arrangements forward a day.”
    â€œOkay,” said Brigid. And then as an afterthought, “Why is there an autopsy?”
    It was a simple question that felt like a punch to the gut.
    â€œIt was a sudden death. Your mother is relatively young, and it happened at home. Routine under the circumstances.”
    â€œRight,” said Brigid, letting me continue.
    â€œWhat your mother wanted to do was to bring your father back here today and have a little bit of time with him before removing his remains to the church tomorrow. What I’d suggest, to keep in line with your mother’s thinking, would be to bring both your parents back here tomorrow afternoon at the same time, have them here over a twenty-four-hour period, then bring them to the church together on Wednesday evening and have the funeral on Thursday morning.”
    Brigid nodded her head with somber eagerness.
    â€œThat sounds perfect,” she said, as the kettle clicked off. She got up from her chair and made us both a cup of coffee. While she was pouring the water, she said nothing and neither did I. The silence was a relaxed one, and I felt no need to fill the gap with words, and nor, it seemed, did Brigid. Even when she’d sat down after putting the milk and sugar on the table, we both fixed our coffee without speaking. I watched the movement of her fingers as she stirred her coffee. She was a beautiful woman, and very much her mother’s daughter. Just as my