22 The Meadow stretched out on his old fashioned mortuary table. She smiled, remembering the afternoon that her shadow had betrayed her at the window. “If you want to watch me, Alannah, you’ll need to understand my work.” He had handed her a copy of Barnes’ The Art and Science of Embalming: Descriptive and Operative and a medical dictionary so thick she could barely lift it. After much reading and long discussions, Alannah understood that his big white hands were no longer performing secret rituals in the basement of a defunct chapel, they were performing a service for people with broken hearts. People desperate for one last look at the face they fell in love with. Given their history, Alannah could only guess what Gaelan was thinking. Her father’s fingers had been someplace that no son should ever have to think about. “Daddy, this is Gaelan. He wants to hear the story of Evelyn Ludlow and her boys. I told him that you’d be the one to tell it.” Just for a moment, Ian Walsh looked lost. Then his dark eyes seemed to light up in recognition of the name. His face flooded with sadness. “It was a dreadful accident. She went through the windshield. I tried suturing, but there wasn’t enough left to work with. In the end, her father decided on a closed casket. That was for the best.” Gaelan had his notebook out. “Can you tell me about her sons, Mr. Walsh? What happened to them? Ian Walsh looked warily at Gaelan. “Are you a reporter? I never talk to reporters, son. Grieving families have enough pain without seeing it splashed on the front page of the Ludlow County Gazette.” Alannah stole a carrot from her mother’s cutting board and crunched. “Gaelan’s a policeman, Daddy. He’s here to find out what happened to the Ludlow boys.” Ian Walsh sighed. “Nobody knows what happened to them. When the police and ambulance got to the accident, their father was unconscious, their mother dead, and the boys were gone. There was blood in one of the car seats, but not enough to indicate that the child had been seriously injured. Their
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODQ3NA==