Chapter 1 - Lost
Grief descended on the Pritchard family. Father, family business owner and entrepreneur, Ricky Pritchard, had passed away at just 52 years old. Funeral preparations were being made for Wednesday with flowers to be sent to Fuller’s Funeral Home. It was a cold, mid-February Minnesota funeral, but no one can be in charge of the timing of death.
Some family members were struggling to arrange transportation to the funeral in Duluth from snow-bound areas, those in Eveleth and Mountain Iron being the worst affected by the storms. Some were complaining that the church and cemetery were on a hill out of the city. They thought ice on the hill could cause accidents. Eva thought in frustration, “Like the family plot could be moved to the bottom of the hill for this one funeral. Maybe the complainers would like to hold out on the funeral until a nice BBQ with free beer could be arranged for mid-July. Typical Rangers.”
It would seem, to Eva, her husband’s death had inconvenienced many people.
She snapped again when her phone rang on the drive home from the store. She pulled the car to the side of the road and answered the call. Her husband’s casket was ready, except the funeral home had made no notes of the liner type. Did she want a silk lining or cotton?
“Pick one. If you need to know a color, pick that too. The lid’s going to be closed for the rest of time, so he won’t care either way!”
Eva checked the car mirrors, adjusted her glasses, re-entered traffic and ignored the four extra calls on her journey home.
Crunching through ice and roadside dirty snow, she pulled the car up to the front of the driveway. She picked out the letters from the mailbox, which totaled two bills, a bank letter and an odd handwritten envelope. There was no return address, the postmark was missing, but there was a stamp on it. Maybe the person was going to post it, but delivered it in person, she reasoned. Perhaps it was business and Ricky may have received plenty of them. After all, he’d pick up the mail every day, same as he always took the garbage out, or always washed their cars.
She parked up next to Ricky’s blue station wagon, making sure to leave enough room at the side for him to open the driver’s door. Fifteen minutes later she had run out of tissues, but was still crying and hurried through the snow into the house.
