Like everything else in Halley's and my life, nothing fit.
An angry sun blazed down on us, squelching the sharp winds
of early March. It was almost as if even God were not quite
ready to let my cousin Halley go.
I leaned against a maple tree, listening to the rabbi
deliver the prayer for the dead. Halley wouldn't have liked
that at all, the prayer. She didn't hold with organized
religion or anything to do with what she called ignorant
superstition, the enemy of rational scientific inquiry.
After all, she'd been a practicing physician for twenty
years, and an excellent one, from the family gossip I tried
not to listen to and the occasional write–ups in the
newspaper: ""Dr. Halley Stein, high–risk pregnancy
specialist, delivers mother of quints:; ""Dr. Stein helps
50–year–old expectant mother deliver 'miracle
baby.'""
I gazed at the small group of assembled mourners.
There were a few of our cousins, one of whom had made the
arrangements. The others, I gathered, were Halley's friends
and colleagues. Her ex–husband was living in
California and they'd had no children.
Later, I suppose, would come sorrowing letters from
grateful patients in the wake of the shock of her death,
piling up at her empty office. I'd heard that she'd worked
almost to the end.
I hadn't spoken to Halley for thirty years. I hadn't
wanted to. Not after that summer at Three Beaches.
Maybe it was time to stop battling the demons of my
teenage self, after all these years. Well, a graveyard was
as good a place as any for an exorcism.
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