Heaven’s Gate
91 Return to Corazón
The memorial service at Hart Funeral Chapel was surprisingly well-attended Wednesday afternoon. It was all friends of the family and Dad’s co-workers. It was really just a reception for folks to give their sympathy to Mom. The few of his friends who were in the know embraced Anna and gave her sympathy, too. And me, of course. And my daughter and ‘wife.’ They all nodded their heads and said they understood why Betts needed to leave early and hoped that ‘God will be with her in these tragic times.’
Most of them were pretty clueless.
At the end, instead of a graveside service, the funeral director gave Mom an urn of Dad’s ashes. We thanked him and left.
Mom didn’t want to stay any longer. She had Dad’s ashes and wanted us to leave for Corazón right away. So we did. We took my car and Anna’s. Jen and I switched off driving our moms and riding with Dani and Xan. We were all relieved to get to the ranch about seven-thirty.
Courtney, Samantha, and Liz had dinner waiting for us and all the kids came to embrace their grandmas. As soon as they knew we were home, Cassie, Mary, Josh, and our four kids came over with John and Bea. That made three babies under a year old in the house, and Jenny Lynn who was just eighteen months. Ruth and Robert were three years old now and Sharon was almost four. It was hard for the grandmas not to have their grief lightened by so many loving hugs.
It was even hard for me to wallow in my grief with my babies in my arms.
We put Mom and Anna in the master suite and they took Dad’s ashes with them.
Matthew met me at the bakery at three-thirty and we started our familiar routine. A father and son in business together baking bread.
“I think we need soft gooey cookies today,” I said. “What do you think?”
“La Madrina likes chocolate chip,” Matthew said. “And Mama Rose likes snickerdoodles. We could make both.”
“Did you hear that, Hannah?” I said. “We’re making your favorite cookies. Maybe we’ll make everyone’s favorites. Let’s see. Elaine likes the oatmeal-raisin cookies.”
“Melanie likes peanut butter cookies,” Matthew added.
“Hmm. What’s Nicolette’s favorite cookie?”
“Madeleines.”
“Of course. And tell Papa Sly we’ll save a big gooey cinnamon roll for him. I think this is a big day for sweet things at The Baker’s Dozen.”
The rest of the kids showed up at five-thirty and got the shop ready for the day. Each of the children had a special task. Refilling the napkin dispensers, sweeping the floor, washing the tables.
“Omelets this morning,” Rhiannon said as she, Sandy, and Doreen came through the door with Douglas Jr. “If we’re getting up for bakery duty at this hour, we’re having our favorite goat cheese omelets.” We laughed and Ellie got the job of cracking two dozen eggs, mixing them with milk and whipping them up. She was spending a lot more time in the kitchen part of the bakery these days, doing any job she could think of to be close to Matt—even washing dishes.
“Do I smell cookies?” Hannah said when she walked into the bakery at seven. “Did you make chocolate chips?”
“Your favorites,” I said as I rushed around the counter to embrace her. Then Rose was in my arms followed by Elaine and Nikki. Even Melanie gave me a hug as soon as she’d found and hugged her sister. I saw Sly and gave him a big hug, too.
“We drove straight through when we finally got a car.”
“We have a new van,” Rose said. “It was the only way we could get transportation quickly. And we needed it. I bought it with casa funds.”
“I’m so glad you are home safe and sound,” I said. “How could you stand to drive straight through?”
“We had six drivers. We drove in two-hour shifts with two people awake all the time,” Melanie said. “It was cool. I got to drive cross-country. Even though it was dark half the time.”
“Have you heard anything?” Rose asked as she put her arm around me and seemed to inhale my floury scent.
“Only that Judy called last night from Jessica’s hotel. She wasn’t there. The housekeeping staff said the room hadn’t been slept in since they made it up Tuesday morning. We probably won’t hear from them again for a couple days. They were headed straight to the site to help with rescue efforts. People have actually been found alive in the rubble. There’s hope,” I said.
As soon as I closed the bakery, I went to the HCEN office in Indy to assess where we were. Samantha, Courtney, Armand, and Rebecca had decided our response to the attack would be to keep regular news coverage, but not to run repeats of the events non-stop twenty-four hours a day. Normal programming went to all reruns. We kept our normal schedule of shows, but we didn’t want to put the burden of performing on our hosts and stars. No one could be sure what anyone would say.
Rose and I looked over the selection of episodes that were re-running to be sure we weren’t putting out insensitive content by accident. I noted that tonight XX/XY was slated to run a ‘classic’ episode from when I was host. Rebecca explained that Armand had specifically requested that we run my “Leaky Pail” monologue. I was pleased with that choice. It had helped Doug come to grips with his cancer and live life for the day. Perhaps it was something we could all learn from.
Elaine and Amber both came in and helped sort through their episodes to make sure we were broadcasting things that were pure and wholesome. We weren’t worried about Reese’s show, but everything we screened was viewed by one of our staff in advance so that we were sure the content was okay. We ran four newscasts each day, with a morning, noon, evening and late-night broadcast. Our newsroom was hopping, but we tried to keep them focused on what was news and not what was speculative hype. It was hard to do. We all wanted a clear enemy to attack. We all wanted to know if we were safe. We all wanted revenge.
The news crew was standing by in case there were any late developments that merited interrupting the programming. Our emergency program committee determined if it was important enough to break to a live newscast or if we should just run a marquee ribbon at the bottom of the screen with the bulletin.
Emotions were running high. The world was changing as we watched.
Rose and I got back late. The poor woman was exhausted. They’d worked hard in LA, drove for thirty-two hours and then we went straight to work for twelve more hours. I was exhausted, too.
We parked and headed toward the back door and met a figure huddled on the back steps crying. I thought at first it was Melanie or maybe Reese. I knelt beside her and lifted her chin.
“Hey. We’re here. What’s the problem?” The weeping eyes looked into mine in such misery it was like a blow to the stomach.
“I didn’t do it, Patrón. I loved her. I didn’t do it!” Amy cried collapsing against me.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
