“If he didn’t, I wish I could give her some of mine,” I said.

He smiled, and kissed my cheek. “You’re a good kid. Your mom would be so proud of you. Are you sure you’re okay now?”

“Yes.” I ate some eggs and toast to prove it, although I didn’t want them. My dad had to be right—a stolen password, a cloned phone, a cruel practical joke. It sure hadn’t been Mr. Harrigan, whose guts had been tossed like salad and whose blood had been replaced with embalming fluid.

* * *

Dad went to work and I went up to Mr. Harrigan’s. Mrs. Grogan was vacuuming the living room. She wasn’t singing like she usually did, but she was composed enough, and after I finished watering the plants, she asked if I’d like to go into the kitchen and have a cup of tea (which she called “a cuppa cheer”) with her.

“There’s cookies, too,” she said.

We went into the kitchen and while she boiled the kettle, I told her about Mr. Harrigan’s note, and how he’d left money in trust for my college education.

Mrs. Grogan nodded in businesslike fashion, as if she’d expected no less, and said she had also gotten an envelope from Mr. Rafferty. “The boss fixed me up. More than I expected. Prob’ly more than I deserve.”

I said I felt pretty much the same way.

Mrs. G. brought the tea to the table, a big mug for each of us. Between them she set down a plate of oatmeal cookies. “He loved these,” Mrs. Grogan said.

“Yeah. He said they got his bowels in gear.”

That made her laugh. I picked up one of the cookies and bit into it. As I chewed, I thought of the scripture from 1 Corinthians I’d read at Methodist Youth Fellowship on Maundy Thursday and at Easter service just a few months back: “And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.” The cookies weren’t communion, the Rev would surely have called the idea blasphemous, but I was glad to have one just the same.

“He took care of Pete, too,” she said. Meaning Pete Bostwick, the gardener.

“Nice,” I said, and reached for another cookie. “He was a good guy, wasn’t he?”

“Not so sure about that,” she said. “He was square-dealing, all right, but you didn’t want to be on his bad side. You don’t remember Dusty Bilodeau, do you? No, you wouldn’t. He was before your time.”

“From the Bilodeaus over in the trailer park?”

“Ayuh, that’s right, next to the store, but I ’spect Dusty isn’t among em. He’ll have gone on his merry way long since. He was the gardener before Pete, but wasn’t eight months on the job before Mr. Harrigan caught him stealing and fired his butt. I don’t know how much he got, or how Mr. Harrigan found out, but firing didn’t end it. I know you know some of the stuff Mr. H. gave this little town and all the ways he helped out, but Mooney didn’t tell even half of it, maybe because he didn’t know or maybe because he was on a timer. Charity is good for the soul, but it also gives a man power, and Mr. Harrigan used his on Dusty Bilodeau.”

She shook her head. Partly, I think, in admiration. She had that Yankee hard streak in her.

“I hope he filched at least a few hundred out of Mr. Harrigan’s desk or sock drawer or wherever, because that was the last money he ever got in the town of Harlow, county of Castle, state of Maine. He couldn’t have landed a job shoveling henshit out of old Dorrance Marstellar’s barn after that. Mr. Harrigan saw to it. He was a square-dealing man, but if you weren’t the same, God help you. Have another cookie.”

I took another cookie.

“And drink your tea, boy.”

I drank my tea.

“I guess I’ll do the upstairs next. Prob’ly change the sheets on the beds instead of just strippin em, at least for now. What do you think’s going to happen with this house?”

“Gee, I don’t know.”

“Neither do I. Not a clue. Can’t imagine anyone buying it. Mr. Harrigan was one of a kind, and that goes the same for . . .” She spread her arms wide. “. . . all this.”

I thought about the glass elevator and decided she had a point.

Mrs. G. grabbed another cookie. “What about the houseplants? Any idears about them?”

“I’ll take a couple, if it’s all right,” I said. “The rest, I don’t know.”

“Me, either. And his freezer’s full. I guess we could split that three ways—you, me, and Pete.”

Take, eat, I thought. This do in remembrance of me.

She sighed. “I’m mostly just dithering. Stretching out a few chores like they were many. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself, and that’s the God’s honest. What about you, Craig? What are you going to do?”

“Right now I’m going downstairs to spritz his hen of the woods,” I said. “And if you’re sure it’s okay, I’ll at least take the African violet when I go home.”

“Course I’m sure.” She said it the Yankee way: Coss. “As many as you want.”

She went upstairs and I down to the basement, where Mr. Harrigan kept his mushrooms in a bunch of terrariums. While I spritzed, I thought about the text message I’d gotten from pirateking1 in the middle of the night. Dad was right, it had to be a joke, but wouldn’t a practical joker have sent something at least half-witty, like Save me I’m trapped in a box or the old one that went Don’t bother me while I’m decomposing? Why would a practical joker just send a double a, which when you spoke it sounded kind of like a gurgle, or a death-rattle? And why would a practical joker send my initial? Not once or twice but three times?

* * *

I ended up taking four of Mr. Harrigan’s houseplants—the African violet, the anthurium, the peperomia, and the dieffenbachia. I spotted them around our house, saving the dieffenbachia for my room, because it was my favorite. But I was just marking time, and I knew it. Once the plants were placed, I got a bottle of Snapple out of the fridge, put it in the saddlebag of my bike, and rode out to Elm Cemetery.

It was deserted on that hot summer forenoon, and I went right to Mr. Harrigan’s grave. The stone was in place, nothing fancy, just a granite marker with his name and dates on it. There were plenty of flowers, all still fresh (that wouldn’t last long), most with cards tucked in them. The biggest bunch, perhaps picked from Mr. Harrigan’s own flowerbeds—and out of respect, not parsimony—was from Pete Bostwick’s family.

I got down on my knees, but not to pray. I took my phone out of my pocket and held it in my hand. My heart was beating so hard it made little black dots flash in front of my eyes. I went to my contacts and called him. Then I lowered my phone and put the side of my face down on the newly replaced sod, listening for Tammy Wynette.

I thought I heard her, too, but it must have been my imagination. It would have had to’ve come through his coat, through the lid of his coffin, and up through six feet of ground. But I thought I did. No, check that—I was sure I did. Mr. Harrigan’s phone, singing “Stand By Your Man” down there in his grave.

In my other ear, the one not pressed to the ground, I could hear his voice, very faint but audible in the dozing stillness of that place: “I’m not answering my phone now. I will call you back if it seems appropriate.”