LITMIR.BIZ

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in her mind’s eye. Titus Radkin wasn’t actually her uncle, he was her great-uncle.

      By last count, he’d been ninety-four and still going strong. Last Christmas she’d gotten a card from him. He’d included a picture of himself and his newest mistress, a woman of thirty-eight. “She’s a little old for me, but she has some very fine redeeming qualities,” he’d written across the back of the photograph.

      Eternally young, that was the way she’d thought of her father’s uncle. He’d embraced a completely different generation, one in which people wore flowers in their hair, rioted in the name of peace and drove around in air-polluting VW buses while preaching about saving the environment and doing their damnedest to procreate and perpetuate the species one lovefest at a time.

      As she recalled, Titus was a zealous advocate of free love.

      Everything else, however, the man had put a price on. A rather dear one. Which was how he was able to buy his very own island approximately twenty years ago. The world had modernized too quickly, going in directions he had no desire to follow. So he had founded his own world. For the most part, or so the story went, he had left the demands of society to live out the rest of his years the way he wanted to.

      It hadn’t been quite so because he’d gone with a full staff and had a great deal of money for his every comfort. She’d visited the island once, when the children were still very young. Titus had paid for the four of them to fly out. Brad had had to pass because of previous commitments.

      “Does he treat you well, Stacey?” Titus had asked, looking at her with those piercing blue eyes of his.

      “Yes,” she’d declared perhaps a little too quickly.

      He had only smiled a half smile, the left corner of his mouth rising while the other remained stationary, and shaken his head. “In the end, that’s all we have, you know, the people who love us. Make sure he doesn’t take you for granted.”

      At the time she’d thought those strange words to be coming from a man who had never turned his back on making love to as many women as he could.

      Good-bye, Uncle Titus. I hope you died in the saddle and not peacefully, the way your lawyer said.

      Stacey took a breath, processing what she’d just been told.

      “How?” she finally asked. “How did he die—besides peacefully.”

      There was a long pause, as if the man on the other end was trying to ascertain whether or not she was on to the truth. And then the attorney said, “He died of natural causes.”

      Which could have meant, since this was Uncle Titus, that he died making love. Or that he simply died of being ninety-four. At least the germs he was so vigilantly on guard against hadn’t managed to fell him, she thought. Her mother had always joked that they had their own personal Howard Hughes in the family.

      The irony of the whole thing struck her. Because Uncle Titus was so well off, her father had mentioned more than once that he looked forward to the day Titus went “to his reward and left us with ours.” Uncle Titus had wound up outliving both of her parents, she thought sadly.

      And with his death, the last of her extended family was gone.

      Granted, there was still Brad’s family. Brad had two brothers, one older, one younger, and a younger sister, all married—all with children and all living within the state. Two of them were only ninety miles away in San Diego, while the other lived up north in Santa Barbara. They all tried to get together for the holidays and on other occasions as well, but it still wasn’t quite the same thing.

      Titus was the last of the family she’d once had. At forty-seven, she suddenly felt like an orphan.

      “Will there be a funeral?” Her voice echoed back to her, sounding shaky. Stacey took another deep breath, trying to regain her composure.

      “Yes. The services will be held this Thursday. On the island,” the attorney added. After another pause, he told her, “Mr. Radkin expressed the hope that you would attend.”

      “Of course.” Stacey felt an odd hollowness forming at the pit of her stomach. Then it spread, taking in every inch of her and lacing it with sadness.

      Other than the unexpected Christmas card, there had been almost no contact between them for years now, at least none that had been reciprocated. She sent Christmas cards and received none in kind. It got to the point that Brad teased her about sending them to the dead-letter office and cutting out the middleman. But she never stopped, always hoping that Titus would respond. He had sent a card and a fifty-dollar savings bond when each of the children had been born. And he’d included a handwritten note.

      The note had meant far more to her than the bonds. She dutifully banked the former, which was the beginning of each of the children’s bank accounts. The latter she had placed in her box of treasures, things that she had collected over time. Things that meant nothing to anyone but her. She’d placed Uncle Titus’s last Christmas card there, along with the photograph.

      “I’ll be there Wednesday,” she told the lawyer.

      “I will have the airplane tickets forwarded to you.”

      “There’s no need—” she began.

      “It’s per Mr. Radkin’s instructions,” the lawyer told her.

      “Oh. Well, then, all right,” she agreed. “Thank you for calling.” She was still fighting the numbness as she hung up the receiver.

      Brad had remained beside her for the duration of the conversation. “You’ll be where Wednesday?” he asked.

      “Attending Uncle Titus’s funeral.” It felt so strange to say that. She had gotten accustomed to the idea that the man was going to live forever. The way he’d always thought he would.

      She realized that Brad was frowning and shaking his head. “I can’t make it, Stacey.”

      Brad and Titus had met twice, once at a family Christmas and once at their wedding. Brad had thought the man odd, a throwback to another era, but she needed his support now. He couldn’t be falling back on prior commitments. Didn’t she mean anything to him?

      “What?”

      “The funeral. I can’t make it,” he said. “I have a six hour surgery scheduled for Wednesday. I cleared my calendar completely to accommodate the time it needed. The patient’s already given his own blood. Everything’s been set in motion. It can’t be rescheduled.”

      She knew how difficult it was coordinating everything that went into performing a surgery. But this was her uncle Titus. The last living relative in her family. She needed Brad with her.

      Stacey tried to think. “Could you fly out right after the surgery?”

      Brad’s immediate response was to shake his head. “I’ve got another surgery for Thursday morning.” But then he paused, thinking. He didn’t want to be the bad guy twice in her eyes in such a short duration. “Maybe I can get Harris to cover for me—”

      Stacey knew that neurosurgeons didn’t “cover” for one another. Not unless something like an earthquake or hurricane was directly involved. Each had his own area of expertise, his own small kingdom.

      She banked down the bitterness that had prompted her to think the last part. “That’s okay. I’ll go alone.”

      Brad peered at her face, his own uncertain. “Are you sure?”

      She didn’t want to argue about this, too. Especially since she knew how it would turn out. Why waste the time? “I’m sure.”

      Off the hook, Brad still didn’t like the idea of her flying alone. “Maybe Jim could go with you—”

      She looked at him sharply. “Jim’s busy setting up his new life. I’m perfectly capable of flying on my own.” She blew out a breath, the impact of the news hitting her all over again. “God, I can’t believe that Uncle Titus

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