“You got a black suit or at least one in navy blue?”
This was how, without a greeting, Pete’s sister Didi, three years his senior with a voice like a railroad spike lodged in a running garbage disposal, called in the middle of the night to tell him their father had died.
And then she abruptly added, “Oh: Dad passed.”
“How?” Pete stared at the blank bedside clock. He recalled yanking it out of the wall, but not when, nor what provoked the rage.
“Cancer, remember?! The sliver of information I called you with three years ago?!” she roared in disbelief. “He’s been knocking at death’s door so long he was wedged in the mail slot. He had cancer everywhere but his fingernails, and I’m not so sure about those, as gray as they got. Did you know I had to cut them with tin snips?”
“Right, right,”
