She remained parked for a few minutes, entering her next destination—Boston’s Trinity Church—into her GPS, and then shifted into DRIVE. As she pulled out into the street, she left with mixed emotions. On one hand, she felt satisfied she’d done all she could for him. On the other, she hoped and prayed that Hank would do the work he needed to do.
* * *
Lucy was familiar enough with Boston to know that she wouldn’t be able to pull up next to Trinity Church and park the car, so she was on the lookout for a parking garage when the GPS told her she was approaching her destination. She pulled into the first garage she saw and, after getting over the shock of the price listed on a sign by the entrance, took the ticket and began a long descent into the bowels of Boston. Finally finding a vacant spot, she parked, took the elevator to the surface, and began the short walk to Copley Square.
Her mother used to scoff that Boston was a “small town” compared to New York, but Lucy found Boston pretty exciting after living so long in Tinker’s Cove. The streets were lined with tall buildings and the sidewalks were filled with people of all ages and ethnicities, all intent on going somewhere. The shop windows were filled with interesting, and no doubt expensive, temptations.
Arriving at Copley Square where a steel drum band was playing beneath the bare trees, she paused to take in the scene. The square itself was filled with people, some listening to the music, others feeding pigeons or simply taking a rest on one of the benches. The Boston Public Library faced the square on one side, the stately Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel stood on another, and Trinity Church itself stood beneath the gleaming mirrored walls of the sleek Hancock Tower, which was designed to reflect an image of the church.
A steady stream of people were pouring into the church and Lucy joined them, making sure to have her ID and press pass ready for presentation. As she shuffled along in the line, she recognized some well-known people—the governor of Massachusetts, the mayor of Boston, the senior senator from Massachusetts, Bob Kraft, who owned the Patriots football team, and a couple newscasters she’d seen on TV. The line moved right along as people were identified and escorted to pews in the Romanesque church, but when Lucy handed over her credentials to the gatekeepers she was directed to a small doorway. There she encountered a steep staircase that led to the choir loft, which offered a terrific view of the church below, but was too small for the large number of media people assigned to cover the funeral.
She was fortunate enough to squeeze herself into a spot in the front row, where she stood in a corner and prayed that whoever designed the 150-year old church had thought to make sure the choir loft was strong enough to hold a large crowd. She wasn’t the only one who had that thought.
The cameraman from Channel 5 was clearly uncomfortable. “I covered a balcony collapse—a triple-decker—last week,” he told her. “Bunch of college kids. Two were killed.”
“That’s terrible,” said Lucy. “I hope that doesn’t happen to us.”
“What are the chances?” he asked. “An old building, constructed before today’s building codes . . .”
“Back when people weighed less,” added newscaster Monique Washington, who was a beautiful, large black woman.
“We don’t get no respect,” said a young guy sporting a fashionable day-old beard whose lanyard identified him as working for the Boston Globe. “They want good press, but they don’t want to provide decent accommodations for us. They just crowd us in behind fences like we’re a bunch of cows or stick us up in the attic. Jeez, it’s hot up here.”
“You said it,” agreed Monique, fanning herself with the order of service she’d picked up off a chair. “So do you think we’ll have any drama? The wives encounter each other and start ripping off black veils?”
“That’d be something,” said the guy from the Globe in a hopeful tone.
“Well, here comes the current wife, the show girl,” said the cameraman, swinging his camera to focus on Mireille.
She was walking slowly down the aisle, leaning slightly backwards and holding onto her mother’s arm. From her vantage point, Lucy could only see her back. Mireille was dressed in low heels and a simple black cloth coat that provided a dark contrast to her flowing blond hair. Mimsy was also dressed simply in a navy pantsuit. A navy and white checked beret was on her head. They were following an usher, who led them to the first pew on the left-hand side of the church.
“Very understated, very tasteful,” admitted Monique with a raised eyebrow. “I’m kinda surprised. I thought she’d be brassier somehow.”
Lucy wanted to defend Mireille but bit her tongue, unwilling to share her privileged one-on-one interview with the entire press corps.
“You gotta wonder with a young wife like that, if she’s kinda glad the old boy is gone or whether she’ll really miss him,” said the cameraman.
“She won’t have to go on Match.com, that’s for sure, not with a billion or two in the bank,” said the guy from the Globe.
“And she’s got the looks, or will have, once she has the baby,” said the cameraman. He was swinging the camera once again, this time picking up the arrival of Ed Franklin’s divorced wife, Eudora. “Here comes the hag,” he announced.
“Oh my gosh. She’s gone over the top,” said Monique, rolling her eyes.
Peering down, Lucy had to agree. Eudora had swathed herself in layers and layers of black gauze, which gave the impression that she was a Muslim woman required to cover every inch of herself with a suffocating chador. Apparently unable to support her grieving self, or perhaps unable to see through the dense layers of fabric, she was supported by her son, Tag, on one side and her husband, Jon, on the other. The trio
