Page 73 of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

“Ms. Della, I need to talk to you. It’s about… Well, it’s going to sound strange. But just go with it, okay?”

“Mmm, sounds serious.” She placed her teacup back on its saucer, and Ricki noticed the IV taped down in the crook of her left elbow. Alarmed, she did a double take. But before she could ask what had happened, she was interrupted by a peppy young nurse wearing Figs scrubs and an arm tattoo of Lana Del Rey’s face. She bounded into the room, clutching her hands together in a gesture of polite, cheerful service.

“How are we doing, Ms. Della? Time to take some blood!”

“Can you give me just a few, Naaz? This is Ricki, my granddaughter. She has something important to discuss with me.”

Even with all the madness swirling around her, Ricki felt a surge of warmth at Ms. Della publicly claiming her as her granddaughter. It was like snuggling under a weighted blanket.

“Hi, Naaz, it’s nice to meet you,” said Ricki, shaking her hand. Who was this person, and why did Ms. Della need a nurse?

“Oh, hi. Ms. Della’s file says she has no descendants.”

“She’s chosen family, dear,” explained Ms. Della.

“Framily,” said Naaz. “A friend that’s family. I host FramilyFriendsgiving, actually. Last year, I cooked the frozen turkey from Popeyes’ holiday menu. It’s pre-seasoned!”

Naaz winked and exited the room.

“Who is that?” whispered Ricki, wasting no time getting to the bottom of this.

“Her? Oh, she’s just my new in-home aide. Turns out, getting older is not so fun. I have a benign cyst. It’s nothing, but she’ll be staying with me for a bit, just for monitoring. She’s quite… peppy. Before she was a nurse, she was something called a ‘party motivator,’ getting people to dance at bar mitzvahs and weddings. Did you know that was a job?”

Ricki had never heard Ms. Della speak so fast. Ms. Della made this new development sound casual, but it definitely didn’t seem casual.

“Dear, close your mouth,” she continued. “You’ll catch flies.”

“But… a home aide? Not like hospice, right?”

“No,” she scoffed, chuckling softly. The chuckle turned into a hearty cough. “I just dislike hospitals. Receiving care in the comfort of your own home? Underrated luxury.”

Ricki tried to play along, but she knew in her heart that Ms. Della was lying. She was ninety-six years old! Being sick at this age was most likely fatal. But Ricki also knew she wouldn’t reveal the truth before she was ready.

I can’t lose her, she thought, staving off preemptive sorrow.She’s my rock. And we haven’t had enough time together.

It was a crushing, creeping fear, this idea of losing this woman she loved. They’d had each other in their lives for less than a year. It wasn’t fair.

Ricki respected Ms. Della far too much to push her on the topic. When Ms. Della was finished with a conversation, she was done. But now, in the face of an obvious health crisis, Ricki felt ridiculous introducing the unsolvable mystery of Ezra Walker.Especially since if it was true, there was a distinct possibility that she might die.

Growing up in funeral homes, Ricki was exposed to death and dying at an early age. She was well versed in wakes, dead bodies, and last rites. She’d hang out with the morticians and makeup artists, hearing stories of corpses reflexively surging upright or changing complexions mid-makeover. Death was spoken about so frankly—as if it were no more than the period at the end of everyone’s sentence—but it never felt banal to her. It felt like something to dread, to rail against. Whenever she’d attended a funeral for work, she couldn’t stop thinking about the people left behind. The despair on a weeping husband’s face. The middle-aged people who, after losing a parent, were lost, abandoned orphans. The little ones who were too young to intellectualize that their beloved grandma or grandpa would never return from wherever they’d gone.

Ricki couldn’t give in to the inevitability of death. Instead, it made her want to live harder than anyone else, go deeper, feel everything, grow things, and approach the world with sharpened senses.

And despite all the anonymous death around her, no one close to her had ever died. Her great-grands and grands had all passed before she was born. She still had both her parents, and her sisters. Ricki wasn’t prepared to experience personal loss.

Stop overreacting, she told herself, trying to stave off her slowly mounting panic.Yes, the woman is elderly, but she’s in great health. You had your own benign ovarian cyst scare in 2013. You had a laparoscopy and lived to see another day!

The idea that Ricki might be facing down her own death sentence passed through her mind again.No.She rebuked the thought. It was a hill too steep to climb. She’d confront it only after she’d confirmed that Ezra was, indeed, telling the truth. Until then, she’d compartmentalize.

Ms. Della tapped her flame-red nails on her teacup, snapping Ricki back to reality. “You’re acting real funny today. What’s on your mind, dear?”

Ricki stared out of the window at the street, trying to figure out where to start. “I’ve been curious about this house.”

“Curious how?”

“The history of it. You told me that it was boarded up in 1928 and stayed abandoned until you bought it a few years ago, right?”

“It’s true. I had my eye on it for a while. It was a great day when I finally convinced the good doctor to buy it.”

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