Last Goodbyes

Craig Conrad

Description

Dutch Verlander’s life was winding down and drastically changing. Retirement was only a step away, and old age had snuck up on him and was smiling at him with the grin of a child molester. Like a man falling from a great height and the sudden change of direction at the end, he saw his life taking on a new direction, one he did not like or want: his father was dying; his girl was dumping him; and his friends were being murdered one by one; and he suddenly found himself saying his last goodbyes.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 02 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669868644
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Last Goodbyes
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Craig Conrad
 
Copyright © 2023 by Craig Conrad.
 
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-6866-8

Softcover
978-1-6698-6865-1

eBook
978-1-6698-6864-4
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date:02/23/2023
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
809146
Contents
Prologue
Part I     August and September
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
Part II     September and October
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
 
Epilogue
1
2
3
4
5
 
Author’s Note
Other books by Craig Conrad
 
It is never any good dwelling on
Goodbyes. It is not the being together
That it prolongs, it is the parting.
 
—Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco
 
Only a moment; a moment of
Strength, of romance, of glamour—of
Youth! . . . A flick of sunshine upon a
Strange shore, the time to remember,
The time for a sigh, and—goodbye!
Night—goodbye . . .
 
—Joseph Conrad
Prologue
October
 
Bye bye, love.
Bye bye, happiness.
Hello loneliness.
I think I’m a gonna cry.
Bye bye sweet caress.
Hello emptiness.
I fell like I could die.
Bye bye, my love, goodbye.
—Everly Brothers’s Bye Bye Love
 
From the high windows of my hospital room, I could look down and see one of the parking lots and part of the street beyond where it was visible through the breaks in the trees. My gunshot wounds were well on the mend, and I was expecting to be released any day now. The doctors seem to be keeping me here more for the gallons of polluted river-water I had swallowed than for the two wounds I sustained.
It could have been worse. I guess, I could have been dead. There were moments I felt like I already was, being that the supposed best time of my life was long past, if you could call my screwed up, unfulfilling youth as the best of times, and the start of the worst of times. Here I was fifty-nine and had never had a lasting relationship with a woman. Somewhere along the flow of years, old age had snuck up on me, and I could feel the bite of its oncoming inexorable debilitation. Old age and gradual infirmity were smiling at me with the grin of a child molester. Aging diminishes life, and a reduced life pales your interest and cause to go on living—maybe that’s why people really die. Among other things, I felt this deeply, especially for the last several years, and that was only part of my problem.
Experts say that when you fall from an extreme height, it’s not the fall that kills you but the sudden change in direction. My life was taking a sudden change in direction. I felt the full impact of it about two years ago, that’s when my friend, Dinky Martin, came back into my life after a year’s absence. Not that the fall wasn’t happening long before that. I just didn’t realize the duration of it. I guess you could say it was my fall from grace—if I was ever in that state—into hardening despair and disillusionment.
There were no around-the-clock crowds to visit me at the hospital, but my door did open occasionally, mostly for the police. Besides pestering me, they did manage to close the book on the AC-DC killer. My sister visited me every day. My nieces several times and brought my mother. Much to my surprise, Dr. Whitaker came every day too. I was wrong about her. Karla wasn’t the “ice princess” I envisioned her to be, but a warm and caring person, sometimes a little misguided by the rules of her profession.
No one came from work, although the story was in the papers, except Joe Connely. I suppose Rosemount Memorial Hospital is a little out of the way and hard to find if you’re not familiar with its location. Carrol never came. But why would she after she dumped me. Then again, I don’t think she would have anyway, even if we were still talking. Most likely, she had other interests now, and I was already history.
It grew dark and started to rain. A wind began to blow, occasionally driving the rain against the windows. Below, the tops of the cars glistened with moisture, and the street turned black and shiny.
I thought about Donna too, deciding to give up on this love thing. Waiting for love to show up was like waiting for Godot, and he never showed up either. I guess some of us aren’t meant for the “lovebug.” We just seem to get a bad bite and never enjoy the warmth of its emotion, only the insanity. My mind riffled through lots of thoughts, sitting in bed and watching the rainfall, waiting for my emotional dust to settle. Rainy days do that to me, make me think, I mean. Some people find the rain romantic; it always reminded me that even nature has bad days. There was still an absence of feeling about my friends. But I knew that would eventually pass, and grief would set in. Right now, it was numbing to think about it. The hurt would come later, and I knew this was one wound that would always be there.
Old hopes and old dreams drifted through my mind as well, those that I could recall. Most had faded on me over the years, so much so that I hardly remembered them anymore.
I wondered if I learned anything from all this? I don’t know. If this was a novel instead of real life, I’d be expected to change, but what do you really learn in life? Only that you got smart too late to do anything about the people and circumstances you encountered along the way. Too bad people don’t wear labels, so you could tell in advance what’s inside of them, letting you know beforehand just what to expect. That way, you wouldn’t waste spending time with the wrong ones. But the way things are, life is a dice game. You roll the dice every time you get involved, and I seem to always crap out.
And if this was a novel and I was writing it—and I’ve thought about it, believe me—I’d probably say it all started with the murder of Amanda Rule, or Jake Wesphal’s death. But I’m not writing one and looking back on it now. I’d have to say it really started with Johnny Falk’s funeral and Marlene Possey’s icy prophecy, which came true up to a point. The only thing she was wrong about was that the bad happenings didn’t stop at three. But everything snowballed after that like a very long, bad dream.
Joseph Conrad said that we live our dreams. If that’s true, the last several months have been one hell of a nightmare.
The rain became heavier, falling in long, gray sheets. A wind-burst drove it hard, splattering it against the windows. I watched the rain for a long time. It had rained that day at the funeral parlor too.
Part I
August and September
Cyd Charisse and Virginia Mayo
1
It was a long gray day, full of rain and a chilling wind that had a bite of fall to it. It was the kind of day that made you melancholy, bringing on a depression that caused you to look back and wonder what you did with your life, now that you were in that aged state where whenever you went out someplace you had to stop at least once to piss; or maybe it was just postaging angst brought on by rainy weather. Usually, a rainy day doesn’t bring on the blues, but it was the start of another workweek, and that was always depressing, and I was going to a funeral parlor, which was even more depressing.
I pulled into The Church and Chapel lot and parked, hurrying inside as gray curtains of rain pelted down and bounced off the parking lot’s black surface. Inside the entrance, I shook off the rain and looked around. The place was crowded with flowers and people. I recognized many of the faces from work. With lots of smiles and head-nods, I moved toward the front of the room and viewed the casket where Johnny reposed. The casket was surprisingly open.
I looked at Johnny for a long moment. Here was a young man, just barely thirty, who had taken his life because of a woman. The story goes that his wife was leaving him, and he chose this as a solution. It’s strange the things a man will do for the love of a woman. Then who am I to talk. This past year, I was going through pain, humiliation, and embarrassment for the love of a woman half my age. And they call women the weaker sex.
The morticians had done a good job preparing the body for viewing, but