I nodded. I was pretty sure Thornton hadn’t wanted kids, either. He’d been ambivalent about all the pregnancies and only slightly more enthusiastic when each baby was born.
“But Olaf—because he was Olaf—just sort of accepted it,” Olga said. She dabbed the lipstick at Sally’s lips one more time. “He let it go. It became pretty clear, though, that he wasn’t happy. And she turned into this completely different person. She quit her job and just wanted to stay home and watch soap operas all day. She stopped coming to church. She’d find all sorts of excuses to back out of family get togethers.” She shook her head. “Got so that we hardly ever saw her.”
I nodded, digesting all that. “Did it bother Olaf?”
“Oh, he blew it off, but I think it did,” she answered. “It wasn’t what he signed up for.”
“So why did she marry him, then?” I asked. “If she didn’t want kids and she wasn’t interested in the same things, what did she get out of it?”
Olga lifted Sally’s chin a little, scrutinizing something. “She wanted to be taken care of because she’s a lazy cow. She wanted a husband to take care of her. Olaf looked like that guy.” She looked at me. “I don’t think she ever thought he’d get so fed up that he’d ask for a divorce. That surprised all of us. But I guess he just realized how unhappy he was.”
I nodded again, sympathizing. I remembered those feelings. I’d tried to convince myself for so long that I could be happy with Thornton and what I’d chosen. I’d make excuses for everything, more for myself than for any other reason. But the more excuses I made, the unhappier they made me. I never in a million years saw myself as a divorced person, but I finally reached a point where it was the only option I felt would make me happy. It was a hard realization to come to and it made me sad to realize that was the direction my life had taken, but I knew it was a necessary evil if I wanted to be happy again.
“I went and visited Elliott Cornelius yesterday,” I told Olga.
She nodded. “Ah. Elliott.”
Her tone was different than it had been before. Not quite an edge to it, but there was…something.
“Did they get along okay?” I asked. “Did Olaf like the job?”
She thought for a moment. “Olaf liked the job just fine. He liked animals and I think he felt like he was helping them out by taking them somewhere after they were dead, rather than just letting them rot on the side of the road.” She nodded again. “Yeah, he liked that work just fine, I’d say.”
“And he liked working for Elliott?”
She dug back into the cosmetics bag. I wasn’t sure what was left to apply to the woman laying on the table in front of her. “Sure. For the most part.”
“For the most part?”
She shrugged as she studied Sally’s face. “It was tense for awhile.”
“Why?”
“Because Elliott did something stupid.”
“What did he do?”
“He went out with Helen,” she said, glancing at me.
My eyebrows lifted. I knew there’d been more to Elliott’s story. “He did?”
She nodded and brushed at some invisible speck on Sally’s face. “He did. Guess she’d been flirting with him for awhile. And, at first, he didn’t pay her any attention. But she got to him somehow because Olaf found out they spent an evening together.”
Stuff It’s owner’s unwillingness to answer more of my questions suddenly made a lot more sense.
“And I think the poor guy took a genuine liking to her,” Olga said. “And let’s be honest. I could see why. Helen’s not an ugly woman and who knows what she did with him on their date. But apparently he liked it. And her.”
That image was one I was going to need some bleach in my memory to get rid of.
“So Olaf found out and I guess they had words,” she continued. “Didn’t speak to one another for a couple days. Olaf was gonna look for another job, but he didn’t think he’d be able to find anything. And then Elliott started whining that she’d already dumped him.”
“To Olaf?” I frowned. That didn’t sound like the Elliott I’d met.
“Elliott’s not the brightest bulb,” Olga said, rolling her eyes. “But yes. To Olaf. And Olaf told him he didn’t care that she’d found someone else so he could take his pity party elsewhere.”
“So was she actually dating someone else then?” I asked, trying to keep up with everything Olga was divulging.
“Well, she said she was,” Olga said. She zipped the cosmetic bag shut and peeled off her gloves. “She told Olaf she was. She told him that the fling was over with Elliott and she’d moved on to someone bigger and better. I was at Olaf’s one day and she stopped by to have him sign some more stupid papers and she just kept going on and on about how wonderful this new man was. How sexy he was.” She rolled her eyes again. “She must’ve called him sexy about fifteen times before I asked if he was blind.”
I stifled a laugh. Despite our initial meeting, I was really beginning to like Olga. She cared for her brother and she was funny.
“Anyway, Olaf didn’t care,” she said, shrugging. “At all. So she just got mad and stormed off. I heard around town that she was telling everyone the same thing. Who knows if it was even true?”
“Any idea who it was? I mean, if it was true?”
She shook her head. “None.” She put her hands on her hips and looked at me. “So what do you think?”
I thought for a moment. “I honestly don’t know what to think, Olga. My encounters with Helen have definitely been strange. I can’t believe Elliott went out with her when Olaf worked for him. But I’m just baffled as to how Olaf ended…where he did.”
She pointed at the body on the table. “I meant what do you think about Sally.”
I felt my cheeks color. “Oh.” I stepped closer to the table. Olga had transformed the woman on the table from a waxy figure to someone who looked warm and peaceful. She didn’t look fake or artificially beautiful. She looked like someone’s wife, a person that people would miss. She looked real.
I smiled at Olga. “I think she looks beautiful.”
Olga offered me a smile in return. “Everyone deserves to look beautiful at their own funeral.”
I couldn’t have agreed more.
THIRTY ONE
I pulled into the lot back at the church to pick up the kids from their 4-H meeting and my mood took a turn for the worse when I spied Thornton’s car parked in the lot.
My mood dipped even further when I saw him sitting in the car. He gave me a half-wave when he saw me.
I drove past him and parked at the other end of the lot. I shut off the car and took a deep breath before I got out to go see what the heck he wanted.
He was already halfway across the parking lot by the time I got out of the car. Thornton Bohannan was a little over six feet tall, with an ever-expanding beer belly and hair that he kept trying to grow out in an attempt to look hip. He wore a red AC/DC t-shirt over a long sleeved gray t-shirt and both looked one size too small on his ample gut. His expensive-looking jeans were turned up at the ankle over expensive looking black shoes. He liked to think that he had a good sense of fashion, but it always came off as a guy in his forties who was trying to look two decades younger. And failing.
He held up his hand again in greeting. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I said. My breath puffed white in the air. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I knew the kids had 5-H this morning, so I figured you’d be here.”
“4-H,” I corrected.
“Right,” he said dismissively. “Anyway, I had the morning off, so I just figured I’d cruise by.”
My radar went into high alert. Thornton never just cruised by.
“Okay,” I said. “What’s up?”
He leaned against my car, his hands shoved into his jeans,and his shirt rode up, exposing his belly. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t have a jacket on. “I heard about what happened at your house.”