Page 1 of Yankee in the Wind

1

Lilly Davis sighed heavily and pushed back a tear. She’d had no idea how rapidly Uncle Will had been deteriorating over the past two months since the death of his only son, Thomas Reed, at the age of thirty-seven. She’d been out of the country on a tour with Doctors without Borders in Central Africa, when she’d heard about her cousin’s death, and had been unable to travel back to help her uncle get over his loss. A local outbreak of Ebola had forced the entire team of doctors and nurses to quarantine in a remote part of the Congo. Nobody had been allowed to fly, making it impossible for Lilly to attend Thomas’s funeral. Nevertheless, she’d shed plenty of tears.

Thomas hadn’t only been her cousin, but also her childhood friend. And even as adults they’d been very close, despite the fact that they’d seen each other less and less. Thomas had joined the military and been deployed to dangerous hotspots around the world, while Lilly had undergone rigorous medical training at the best hospitals and laboratories in the country, before specializing in infectious diseases and landing a job at a cutting-edge laboratory in Bethesda, less than ten miles from Washington D.C. Her department had asked for volunteers to accompany Doctors without Borders to the Congo to assist them by testing for muted viruses in the region.

Lilly hadn’t spoken to Thomas in the two months before his death, which wasn’t unusual. Over the past three years, it had always been Thomas calling her, always from a different number. When she’d asked him about his location, he’d told her that he couldn’t give her that information. She suspected that his deployments were top secret and hadn’t pressed him. But she knew Thomas well enough to tell that he was stressed, and that whatever he was doing was taking a toll on him. More than once she’d told him that he’d served his country long enough, and maybe it was time to come home and get a less stressful job.

“Soon,” Thomas had promised.

But it had never happened. And now, Lilly stood in Uncle Will’s house in the outskirts of Washington D.C. surrounded by boxes with household items ready to be donated to charity.

“You look sad, Miss Davis,” Deja Lashae said from behind her.

Lilly pivoted. Deja Lashae, a black woman in her late forties, looked at her. She’d been her uncle’s home healthcare worker for the past year, until it had become clear that William Reed had to go into a home for Alzheimer’s patients to get the care he needed. Deja was tall and looked fit and strong. Knowing that handling elderly patients involved a lot of lifting, Lilly realized that being a home healthcare nurse for an old man whose health was failing and who could be stubborn, required a physically strong person.

Lilly sighed. “I spent many happy hours in this house, visiting Uncle Will and Thomas. I can’t believe Thomas is gone… and Uncle Will… it’s sad to see him like this…” She and William Reed were now the only ones left of the Reed family. Her mother, Will’s sister, had died a few years earlier of cancer, and her father had moved back to his native Canada after their divorce nearly twenty years earlier. Will’s older brother had died in a car accident.

“That’s what dementia does to people,” Deja said with a compassionate smile. “You lose your loved ones even though their body is still here.”

“That’s true, Deja. I should have come back earlier. Maybe I could have spent a little bit of time with him when he still had lucid moments.”

“Don’t blame yourself. Nobody could have guessed how fast the disease would ravish his brain after his son died. It was as if he just gave up after that.”

“Were you with him, when he got the news of Thomas’s death?”

“Yes, I was. Your uncle took it hard. It seemed like all life left his body right there and then.” Deja let out a sigh. “And when Thomas’s ashes arrived a few days later… oh, it was crushing.”

“His ashes?” Lilly said with a start. “He was cremated?”

“Oh yes,” Deja confirmed. “I would want to be cremated. Lots of people do it nowadays. It’s cheaper too. You know, no casket, no large grave to maintain, and—”

“But Thomas didn’t want to be cremated. I know it. So does Uncle Will. I’ve known it since we were kids. Ever since his mother died in a fire that broke out in a restaurant, he was horrified at the thought of being cremated.” Lilly shook her head. “It was in his living will. Thomas made us all promise. He made me promise.” Only Lilly hadn’t even been in the country when Thomas had died.

Deja gave her a concerned look. “I’m sorry, Miss Davis, I don’t know anything about that. And your uncle was in no condition to make any decisions. Besides, from what he was told when he got the news of Thomas’s death, I got the impression that he had no choice about what happened to Thomas’s remains.”

Lilly furrowed her forehead. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “Something about an infectious disease and that it was in the interest of public health?”

“But that makes no sense. Did they say what he died of?”

Deja lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “That’s all I could get out of your uncle.”

“I thought you were there with him when he got the news of Thomas’s death.”

“Oh, yes, I was, but your uncle called somebody after Thomas’s ashes arrived. But I’m not sure what they told him. He said something about an infection risk, and that the government just did what they had to, but he was upset about it.”

“Who did he speak to?”

“I don’t know.” Deja lowered her voice. “Just between you and me, I’m not even sure that your uncle spoke to anybody at all. Even in the months before his son’s death, he came up with all kinds of stories that didn’t bear much resemblance to reality. You know… conspiracy theories.”

That surprised Lilly. Her uncle had never been one to indulge in conspiracies. He was a man of logic, of science, of facts. He’d been a mathematician at a university in his younger years. Later he’d switched to a career as an actuary working for a large insurance company. Clearly, her uncle was far from the person he’d once been, even though he’d greeted her joyfully when she’d visited him upon her return from the Congo.

“When I saw him last week, he seemed very clear.”

“That’s the thing with dementia,” Deja explained. “One minute people sound as if they’re perfectly fine, and the next, they don’t even recognize you. It’s a cruel disease.”

“It is,” Lilly said. Then she motioned to the boxes. “I’d better continue so I can get the house listed for sale. Thank you for helping out with this, Deja.”