For Red Anemones: Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour.
Red Anemones
~ Yarde Book Promotion, Editorial 5* Review
Paula Dáil
Excerpt 1:
Elyria, Ohio
January 1971
If you aren’t who I think you are, then who are you?
“Dad – what are we doing here?” I ask my father, while shivering in a bitter wind, insistently spitting snow at us. We are standing side by side in a place neither of us has ever heard of, can’t pronounce, and never expected to find ourselves. As I speak, I stare at a pile of partially hidden, freshly dug dirt. Fifty yards away, gigantic chunks of frozen water crashing onto Lake Erie’s shore sound like ice cubes stuck in a meat grinder.”
“I told you – we’re here to bury your mother,” my father answers through chattering teeth. He moves closer, linking his arm through mine, seeking to share each other’s warmth as we move toward a synthetic grass tarp, obscenely green against the dormant ground beneath it. A slowly moving hearse becomes visible from the left.
“I think we’re in the wrong place. This headstone says Rachael Rebekkah Rosenblum Barlow, and my mother’s name was Charlotte,” I point out.
“Until forty-eight hours ago, I thought her name was Charlotte, too. Apparently, we were both wrong,” my father replies in a barely audible whisper punctuated by a deep sigh.
“Look at the headstones next to hers. Mikael Jacob Weiss and Sarah Rebekkah Michal Weiss, with no dates and an inscription, ‘May their memories be for a blessing.’ Another says Nathalie Avigail Weiss Rosenblum d.1934 and Eitan Noem Rosenblum d.1938. Do you know who any of these people are?”
“No idea.” The two-word answer rides on a deep exhale and a slight shake of my father’s head. We pass the time waiting for the hearse by staring out across the partially frozen lake, mesmerized by the icebergs floating rhythmically back and forth, until a wave hurls them toward the shore. An idling backhoe, partially hidden behind a large, dormant tree downslope from the hill where we stand, hums a steady dirge.
“According to her lawyer, your mother, Charlotte Rose Barlow’s legal name was Rachael Rebekkah Rosenblum Barlow. These others must be related to her somehow; otherwise, there’s no reason for her to want to be buried in this godforsaken place, and she was very insistent about it,” my dad explains as the hearse pulls up. He takes my hand, and together we walk closer to the tarp. The driver and another solemn-faced man get out and walk toward us, putting on gloves. They peel back the artificial turf, exposing the hole underneath, then walk back to the hearse, where two men wearing black overcoats and fedoras are extracting a wooden, sarcophagus-shaped coffin. A small nameplate is affixed to the flat top.
“That can’t have been easy to find,” I remark, referring to the European-style box containing my mother’s remains.
“Your mother was very specific about what she wanted.”
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