My Sister Called to Say Our Father Was Dead While He Sat Beside Me. By Sunset, the Funeral She Planned Had Become Her Trial..105

At 6:30 on a bitterly cold Thursday morning, my sister called and told me our father had died during the night.

There was one impossible problem with her story.

Dad was sitting three feet from me at my kitchen table, wrapped in a navy flannel robe, drinking fresh coffee and stealing bacon from my plate just as he had every morning for the past two days.

I stared at the name glowing coldly across my phone screen.

Simone Bennett.

My older sister rarely acknowledged that life existed before noon. Simone treated mornings like a personal insult, so seeing her name while the sky beyond the windows was still iron gray tightened something deep in my stomach.

My first thought was that someone had been hurt.

I had no idea she was about to manufacture the emergency herself.

Dad reached across the table, stole another strip of bacon, folded it with absurd care, and dipped the end into the golden yolk spreading across his plate.

His silver hair still held the damp shine of his morning shower.

He looked stubbornly, unmistakably alive.

Annoyingly alive, considering the bacon in his hand had belonged to me.

Then he caught the look on my face and stopped mid-chew.

“What?” he whispered.

I raised one finger.

“Simone?” I answered.

For two stretched, uneasy seconds, neither of us spoke.

Through the phone came the low vibration of a running engine and the metronomic click of a turn signal.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Then Simone spoke.

“Claire, Dad died last night.”

My fingers locked around the warm ceramic mug.

Behind me, the coffeemaker exhaled one final ribbon of steam into the silence.

Dad stopped chewing.