Chapter 18; In Memory

The car was painted a shiny black, and Jemima carefully stencilled on the words "In Memory of Andrea" in yellow paint on one side. The letters were in a beautiful curly style that was still legible, but Harold hadn't said she could. She looked up at the old man shyly, hoping that he would approve.

He smiled under his scraggly moustache and nodded. It was fitting. It was the first, and last, vintage car his wife had ever brought home for him to restore – generally she objected to them, saying they were junk when they were brought in. Of course, when they were finished she always fawned over her husband's brilliance.

"We'll carry her from the funeral home in it, too," he said, wiping a smut off his spectacles. "Just as soon as we've put air in all the tires." The inner-tubes had all been patched the day before, but no air had been put in so that the patches wouldn't blow off.

"But first," he said, taking the pump hose from Jemima, "we'll have some lunch. Come on Jemima, you've hardly had a bite to eat all day."

"Yes Uncle Harold," Jemima said meekly.

Humbert and Jemima rolled the car back into the garage while Harold held onto Haru, so that the cat didn't get run over, then the old man led the way back into the house, still holding onto the feline. Andrea would not have permitted the animal in her house, but Harold had taken quite a shine to the little lady, even sharing some cold turkey with her.

"What breed is she, Humbert?" Harold asked, watching the cat leap from his lap to try and win Jemima over.

"The receptionist at the veterinarian clinic said she looked like a Havana Brown," Humbert supplied, watching his darling's antics, trying to get the loving attention of the only other female in the kitchen.

"Good British breed that, a little on the rare side, but a fine breed all the same" Harold said. "But they're supposed to have green eyes, not brown," he added, noticing the discrepancy.

Humbert shrugged, he didn't know all that much about breeds. He just had Haru, and she was perfect as far as he was concerned. Haru had made a space for herself on Jemima's lap, having finally won the young woman over.

"Who was the woman who answered your phone last night Humbert?" Jemima asked suddenly, just blurting out the question. It must have been waiting all day to come out, the way she said it.

Haru's ears flicked, and her head came up to keep them from flying off her head. None of the human's noticed her reaction though, so she settled down again, keeping her ears perked.

"I don't exactly know," Humbert said carefully. "Maybe she's my guardian angel, she's never given me her name. She just shows up after dark and stares at me a while before she disappears. I haven't any idea where she comes from, or where she goes."

"Yep, that sounds like a guardian angel to me," Harold said, sliding down in his seat a little and resting his hands on his stomach. "Calm down Jemima, I told you Humbert wasn't sleeping with a whore the night his mother died, you should trust a father's instincts of his son."

The old man lay a hand on his niece's shoulder, a solid, unshakeable presence, with years of experience and a whole lot of other stuff behind it.

The funeral was perfect. It even rained, so no one could be caught out crying, because it all got mixed up in the relentless and oppressive drops.