Excerpt:

It was almost eight o’clock at night by the time the cookie jars were sorted and packaged, some to give away, some that Max wanted to keep, and several in mailing cartons that would go to an aunt and two female cousins. He looked at me over the last sealed box and actually smiled. His eyes were still red-rimmed, and I could see he was starting to feel the weariness that follows emotional stress, but he looked relieved.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay. Tomorrow is Saturday, so I’ll be here by 8:00 AM. Be showered, dressed, fed, and caffeinated by then because we’ll need to get started right away. What’s the matter?” A sudden fierce scowl had appeared as I was speaking.
“I didn’t feed you anything! You’ve been working for four hours straight, right through supper, and I haven’t even offered you a glass of water.”
“Yeah, what’s that about?” I said as I stood. “Here I am on a Friday afternoon, beating down your door, pushing my way in, ignoring all your polite and not-so-polite refusals, making myself at home in your home, and you have the audacity to neglect to feed me? Sad. Now I suppose I’ll have to bring breakfast with me in the morning, because I just don’t trust you anymore.”
He trailed me to the front door, plucking my jacket from the hook and holding it for me as I slipped into it. My hair was braided and he absently pulled it free from underneath and smoothed my collar down in the back.
“You have a way home?”
“I’m parked on the street there.”
“What is that?”
“A Vanagon. It’s a classic.”
“Mmmm. Like eight tracks and rotary phones are classic. Bring bagels tomorrow. I’ve got spread, and a toaster oven. ”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Thanks for ignoring me earlier tonight, Missy.”
“Ignoring the wishes of others is one of my specialties. It’s probably why Pastor Styles called me in the first place. Goodnight, Max.”
“Goodnight.”
As I drove to Whispering Pines Campground and RV Park, I tried to put the whole picture together. Pastor Styles had told me that Donovan De Luca was the only child of Jennifer and Antonio De Luca. They had been killed in an auto accident on an ice-covered bridge of State Road 107 in February. Their son, a special events planner who ran his own business called Potential, Inc., lived and worked in Markham, a growing city over an hour away. He had numbly tackled all the arrangements for services and interment, and then slogged his way through their will, insurance policies, and financial statements. But when it came to the house he grew up in, and all the things his parents had collected, loved, and used for so many years, he found he had reached his breaking point. It was, he had told his pastor, too much for him to even contemplate. So, Pastor Styles had called me, knowing that just two years ago, I was forced to do the same thing with my mother’s possessions. Perhaps, he had said, the feelings were different, but the process was the same. Would I see what I could do?
I punched the code into the security buttons at the gate, and drove to my site. I sat in the driver’s seat for a moment, thinking. Who had the best bagels between here and Max’s?