Excerpt: Breaking Rules

This had once been a neighborhood of mansions. Now, what was left of most of them had been broken up into flats. Porches sagged, and the wood siding needed paint. The sidewalk was buckled by the upwelling of sycamore tree roots from the venerable trees that lined the street’s parking strips and stretched across, making a canopy that bathed the asphalt street in shade. It might not actually be cooler, she thought, but it sure looks cooler.
An overweight man who’d poured himself into a black suit about a size too tight for him, stood on the Lisle Funeral Home porch with pamphlets in his hand. He beamed at her like he was seeing a long lost friend. “Andrews or Housman?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are you here to see Mrs. Andrews or Mr. Housman?” This time he enunciated clearly, like she was a little slow, a little deaf.
“Oh, Housman.”
He switched the brochures around so a gray pamphlet lay on top. “Blue room, straight through to the back. You’re a little late.”
Rebecca almost said, “I know,” but didn’t want to have to explain--not the how she knew where it was part, or the being late part. Maybe he’d think she was one of those freaks who showed up at viewings randomly, just to be somewhere, to belong, and maybe to get invited to a free meal in memory of a departed one.