Except there’s no Mr. Hannigan in it. The Reverend and I stare at an empty bed.

No big smile. No enormous, bug-eyed glasses. No skinny body under the bed sheets. As my stomach cartwheels, a young Black woman rolls a PowerVac around the room while wearing earbuds. A second, very old woman—white and obese—slumps in her recliner. Ricky’s mother’s permed hair is pearly white to the point of being see-through. She digs into a bag of pretzel Goldfish while she and the Reverend exchange a pregnant, wordless moment.

“I tried calling you,” she finally says, her voice as heavy as her eyes. “I left a message.”

“Where is he…?” the Reverend asks, his voice cracking.

“Ricky passed away last night.”

The empty bed…I knew it. My stomach somersaults again, but the Reverend’s heaving breaths stop completely. The cleaning woman’s vacuum barges through the tense space between the Reverend, Mrs. Hannigan, and me, as if we were furniture or potted plants to be navigated around.

Goodbye, Mr. Hannigan. He was my favorite appointment. Everyone else on my route either sent me away with a nasty look or warned me not to steal anything. “I know the family, and the kid’s got no father. All this trash moving into town; we’re gonna have to lock up everything we own!” Ambrose thinks of Mom and me as one step up from the trailer park, but Ricky never treated me that way. He knew the real me, and better yet, he liked what he knew.

Garlands of multicolored blooms hang from rows of fishing wire above the bed like a magical fairytale canopy. The flowers are new, but what they’re draped over is not—yellow Broadway Playbills. Dozens of show programs hang off the lines, some still visible under the onslaught of bouquets. Older musicals—nothing recent—probably from a time before Mr. Hannigan ended up in this bed.

This empty bed.

“He was fine yesterday,” the Reverend whispers.

“He was not fine yesterday,” Mrs. Hannigan says, nibbling another goldfish. “He had an infected bedsore we didn’t notice—”

“That useless medical aide!” The Reverend juts the entire heft of his body forward on a wounded scream. I didn’t think he knew Ricky that personally. He ordered me to treat Ricky as higher priority than the others, but he never specified why. I assumed the Hannigans were once big givers to his church.

“Should I wait outside?” I ask, wishing I could be as laid-back about this unfolding drama as the woman vacuum-dancing around the room.

“I’ll drive you home,” the Reverend moans into his hands.

“You can’t,” Mrs. Hannigan says. “Those two detectives came by looking for you.”

The Reverend widens the gaps between his fingers to better glare at Ricky’s mother. Before I can get excited about how visibly nervous this news has made the Reverend, footsteps descend the stairs. The home’s entire structure whines with each step until two women emerge from the staircase behind Mrs. Hannigan’s recliner. A faint powder plumes into the air as the detectives snap off their latex gloves—but not a speck falls onto their perfect, ironed pantsuits.