The Last Breath. Kimberly Belle

are under the welcome mat,” he says, right before he disconnects.

      I throw back the covers, and the cool air in my bedroom practically hisses when it hits my skin. Jake neglected to mention where, exactly, he spent last night, and contemplating that answer makes me hot enough to fry an egg on my bare belly. Downstairs on the couch? Next to me in my bed? Almost certainly somewhere in this house. Town is exactly a two-point-seven-mile hike, mostly uphill, and Jake would be crazy to have walked back in the freezing dark.

      I slither across the bed to the window and spot my car parked neatly in the driveway, its windows buried under a light dusting of snow, as is the driveway. No tire tracks either, which means my car has been there a good while. By the looks of things, most of the night.

      At the end of the driveway, a red Jeep Cherokee slows to a crawl. The driver, a middle-aged woman with hair the color of traffic cones, stops to check the number on the mailbox against a piece of paper in her hand. She does a sloppy three-point turn and careens into the driveway, thrusting the gearshift into Park right before her bumper slams into mine.

      I hop out of bed, scrounge around in my open suitcase for a pair of sweats and last night’s sweater and pull them on. By the time I make it to the front door, she’s standing on the welcome mat with a crate of medical supplies and a hurry-up-and-let-me-in grin.

      “Lordy me,” she says, “it’s colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra out here.”

      “You must be the hospice nurse.”

      She doesn’t wait for an invitation, just barrels past. “In the flesh.”

      And there’s plenty of it. Her curves have been stuffed into clothes that almost fit her, and her permed and pigmented hair has been teased to unnatural heights and sprayed into submission. Add to that shiny blue eye shadow, watermelon lips and eyebrows that look as though they’ve been drawn on with a brown magic marker. The woman is pure Appalachia in yellow-and-lilac nurse’s scrubs.

      She thunks the crate onto the floor by the living room and takes a good look around. Her gaze lands on me, and she grins. “You must have had one wild night.”

      “Oh! Um, no, I...I mean, we...”

      Her laugh is more like a cackle. “Honey, it may have been a good spell ago, but I remember that look. Wild hair, even wilder eyes. Plus, your tank top’s on backward.”

      Yeesh. I wrap the sweater tight across my chest and thrust out a hand. “Gia Andrews.”

      “Fannie Miles.” She waddles off as if the house is her own. “Sweet holy Jesus, I need a cup of coffee.”

      In the kitchen, Fannie gets the pot going with practiced efficiency. She digs around in the cabinets until she finds two mugs, then motions for me to follow her back into the living room.

      “I’m gonna have to do some rearranging in here,” she says, taking in the hospital bed pushed to the corner. “You don’t mind, do you?”

      “Not at all.” This is clearly the Fannie Miles show, and I’m happy to let her lead.

      “Great.” She settles her ample behind onto the couch, casting an expectant glance around the room. “So where is everybody?”

      “You’re looking at them.” I try not to feel sorry for myself as I say the words, or think about the knife of resentment I feel jutting out of my back, somewhere in the vicinity of right between my shoulder blades.

      Fannie lifts a crayon brow. “I thought Cal said there would be three of you.”

      I nod. “There goddamn better be. But for now I guess it’s just me.”

      She wraps a warm palm over my arm and gives me a kind smile. “Then right now, sugar pie, you’re the only one who matters.” Fannie pulls back her hand, sits up a little straighter. “Okeydokey, then. How much did Cal tell you?”

      “He filled me in on the basics. That you’re responsible for my father’s care and comfort, that you’ll manage his pain without prolonging his life, that you’ll stay until the end.”

      The end. A growing ball of nausea takes root in my belly, one that has nothing to do with last night’s liquor.

      “But more important,” I continue, “how much did Cal tell you?”

      “I assume you’re talking about your father’s legal issues?”

      I shake my head. “You’d have to be dead to not know about those. I’m wondering more what he could have possibly said to make you agree to take this job.”

      Fannie shrugs. “That’s easy. He’s paying me two dollars more an hour plus a whopper of a bonus if I stay until the funeral.”

      I don’t respond. In my job, I’ve met plenty of people for whom money is a legitimate reason to do just about anything—dig a community well, disappear without a trace, murder a business partner. Tending to a dying man is as good a job as any, I suppose. And depending on the size of the bonus and how long Dad lasts, the amount could be substantial. Fannie doesn’t look particularly hard up for cash, but who am I to judge?

      “You’re worried that money ain’t proper motivation, aren’t you?”

      “I just want to make sure you know what you’re getting into. We aren’t the most stable of families, as I’m sure you can imagine. Quite honestly, though, our dysfunctionality is the least of your problems.”

      Fannie catches my meaning instantly, making me think she’s already considered the consequences of taking this job. “You mean my being here isn’t going to get me elected the next Miss Rogersville.”

      I nod.

      She barks out a laugh, slaps a palm to a meaty thigh. “I hate to tell you, honey, but that train left the station ’bout twenty years ago.” When she sees I’m not ready to join in her hilarity, her expression sobers to half-serious. “You must be the one living way off in Australia.”

      “Africa.”

      “Africa. I coulda sworn it was Australia...anyway, my point is you weren’t here, so you couldn’t have known folks are already blabbering about me on account of my rat bastard ex-husband. I swear, how I stayed married to Lester Miles for fifteen years without catching a venereal disease is one of God’s great mysteries.”

      I can’t help but smile, but there’s a warning buried in the gesture. “This job is going to take gossip to a whole new level.”

      “Sugar, if I’da cared what people thought of me, I never woulda married that no-good snake back in ’95, and I sure as hell never woulda told everybody he spent our retirement fund on cocaine and hookers after I left his sorry ass.” She lifts her entire upper body in a shrug. “Not only do I need this paycheck, I also don’t give a flying pile of pig shit what people think about my being here.”

      I sit for a long moment, trying to process what Fannie just told me. A lying, cheating, thieving spouse would certainly feed the Rogersville gossip mill. Not on the scale of a father who may or may not be a murderer, but still. She must be well-acquainted with how it feels to walk into a room and be greeted with silence, even though every person in there has plenty to say about you behind your back.

      The bigger question is, how can she stand it?

      “How do you do it?” I ask. “How do you not care?”

      Fannie looks at me with kind eyes. “You just don’t, sugar, that’s all.”

      She pats my arm again and hoists herself off the couch, following the scent of freshly brewed coffee into the kitchen. Halfway there she turns back with a soft cackle. “Otherwise give ’em the line about the flying pile of pig shit. That one always works.”

      * * *

      After a second cup of coffee, Fannie refuses my offer to help her rearrange the room or cart in her busload of medical supplies. She shoos me off, ordering me into a hot shower and something