McKENZIE THROM
Unsolved Mysteries Even though Everett vehemently disagreed, there would be no need to perform an autopsy on Mrs. Langdon. The seventy-four-year-old smoker with stage IV lung cancer had been dwindling down in size for months. Her relatives had begun making regularly paced goodbye visits and according to her niece, Claudia, who had come to stay with her at the beginning of the summer, the old woman had refused to go outside the house for the past few days. Mrs. Langdon had seemed to surrender days in advance, limiting herself to her bedroom, lying with arms wrapped across her chest in the position of perpetual rest. This was why it was not particularly surprising to any of the neighbors when the ambulance slowly rolled up her driveway one July afternoon. The old woman had died, they assumed, just as old women tend to. Unfortunately this explanation was unsatisfactory for Everett. He watched the scene unfold with a sense of profound disappointment. It had nothing to do with the old woman herself, for Everett had never been close to Mrs. Langdon. He had rightfully intuited her dislike for children, and had wisely kept his distance. The problem was this: the ambulance had driven past the house three times before Claudia had come outside to flag it down. The siren was switched off, and only when the truck parked in Mrs. Langdon’s front yard did the lights finally begin flashing. When the paramedics emerged from the truck, it took minutes before they entered the house because they were unsure of how to unfold the gurney. Even though he was only nine, Everett had seen his fair share of TV and movies to subsequently know that this was not how death was supposed to work. Death involved tears, cries of anguish and people who couldn’t let go. It involved an ambulance that drove fast and actually turned its sirens on. It involved yellow police tape, and a crowd of curious bystanders gathered outside. “Mrs. Langdon is dead,” he said upon seeing his mother. She was