Gabriel’s tongue runs the length of his lower lip, his breath coming in terse streams. “I let him go into the house first.”
I lower my face until we’re eye to eye, nose to nose. “Stop. What happened isn’t anybody’s fault. He outranks you.” If there’s anything I’ve learned about firefighters, it’s that they abide by rank.
He’s quiet, his gaze staying on me. Then he shifts, and I stand. “I’ll be right back,” he says, his voice hollow, a husk.
He retreats through the front door, shoulders hunched. His truck door opens and closes. I spend the moment he’s gone attempting to calm myself, so that I can be what Gabriel needs. He walks into the kitchen clutching a paper bag. From it, he pulls out a bottle.
Tequila.
He eyes me. Maybe he’s gauging my reaction. Maybe he’s so inundated by grief, he doesn’t care about my response. In a voice so thickened by pain it’s hard to believe it belongs to my husband, he says, “Get drunk with me?”
No.
But…well…
Gabriel has abstained for a decade. He has matured, his frontal lobe is fully developed now. He is not the person he was when he was a teenager.
“Are you sure?” I have to ask, though of all times for him to do this, today seems fitting. Soothe, numb, and forget, if only momentarily.
“My best friend died last night. I saw it happen.” Gabriel lifts the bottle, as if it’s a bicep curl. “It’ll just be this one time. And you’ll be with me.”
I don’t want to tell him no. I want to get down in the grief with him, sit beside him and wear the pain like a cloak. I want to show him how much I love him.
I pull two juice glasses from the cabinet.
Gabriel twists off the top and pours. It’s a bizarre sight, Gabriel with a bottle of booze, but I don’t hear alarm bells ringing in my head. Like Gabriel said, it’ll just be this once.
What’s the harm in it?
CHAPTER 15
Some funerals are a relativelyhappy affair. People slap them with aCelebration Of Lifetitle and imbue the event with a joyful hue.
Not this one.
This is a funeral service in the truest sense of the name. It is somber and dark. Palpable anguish, so thick it could be sliced, settles into the space between bodies packed into pews.
Gabriel’s fingers wrap around mine, his grip painfully tight. If I bruised easily, I’m sure my body would bear the markings of his iron-clad grasps since the night Ryan died. Every time we’re in our bed he holds me, forming a cage, as though he believes if I’m not ensnared, I’ll be lost.
I uncross and recross my legs, my black dress slipping over my black tights. Four rows in front of us, Carrie’s blonde hair shimmers with the quaking of her shoulders. I know Gabriel notices. I know he feels disgusted by her. More than once since the first morning, he has mentioned what a terrible person Carrie is. He hasn’t reached out to her, but I have. I called her the day Ryan died, after Gabriel passed out drunk. I wasn’t expecting her to answer the phone, but she did. Where Ianticipated wailing, I heard only a sunken tone. We spoke for less than a minute. She accepted my sympathy, declined my offer to help in any way she needed, and we hung up. We haven’t spoken since.
Gabriel’s father delivers the eulogy. He tells a story of Ryan’s first time cooking at the firehouse, how he’d almost burned the place down.
“We’ve always kept a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, but I never expected to need it.” He grins ruefully, and for the first time during the service, the low hum of collective chuckling radiates through the people. It makes me happy that Gabriel’s father was able to insert a moment of levity. The stuffy air needed it.
He finishes and returns to his seat next to Gabriel’s mom. The minister says a final prayer, and the service ends. There is a reception afterward, and Gabriel takes his time with Ryan’s parents and his two older sisters. I stand back and watch. Grief has always fascinated me. It is an emotion so layered, so nuanced. One moment it can be as soft as a gentle rain, the next, an outraged typhoon. Some people refuse to admit its presence. Others drown in it.
And then, there’s Carrie. She shakes hands and hugs, nodding and wiping at her eyes. I believe her tears are real. And she uses those real tears to firmly place herself in her new role. Widow.
Carrie gazes out across the small room we’re in, and finds me. She starts for me, and is stopped twice on the way. When she arrives, she doesn’t hug me the way she has other people. She stands beside me, shoulder to shoulder, and murmurs so quietly I lean closer to hear her say, “He would have hated this.”
I nod. “What would he have chosen instead?”
She shrugs. “I’m not sure. But I know it wouldn’t be this.”
From somewhere in the room, there is wailing. An older woman is led away by an equally aged man. Maybe she is an aunt.
Carrie raises her eyebrows and ducks her chin as if to say, ‘See what I mean?’.
