Media vans idle down the road, satellite dishes angled skyward like vultures waiting for the signal.
This is not a goodbye.
It’s a canonization.
Inside the chapel, the air is thick with incense, reverence, and expectation.Cameras are banned, but Callum knows better.Someone always finds a way.There will be leaked footage, whispered quotes, headlines already half-written.
He takes a seat near the front, close enough to see everything, far enough to avoid the worst of the stares.
The casket is closed.
Thank God.
Keir MacLaren, reduced to wood and silence, would break something in Callum that he isn’t sure would come back.
The service begins the way all services for famous men begin, with stories carefully orchestrated for public consumption.
Keir the genius.
Keir the visionary.
Keir the man who changed music forever.
One speaker after another steps forward, each polishing the legend until it gleams.A producer talks about Keir’s ear, his fearlessness, his generosity.
“He would give you the shirt off his back,” the man says, voice thick with emotion.“He loved deeply.He lived fully.”
Callum’s fingers curl into fists.
Would he?
Keir had given Callum a home.Structure.Discipline.A second chance when no one else bothered to see one.
But Keir had also vanished from entire parts of his own life.
Another speaker follows, this one sanctimonious, self-important, clearly enjoying the sound of his own voice.
“Keir’s devotion to family was unparalleled,” the man declares.“He believed in connection above all else.”
Callum’s jaw tightens.
That’s when he looks at Isla and his heart cracks.
She sits in the second row beside her mother, rigid as a drawn blade.Her black dress is sharp and tailored, with no softness to it.Her posture is perfect.Controlled.Her face is calm in the way only someone who has learned not to expect comfort can be calm.
She has not cried.
Alisa MacLaren dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief, grief neat and measured.Isla stares straight ahead, unmoving, like she’s enduring something rather than participating.
Something in Callum twists.
The speaker continues, droning on about Keir’s warmth, his capacity for love.
This is bullshit.
Callum shifts, anger coiling tight in his chest.He knows Keir’s flaws.He lived with them.He forgave them.He worked around them.
But turning the man into a saint?
