He was the brutal violence of lightning storm, the lashing wind of a hurricane, the destruction of an earthquake…
And now he’s gone.
Dead.
Right there on his front porch, beer bottle clutched tight even in death, his face screwed up, prepared to yell at anyone who dared tread too close to his lawn.
Well, the last I don’t know for certain, since I wasn’t here, but I’d bet my life on it.
Because that was my dad.
“About time you showed up.”
I go stiff and look at my brother. He’s similarly clothed in a dark suit and tie, his face and muscled body almost a mirror of mine—though where my eyes are gray, his are green, and where my hair falls into my eyes with that trademark hockey flow, his is contained, neatly corralled into an appropriate style for church.
“I’m here.” I jerk my chin toward the closed casket. “He doesn’t deserve even that much.”
“Pot meet kettle,” Rain mutters. “Since you’re doing your best to be exactly like him.”
Rage flashes through me in a hot wave, so intense, so all-consuming that I jerk toward him, that I barely remember I’m in a fucking church, that I’m not on the ice where I’ll just get five minutes in the box for beating up this asshole.
My brother.
But still an asshole.
Clenching my teeth together, I look forward again, watching as the priest moves to the lectern and begins talking about my father like he wasn’t the asshole everyone in this town knew he was.
Cedar Hollow is the quintessential small town located in the foothills of the nearby mountain range. A destination for tourists with its quaint streets and riverfront location—snow in the winter, apples in the fall, tulips in the spring, rafting in the summer—on its surface, it’s a great place to grow up.
Except when one’s father is Norm Harrison.
“…and now I’d like to welcome anyone who would like to share a few words about Norm to come up.”
The silence that follows…well, yup, Fate has a great fucking sense of humor.
Rain sighs from next to me, and I don’t bother to look at him.
There’s no way I’m going up to that mic and saying anything that’s remotely close to good.
Something he clearly gets, having grown up in that house.
But my brother is the responsible one, the good one?—
So, it’s no surprise that he pushes to his feet and finds the one story that doesn’t make our dad look like the complete and total bastard he was.
“…and that’s when we decided a possum didn’t make a very good pet,” he says, eliciting soft laughter through the room…and leaving out the part where it wasn’t we—as in, Rain and I—that decided a possum wasn’t a good pet.
Nope. That was Norm.
And our father didn’t give one fuck that we’d raised Millie from the time she was a baby, that she relied on us, that she trusted us…
We had to set her free.
And when she came crying to the back porch, my dad took out his gun and?—
Rain drops back into the pew, hands clenched into fists.
I find that I’m doing the same.
