“Good boy.”
“I’m older than you.”
“By what? Six months?” She scoffed.
My mother, accepting condolences from a stooped gentleman, broke eye contact with him to glare across the lawn at me. My sibling, Fae, followed her gaze. Their face registered shock at the sight of me before they gave a tentative wave.
“That’s my cue.”
Amelia put out her cigarette with a black stiletto. “I’ll join you.”
“For emotional support?”
“For entertainment.”
In my head, I’d practiced a long speech about how much I’d missed them. (I didn’t. Not in a malicious way, but I’d been on my own so long, I’d forgotten how to miss anyone.) Compliments I could employ to break the ice. (Not my specialty; even white lies sounded fake in my mouth.) And memories to reminisce over. (Risky if no one else remembered, or if I’d remembered wrong.)
All I could say when faced with my mother was exactly what I’d said to Amelia. “Hey.”
Her face split into an over-bright, artificial smile, and she threw her arms around me. “Oh, Tal! You’re home. We didn’t know if you’d come. It’s been so long. How long has it been?”
“Since Laurelie died, so nine years,” I said.
She faltered long enough for me to know I’d said something wrong. I did that. I didn’t know how to pad my answers in soft half-truths. I forgot we weren’t supposed to talk about death directly, even at a funeral, even when it was so long ago. Conversations always felt like minefields in which everyone except me had been given a map of where to step, and where not to.
Fae winced.
Mum recovered. “That long already? Time just flies. You’ll come to dinner after the wake, of course?”
“I really shouldn’t stay long,” I said.
“Oh, but it will only be another hour or two. Surely nothing terrible will happen.”
Terrible things followed me and did not offer extensions on curfew, but I said, “Sure, we’ll see.”
She nodded as if that settled it. “Then go in, go in. Sit at the front with us.”
As I passed, Fae grabbed my arm. “Hey. Missed you.”
I struggled with a smile. “Missed you, too.”
I walked through the church doors, into the cocoon of quiet that made all holy places a little creepy. I waited just inside for Amelia, who hugged my family members before joining me.
“That wasn’t so bad,” she said.
“She’s furious with me,” I countered.
I was not terribly good at reading people. It took a while to learn their tells, particularly with people like my mum, who did her best to always be bright and chipper. Even nine years later, her tells were the same.
In front of the altar was the coffin. Closed, mercifully closed, and covered with lilies and alstroemeria. A portrait had been placed in the center, but it was from a long time ago, when Grandad had been around my age, and it occurred to me that I didn’t know what he looked like now, before he’d died, which made the closed casket seem less a mercy in spite of my fear of seeing his corpse.
“Ah, my eyes must be going, but Marlowe, isn’t that our Taliesin?”
“It’s not your eyes, love.”
I looked over to see my aunt waving to me. “Oh, Taliesin! Tal! Come sit with your aunt Lettie.”
“Notice they didn’t invite me, their own daughter, but I’ll be coming anyway,” said Amelia.
