“All right,” Sassy had said when she could speak again. “He was a tiny bit obsessed with sex.”
Now Marion placed two cups of coffee on the table then slid a plate of oatmeal raisin muffins toward Sassy. “Just baked this morning. They’re still warm.”
“Thank you for being here,” Sassy said, watching her. “I mean it. I wouldn’t be getting up if you weren’t here.”
Marion smiled gently. “You’ll feel stronger once you eat something. Go ahead. I’m a pretty good baker, if I do say so myself.”
She took a bite of the muffin, and the next thing she knew she was dabbing at crumbs and licking them off her finger. Marion went to get more coffee, and Sassy bit into another muffin.
“These are really good,” she said.
“I’ll bake blueberry another day. Those are even better.”
Sassy swallowed, but it was difficult with the lump in her throat always there. “What am I supposed to do now, Marion?”
“You live, Sassy,” her friend said calmly. “One day at a time. You are going through a terrible, traumatic time, and now you have to survive it. You’re not alone. Tom and I are here with you. So are all the neighbours. We all love you, Sassy.”
She felt herself weakening again. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“It’s a horrific thing. I am so sorry you’re suffering.”
A thought Sassy had planned to keep to herself for the rest of her life popped to the surface. It came out with more force than she’d thought she had. “I am so angry at him. And I’m ashamed of what he did, because I think it was on purpose. And I know I shouldn’t be angry because he’sdead,but I can’t help it. It hurts so much, what he did.”
“All your feelings are valid, Sassy. It’s all right to be angry. When he died, he took part of you with him, and there’s no way you could have prepared for that. His death changes everything you knew.” She held Sassy’s gaze. “And it’s all right if you feel ashamed of him, but keep in mind that you don’t truly know what he was thinking. You don’t know the real reason for why this happened. It’s not as if he left you a note detailing his plans.”
“If he’d written me a note, or if he’d told me, I could have stopped him.”
“Could you? I don’t think that’s fair to either you or him.”
“I could have. If I’d told him I needed him…”
“He knew that. He loved you so much, Sassy, but this was about him, not you. If you’re right, and he did it on purpose, it was a last resort. Yourfather was a complicated man. He was your father, but he was also a decorated war hero. Before he was a dad, before he had any idea what his life might become, he put his life on the line for others, and he saved lives. It doesn’t matter how many medals a man might earn, he isn’t impervious to the pain his experience caused.” She sighed. “He must have been torn apart by everything happening, but he never would have left you alone. Not if he’d been able to think clearly enough to stop himself.”
“I know what you’re talking about,” Sassy said. “You’ve told me about Daniel and your dad, and the things they have to live through. But my dad never had problems like that. He was fine all his life.”
“Some of the men I’ve read about keep their problems buried their whole lives. They hide them away because they’re ashamed, or they don’t want anyone else to know. Or they just want to forget what happened.” Marion lowered her eyes to the empty plate before them. “My dad suffered his whole life after the war, and he’s still suffering. Your dad just kept it contained, I guess. With Joey missing, it might have all come back.”
“Joey.” Thinking of him brought back a whole other level of misery. “I hate feeling this way. I feel like I’m not even here.”
“Grief is the most painful of all human emotions. It’s the price you pay for loving and being loved.”
Sassy took a deep breath and let it out very slowly, fighting exhaustion. How could she still be tired? She’d slept for three days already.
“I don’t remember if I ever grieved my mother’s death,” she admitted. “I didn’t know her.”
“You were so young. You probably went through a lot of confusion rather than typical grief. In a way, you have always grieved her, but her loss helped shape you into the strong person you are now.”
“I have a snapshot in my head of her funeral,” Sassy said, surprising herself. She’d forgotten all about it until this moment. “I remember being with my father and Joey in that big, cold church. So many people were there, all of them wearing black. I had a friend back then—no idea who she was, I just vaguely remember her face—and she was in the row behind us with her family. I remember seeing her little hand in her mother’s. I could almost feel thesoftness of the woman’s skin as she comforted her daughter, and I remember feeling really, really pissed that she had a mother and I didn’t.” She inhaled, and the air shuddered through her. “Now I’m an orphan.”
Marion’s eyes shone. She took Sassy’s hand in hers and held it between them, pulling Sassy out of the darkness. “But you’re not alone.”
twenty-sixMARION
One week after the funeral, everyone mentioned in Jim Rankin’s will was called to a lawyer’s office. Tom drove, and though Marion wasn’t officially invited, she went just to be with Sassy. From the back seat, she watched her friend stare out the front passenger window as they drove. She could practically feel the longing in Sassy’s chest, her desperate need for life to go back to what it had been.
Marion and Tom stayed close to her, but there was only so much they could do. The person Sassy needed the most was the person they had buried only days ago.
The lawyer’s meeting room was dark and formal, with old wood floors that creaked underfoot. Deep oak wainscotting lined the walls beneath perfectly stacked bookshelves, and many of the book spines glimmered with gold lettering and lines. Everything looked as if it came from the last century. Smelled that way, too. Sweet. Like the wood had been cured by old pipe smoke.
