I chew on my bottom lip.
‘If it’s too awkward, we can—’
Holding my hand up, I cut her off.‘It’s fine.I just feel a little out of place, but don’t worry about me.You should hand Daisy over and go mingle.I’m on babysitting duty, remember?’
‘How could I forget?’she says, smiling.
‘Ready?’Darcy appears beside Ella.Outside, everyone has congregated under the flowering tree, and we trail through the back doors to join them.I stick to the edge of the crowd, content to watch from a distance as person after person steps up to talk about a man I never met.It all feels too intimate and too painful for someone like me to witness.A stranger surrounded by people grieving.
A speaker crackles to life.‘True Blue’ by John Williamson drifts out into the wide, open sky.The first few notes fall, and everything else follows.Someone starts crying – soft at first, then harder.A woman clutches a man’s arm.A teen wipes his sleeve across his face.The pink flowers shimmer above it all, and beneath them, a man I never knew is lowered into the ground.
I don’t move.
I don’t breathe.
I simply stand there – in the shadow of a stranger’s house, watching a group of people say goodbye to someone they loved while I try not to come undone over a man who probably never wants to see me again.
The casket hits the earth with a hollow finality that echoes all the way through me.
People begin to drift around the tree.Quiet voices.Soft footsteps on red dirt.Tissues crumpled in jacket pockets.It’s the strangest sort of ending – both heavy and delicate.
I look past them, and I see Luke.
Sandy blond hair brushed roughly into place.His dimples are absent, along with that trademark spark in his blue eyes, now swallowed by the shadows beneath them.Even his usual squared and stubborn posture has folded in on itself.All six-foot-somethingof him curled inwards like one of the neighbouring trees in the peak of summer.
He stands a few metres away, his hands in his pockets, head slightly bowed as if still tethered to the patch of dirt where his father now rests beside his mother.Two other strangers start shovelling dirt on top of the casket, and my heart aches to imagine what he must be feeling at the sight of it.
He hasn’t seen me yet.
I clear my throat and shuffle closer.Ella’s watching me as I hand her a sleeping Daisy, perhaps debating whether or not to grab my arm and stage a casual, whisper-fuelled intervention.But she doesn’t.
I cross the space between us, one tentative step at a time, until I can see the grief etched on his face.It halts me in my tracks.I don’t say a word.
Because he looks … lost.
Not in the usual way, the emotionally distant, romantically inconvenient way I know so well.In the real way.The ‘I don’t know who I am without them’ way.The ‘I haven’t slept in weeks and today I buried my last parent’ kind of way.
I almost turn around.Almost.
Instead, I say the first thing that comes to mind.‘I forgot how good you look in a suit.’
Slowly, he turns to face me.
His eyes are red.His skin is dull with exhaustion.He looks like someone who’s been carrying the entire family name on his shoulders for years and now realises he can’t hand it off to anyone else.
Yet he still manages to muster the faintest smirk at my comment.‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’
I shrug.‘Honestly, my ears are still ringing from Daisy crying, so I’m not operating at peak wit today.’
He exhales a half laugh, short and rough.
It’s not much.But it’s something.
‘Thanks,’ he says eventually.
I frown.‘For what?’
‘For taking my mind off the fact that I just buried my dad.Even for a minute.’
