Page 88 of Miserable Marionette

41

Forever & Always

Audrey, Present Day, 1994

“This was a beautiful service, truly. You and your husband did lovely,” Jirani Oliver whispers to me as everyone takes their last walk down the aisle. I’m not sure how she ties into all of this, only that her words make a deep flush spread across my cheeks. Husband.

I resist the urge to look away from her to seek him out in the crowd. I know I won’t find him there. He left minutes ago to ready the hearse for the casket, pulling it up to the loading area in the back.

Once you get over the uncomfortable bits of a funeral, there is an innate beauty in it. A ripe sense of pride in helping a grieving family. I can feel where they are now, deep in the trenches of it, the same way you feel an old bruise. And maybe it’s doing some good, fixing something tiny and horrible, even if it doesn’t begin to touch the vast trench of what Gideon’s done.

Jirani doesn’t stand with her family but beside me instead, my hands clasped comfortingly on her arm, while we watch her children accept handshakes and hugs beside the casket of Mr. Oliver.

“I’d left them… years before he got sick,” she offers suddenly, her voice scratchy. “When they called to tell me he was dying, it was the first time I’d heard my babies' voices in years.”

My mother's curled blonde hair and painted lips come to mind, making something in my chest spasm. “Why did you leave them?”

She doesn’t look at me when her sigh fills the politely muted space, only voices to be heard speaking their condolences in hushed murmurs. “I’ve asked myself that so many times over the years.”

She leaves it at that, and I can’t help but want to press her for more. It’s not my place, and she’s not my mom. I can only hope that even if it is from a distance or privately felt, Emma Fisher would still look at me with the love Jirani does now. That maybe she regrets it, her harsh words and—

“Oh my god,” Jirani whispers as she steps out further into the viewing room, her eyes glued to the back. I frown just as the double doors to the foyer open with a flurry of activity.

I spin toward them, coming face to face with Officer Braylon. “Bray—"

That’s when I see it out the foyer window, the flash of red and blue… ocean eyes as they lead Gideon past, his hands cuffed behind his back. He stares at me, at the man beside me with nothing more than a blank kind of panicked rage as my pulse jumps to a dead sprint in my neck. “There’s a funeral going on. What are you doing?” I hiss, hoping my voice sounds angry and not shaken.

Braylon’s face is shuttered, not unlike the night he arrived at my door and sat me down to tell me my dad was gone. That face only drives the stake into my gut more harshly. The cop battling with the man, the father. I shake my head at him, hating the look of it. “This family is grieving, how dare—"

“I know you—" He seems to choke up on his words. “I know you well enough to know you have no part in this, but you need to…” his voice trails off for a moment before he grabs my elbow, steering me into the office before shutting the door as quickly and quietly as it will allow, but the door is old, the wood warped when a pipe burst in the winter of 81. It’s loud, scraping the hardwood, deafening in the small space.

The orange tabby cat quietly regards us from a chair in the corner. I stare at the cat, my face flush with anxiety as I wring my hands. “Where are you taking Gideon?” Pure panic taking the helm, blotting out every other thought in my mind.

“Look, Auds, I can’t say much, but this is big.” He swallows hard. “Oh, hell…” Braylon grips his chest, nearly kneading the space there. His aged, tanned face muddy with his own anger… disgust. Disgust for Gideon, for what he’s done. For what I haven’t, what I would let him do again.

They know.

I scramble backward, only for him to reach out and steady me, finally finding his voice. “Did he hurt you, Audrey?”

“Never. He’d never hurt anyone,” I lie, but it falls flat. Gideon has always hurt people. I can count on two hands the times my father dug him out of shit. The times Braylon helped, disapprovingly from the sidelines. “Where is he going?”

“You need to keep calm—"

“Calm?!” I hiss, my palms growing clammy. “There is a grieving family out there, and you have just taken the funeral director out in cuffs! Do you have any idea what this will do to his reputation!? He’s a doctor a—"

“Auds, I gotta know you’re solid, kid.”

“What?” I breathe.

“You need to be okay, you hear me? You need to stay home, lie low.”

“Why?” This one comes out as a whimper as I sag into the side of the desk. “Why now? I… he, no we’re—"

Was it me? Is it my fault?

I barely hear the words he says next, hear anything outside of the pounding in my own head.

He only shakes his head, ruffling my hair, but his touch is wrong like sticking a wet finger in a light socket. “Get yourself together for the family.”