“The funeral was beautiful.” My aunt’s words bring a numbness that travels down my throat and the false expression I’m wearing slips, but I force the smile back on my face when she looks up at me.
I take a sip of cheap Cabernet and let the anger simmer.
Beautiful.
What a dreadful word for a funeral.
For the funeral of a woman not yet thirty. A woman who none of these people spoke to. A woman I tried so desperately to save, because at one point in my life, she was my hero.
The glass hits the buffet a little harder than I wanted.
“Sorry I didn’t make it. I’m glad it went well.” My voice is tight.
“It was really kind of you to pay for everything… I know there’s nothing in the estate or…” she says, but her voice drifts off, and I nearly scream at her. I nearly scream at all of them.
Why are they doing this? Why put on a front as if they cared? They didn’t come to visit any of the times she was in the hospital. They didn’t pay a cent for anything but their gas to attend the funeral and come here. And whatever those fucking casseroles cost. All the while I know they were gossiping, wondering about everything Jenny had done to land herself in an early grave.
They’re from uptown New York and all they do is brag on social media about all their charity events. All their expensive dresses and glasses of champagne, put on full display every weekend for the charity that they so generously donated to.
I’m sure that would have been so much better.
Or maybe this alternative is their charity for the weekend. Coming to this fucking wake for a woman they didn’t care about.
I could scream at myself as well; why open my door to these people? Why tell my aunt the reception could be held here? Was I still in shock when I agreed? Or was I just that fucking stupid?
They didn’t see what happened to her. How she morphed into a person I didn’t recognize. How my sister got sucked down a black hole that led to her destruction, and not a single one of them cared to take notice.
Yet they can comment on how beautiful her funeral was.
How lovely of them.
“Oh dear,” my aunt says as she hugs me with both arms this time and I let her. The anger isn’t waning, but it’s not for them. I know it’s not.
I’m sorry they didn’t get to see those moments of her that shined through. The bits of Jenny that I’ll have forever and they’ll never know. I feel sorry for them. But her? My sister? I’m so fucking angry she left me here alone.
Everyone mourns differently.
The thought sends a peaceful note to ring through my blood as I hear footsteps approach. My aunt doesn’t pull away, and I find myself slightly pushing her to one side and picking up a cocktail napkin to dry under my eyes.
“Hey, Beth.” Miranda, a twentysomething string bean of a girl with big blue eyes and thick, dark brown hair, approaches. Even as she stands in front of me, she sways. The liquor is getting to her.
“Do you guys have a ride home?” I ask her, wanting to get that answer before she says anything else.
She blinks slowly, and the apprehension turns into hurt. She shifts her tiny weight from one foot to the other. Her nervousness shows as she tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, swallowing thickly and nodding. “Yeah,” she croaks and her gaze drops to the floor as she bites the inside of her cheek. “Sorry about last time,” she barely whispers before looking me in the eyes. “We’ve got a ride this time.”
It’s when she sniffles that I notice how pink her cheeks are – tearstained pink – not from drinking. Fuck, regret is a spiked ball that threatens to choke me as I swallow.
“I just don’t want you guys getting into another accident, you know?” I get out the words quickly in a single breath, and pick up that glass of wine, downing it as Aunt Margaret turns her back on this conversation, leaving us for more… proper things maybe.
Miranda’s quiet, looking particularly remorseful.
I don’t mention how the accident was in front of my house, five fucking feet from where they were parked. Miranda passed out after getting drunk with Jenny and some other people nearby. Her foot stayed on the gas and revved her car into mine, pushing both cars into my neighbor’s car until mine hit a tree. She could have killed them all. All four of them in the car, high and drunk and not caring about the consequences. Consequences for more than just them.
Her voice is small. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. It was a bad night.”
A bad night? It was a bad month, and the start of me losing my sister. That night, I couldn’t turn a blind eye to it any longer.
“I just wanted to say,” she begins, but raises her voice a little too loud and then has to clear her throat, tears rimming her eyes. “I wanted to tell you I’m really sorry.” Her sincerity brings my own emotions flooding back, and I hate it. “I loved your sister, and I’m…” This time I’m the one doing the hugging, the holding.
“Sorry,” she rasps in a whisper as she pulls away. I look beyond her, at the groups of people in the dining room and past that to the kitchen. There are maybe twenty or thirty people in my house. And not a single one looks our way. They’re too busy eating the food I paid for and drinking my alcohol. I wonder if they even feel this pain.
“She had this for you.” Miranda pushes a book into my chest before running the sleeve of the thin sweater she’s wearing under her eyes. Black mascara seeps into the light gray fabric instantly. “Right before she went missing, while she crashed at my place, she couldn’t stop reading it.”
It takes me a moment to actually take the book from her. It’s thick, maybe a few hundred pages… with no cover. The spine’s been torn off and my name replaces it. Bethy. That’s what Jenny used to call me. The black Sharpie marker bled into the torn ridges of what the spine would have protected.
“What is it?” I ask Miranda, not taking my eyes from the book as I turn it over and look for any indication as to what story it is. I can feel creases in my forehead as my brow furrows.
Miranda only shrugs, the sweater falling off her shoulder and showing more of her pale skin and protruding collarbone. “She just kept saying she was going to give it to you. That you needed it more than her.”
My gaze focuses on the first lines of the book, skimming them but finding no recollection of this tale in my memory. I have no idea what the book is, but as I flip through the pages, I notice some of the sentences are underlined in pen.
He loves like there’s no reason not to. That’s the first line I see, and it makes me pause until the conversation pulls me away.
“Before she died, she told me things.” Miranda’s large eyes stare deep into mine.
Jenny told me things too. Things I’ll never forget. Warnings I thought were only paranoia.
As Miranda’s thin lips part, my boss, Aiden, walks up to us in a tailored suit and Miranda shies back. My lips pull into a tight smile as he hugs me.
“You’re dressed to the nines,” I compliment him with a sad smile, not bothering to hide the pain in my voice. Miranda leaves me before I can say another word to her. She ducks her head, getting distance from me as quickly as she can. My eyes follow her as Aiden speaks.
“You okay?”
My head tilts and my eyes water as I reply, “Okay is such a vague word, don’t you think?”