Dan wasn’t done talking. “I almost wish I’d stayed with the kids. This is your case, after all, not mine.”
Eli knew Melba was on duty, so her mother must be looking after the children, and probably Hayley, too.
“You’ve been a lot of help,” Eli assured Dan. “Write up an invoice and I’ll put in a requisition with the county auditor, so you can get paid.”
Dan waved a hand the size of a bear claw and said dismissively, “This one’s on me. You want to pay me back, put in a good word for me with Melba. That woman is out-and-out cussed. The more I try to convince her I’ve mended my ways, the more she gives me the stink eye and tells me to back off.”
Eli allowed himself the brief semblance of a grin. “Remind me never to piss that woman off.”
His gaze kept straying back to Brynne, and she must have felt it, because she turned her head and looked directly into one of the cameras. Her eyes were clear and still.
As if he’d actually been caught staring, Eli steered his attention back to the Lansings, then the little cluster of juvenile delinquents sitting in the last row of folding chairs. They wore worn leather jackets, dirty jeans, dark hoodies and smug-ass attitudes.
They’d run with Freddie, but the closest they’d probably come to mourning a supposed friend was being glad he was in the coffin, instead of one of them.
Eli decided to keep an eye on that motley crew, not because he thought they’d been involved in either Tiffany’s death or Freddie’s, but because of the attitudes. If they planned on disrupting the service in any way, he’d shut that shit down in a heartbeat.
The funeral director’s wife, Marion, took her place at the organ.
Her husband went to stand behind the podium. He adjusted the mic, and it emitted a shrill squeal.
The mourners sat up straighter in their folding chairs, hands resting in their laps.
Fred, Sr., and Gretchen stared stonily at the plain wooden cross behind the long table that resembled an altar, but wasn’t.
There were seven churches in Painted Pony Creek, but the Lansings weren’t members of any of them.
Eli decided he was being unnecessarily judgmental, since he hadn’t signed up, either. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in God—in his estimation, there had to be some kind of benevolent force in the world, if only to counterbalance the obvious evil.
Sara was a semi-regular churchgoer, and she’d brought Eric and Hayley up to attend Sunday school and join in various youth-group activities. The folks had said they had to learn the basics but when they were old enough to make up their own minds, they would be free to stay or go.
Sara had stayed, Eli had gone, not out of rebellion, but because he’d preferred the seat of a saddle to the hard pews at the Creek’s staid Presbyterian church. He’d ridden or gone fishing or skied, depending on the season and, being out in the open, alone or with J.P. and Cord, had seemed like a form of worship in its own right.
Pete Gilford didn’t preach a sermon, and when it came time to extol the virtues of the deceased, he came up dry. He cleared his throat a lot, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, landing his gaze purposefully on the Lansings several times, only to have it bounce away again.
He was an old hand at conducting funerals, of course, and his performance was usually fairly smooth. Today, though, he couldn’t seem to get it right, no matter how hard he tried.
He had no choice but to stumble his way through, and Eli felt almost as sorry for him as he did for Fred, Sr., and Gretchen.
Pete invited anyone who wished to speak to come to the podium.
No one stepped up.
Eli watched his nephew fidget beside Sara, then lower his head.
The boys in the back nudged each other and smirked, but none of them chose to approach the podium, which was probably a very good thing.
Embarrassed by the lack of response, Gilford swallowed a couple of times and then began his wrap-up. He unfolded a sheet of plain notebook paper, adjusted his glasses, cleared his throat again.
He read a prayer, perhaps provided by the Lansings, though they most likely weren’t the praying kind. By the way Gretchen glared at that wooden cross behind the director, she was no fonder of God than she was of anybody else.
The organist played a recessional.
Fred, Sr., and Gretchen rose and stalked down the aisle, grudgingly taking up their position beside the door.
People rose, shuffled out, shaking their hands, saying they were sorry for their loss, the usual stuff that has to be done at a funeral, even if it doesn’t lessen anyone’s grief.
Dan sighed, pushed back his chair and stood. “Well, I just learned a whole lot of nothing,” he declared.
“Me, too,” Eli agreed glumly.
With that, they left the funeral home the way they’d come in—through the back door.
The hearse was waiting in the broad alley, hatch raised. The ground was hard with frost, but evidently a hole awaited out there in the graveyard.
Eli shivered, raised the collar of his coat, and wondered how long it would be before Brynne texted him to let the groveling begin.
Strange how much he was looking forward to that.
* * *
THREE DAYS AFTER Freddie Lansing’s funeral, Brynne’s mom and dad arrived, tooting the horn in their giant RV to announce their return to all and sundry.
Standing at the front window in the restaurant, between two booths, she watched as her dad parked the rig on a side street. He maneuvered that RV as easily as Brynne did her roadster, and she felt a little swell of pride in the old man.
She’d been in a low mood since the fight with Eli, even though they’d tentatively reconciled, and even her painting hadn’t brought her out of the doldrums.
Now, seeing her parents alight from the rig, wearing jeans, boots and matching red puffy coats, her spirits lifted significantly.
Miranda nudged Brynne with one elbow, smiling, and handed over her coat.
“Go on,” she urged, in a happy whisper.
Brynne pulled on the coat and hurried outside. The sidewalk had been salted, but there were still icy patches, so she was careful.
Mike and Alice Bailey crossed the street, holding hands, and for a moment, Brynne’s eyes scalded and her vision blurred.
God knew her parents drove her crazy sometimes—her mother’s penchant for planning weddings at the first sign of a man in her daughter’s orbit would only increase now, of course—but they were wonderful people, and she loved them very much.
She’d missed them far more than she’d realized, too.
As she embraced them, first her mother, then her dad, she felt overly emotional, and very grateful that they were her parents. She could just as easily have been born to very different people—like the Lansings.