Chapter 3 - The Funeral They Skipped
Lucas’s funeral was on a Thursday morning.
The sky was gray, and the church smelled like lilies.
My best friend Emily stood beside me the entire time, one hand on my back. Thomas’s coworkers came. Lucas’s teacher, Mrs. Jenkins, drove more than an hour with a letter from his class and cried so hard she could barely read it.
My son’s casket was placed beside his father’s.
I remember thinking no mother should know the sound of earth falling twice.
While the priest spoke, I thought about the Bahamas.
My mother applying sunscreen.
My father ordering seafood.
Chloe posing with one hand on her pregnant belly.
Derek wearing sunglasses.
All of them laughing in a place where the ocean was blue while my child was lowered into the ground.
After the burial, Emily begged me to come home with her.
“You shouldn’t be alone,” she said.
I looked at the fresh earth beside Thomas’s grave.
“I’m not alone,” I said. “I’m awake.”
Then I drove straight to the apartment.
The one Thomas left me.
The one Chloe and Derek had occupied for free for three years.
I unlocked the door with my key and stepped inside.
Their dishes were in the sink.
Their shoes were by the couch.
Their framed vacation photos lined the wall.
A home they had never paid for.
A life they had mistaken for their right.
May you like
I stood in the doorway for a long time.
Then I called movers.
