Chapter 13
Now
Chantal is deeply committed to Sunday brunch.
Right now she will almost certainly be in her favorite booth at her favorite restaurant, splitting the paper with her fiancé.
She will take Arts first and he will have Opinions, and then they’ll switch.
They will have their coffees, and her eggs Benny will be on its way.
I would be disturbing her ritual. She’s barely verbal, let alone ready to deal with my crisis, until she’s had at least two cups of caffeine.
At least that’s what I tell myself as I quickly write a message to her, delete it, and then put the phone on the bed beside me.
Again. I shake my head at myself. Fifth time’s the charm, right?
I pick up the stupid thing and type out another text, punch send, and then throw the phone down.
I sit and wait—for one minute, then five—and when no reply comes, curse myself for sending it in the first place and shuffle off to the bathroom.
I run the shower until it steams up the mirror, then step under the hot spray and put my head against the tile, letting the anxious stream of thoughts billow around me like mustard gas.
What the fuck is wrong with me? What kind of a person takes advantage of their former (newly single!) boyfriend on the day of his mother’s funeral?
Sam is never going to let me stay in his life.
And why should he? I’m a shitty, selfish person who is clearly incapable of being his friend.
I don’t register that I’m crying until I feel my shoulders shaking. Disgusted with my own self-pity, I push off the wall, scrub myself roughly with soap, wash my hair, and dry off.
I arrive at the church ten minutes early, and the lot is already full with dusty pickup trucks and well-used sedans.
A young man is directing cars to park in the adjoining field.
I leave the car at the end of a haphazard row, and walk toward the church, the heels of my black pumps digging into the grass, making me look as off-kilter as I feel.
Sam is standing in a small cluster of people in front of the church steps.
I stop short at the sight of Taylor beside him, legs as long as a giraffe’s, hair as golden as a sunbeam.
Even though Sam and Charlie had mentioned she was coming, I somehow didn’t expect to see her.
I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to steady myself.
When I open them, Charlie is looking at me from across the parking lot.
He raises his hand, and the whole group turns my way.
As I move closer, I immediately recognize the thin, middle-aged man as Julien.
There’s an elderly couple who must be Charlie and Sam’s grandparents on their dad’s side.
Sue’s parents aren’t around anymore. There’s another couple, who I think are Sue’s brother and sister-in-law from Ottawa.
I take a deep breath and paste a warm smile on my face, though my stomach is roiling.
“Everyone, this is Percy Fraser,” says Charlie as I join them.
“You probably remember her. She and her parents had the cottage next door when we were kids.” I greet the family with hugs and condolences, pretending that this is a funeral like any other and that I don’t feel Sam watching me intensely.
“You look well, Percy,” Julien says, giving me a loose hug. I rub his upper arms with both hands as he pulls away. His eyes are red and he smells like stale cigarette smoke.
I turn to Sam and Taylor last. He shut down so quickly this morning after what happened, because of course he did.
Who wants to open up the you left me brokenhearted conversation the morning of their mother’s funeral?
I’m afraid to meet his eyes now, afraid of what I’ll find there. Regret? Anger? Hurt?
So I fix my gaze on Taylor instead. Her hand is resting on Sam’s shoulder, in a way that screams mine.
Sam may have ended things with her, but she is clearly not done with him.
In reply, I glue on a serene smile that says, I didn’t just make your ex-boyfriend come in his pants, and keep it there, though bile is rising up my throat.
She’s stunning in a tailored black jumpsuit, her hair in a glossy low ponytail.
My black sheath dress feels drab in comparison.
She’s wearing very little makeup and no jewelry and somehow manages to look intentionally minimal.
If I walked around wearing only mascara and lip gloss, I’d just look tired.
As it is, I spent five minutes alone applying several layers of concealer around my puffy eyes and red nose.
When I finally look at Sam, it’s like seeing him for the first time.
He’s standing as straight as a red pine, wearing a crisp white shirt and an expensive-looking black suit that’s cut close to his body.
He’s freshly shaven and his hair is combed and held in place with some kind of styling product.
He looks like an actor who plays a doctor on TV rather than an actual doctor.
Sam and I were always bumming around in bathing suits or work clothes, and I’ve only seen him in a suit once before.
Now he looks like such an adult, such a man.
A man who should have a gorgeous lawyer on his arm instead of a basket case around his neck.
He and Taylor make a striking couple, and it’s hard not to feel that they’re designed to have smart, successful, impossibly gorgeous babies together.
I lean in to give him a hug, and it feels like coming home and saying goodbye and four thousand days of longing.
“We should probably head in,” Taylor says, and I realize I’ve been pressed to Sam’s chest for a second too long for polite company, but just as I pull back, he squeezes his arms around me a little tighter, just for a second, before releasing me with an unreadable look on his face.
This is the biggest church in town, but it’s still not large enough to seat everyone who’s shown up this morning.
People are standing in rows behind the back pews, crowding around the doorways, and spilling outside.
It’s an incredible show of love and support.
But it also means the church is hot and stuffy.
By the time we get to the front pew, my neck and thighs are already damp.
I should have worn my hair up. I sit between Charlie and Sam, where a large photo of a smiling Sue stares out at us, surrounded by arrangements of lilies, orchids, and roses.
I wipe at the sweat on my upper lip then rub my hands on my dress.
“You okay, Pers?” Charlie whispers. “You seem twitchy.”
“Just hot,” I tell him. “How about you?”
“Nervous,” he says, holding up a folded piece of paper that I assume contains his eulogy. “I want to do her proud.”
When it’s time for Charlie to speak, he grips the edge of the podium with white knuckles.
He opens his mouth, then closes it again, looking out into the crowd for several long seconds until he starts to speak, his voice audibly shaking.
He stops, takes a deep breath, and then begins again, steadier now.
He talks about how Sue held the family and the business together after his dad died, and though he has to pause a couple of times to collect himself, he makes it through, no tears shed, an obvious look of relief in his green eyes.
To my surprise, as Charlie returns to the pew, Sam rises. I hadn’t realized he was speaking today. I watch him as he strides confidently to the front of the church.
“Many of you will find this scandalous, but Mom didn’t really like pierogies,” he begins with a small smile across his lips, and the room rumbles with low laughter.
“What she did love, however, was watching all of us eat them.” He keeps his eyes mostly on his page, but he’s a beautiful speaker; while Charlie’s eulogy was earnest and reverent, Sam’s is gently teasing, breaking the sadness in the room with lighthearted stories about Sue’s struggles and triumphs in raising two boys.
Then he looks up and scans the crowd until he settles on me briefly before looking down again.
I can see Taylor observing me from the corner of my eye, and my heart laces up its running shoes and takes off in a sprint.
“Mom lived without my dad for twenty years,” he says.
“They had been friends since kindergarten, started dating in ninth grade, and got married after high school. My grandfather will tell you that there was no way to convince either one of them to wait just a little bit longer. They knew. Some people are lucky like that. They meet their best friend, the love of their life, and are wise enough to never let go. Unfortunately, my parents’ love story got cut far too short.
Just before she died, Mom told me she was ready.
She said she was tired of fighting and tired of missing Dad.
She thought of death as a new beginning—said she was going to go spend the rest of her next life with Dad, and I’d like to think that’s exactly what they’re doing now. Best friends together again.”