3. The Last Dress
The Last Dress
By the time Jenna pulled into the parking lot of the funeral chapel, the sun was high and merciless, burning through the windshield. Her bag sat in the passenger seat, with her rental car keys, phone charger, and the brand-new Anytime Fitness membership card she’d shoved in there after her shower.
She hadn’t gone to the gym because she wanted to pump iron or start fresh. She’d stopped because she couldn’t face her family, or anyone really, with yesterday’s mascara streaked down her cheeks and the smell of bread and soap still clinging to her clothes.
So she’d driven down Pinellas Avenue just after dawn, spotted the purple-and-white sign, and walked inside. The man at the front desk had barely even looked up from his computer when she asked how soon she could use the facilities.
“Instant access,” he’d said, handing her a key card and a smile that didn’t belong in her world right now.
Now, that key card was buried in her purse, pressed between tissues and receipts. She doubted she’d ever use it again, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away.
The shower had helped. Though the hot water, clean clothes, and the smell of coconut shampoo from the dispensers, hadn’t made her feel any more human. It just stripped off the evidence of the night.
She sat for a moment in the car, hands gripping the steering wheel, staring at the chapel’s white columns and manicured hedges. People would start arriving soon: family, flowers, and decisions waiting for her signature.
She’d been moving since the call, airport lines, the drive, the cleaning, the crying, and now, finally, she’d run out of motion. The stillness hurt worse than anything.
Jenna exhaled and reached for her bag, shoving the rental keys and that stupid membership card deeper inside as if hiding them would make all of this less absurd.
Then, she opened the door, and the heat rolled in, thick and familiar, carrying the scent of salt. Somewhere in the distance, a gull called, out of place and perfect.
She squared her shoulders, stepped out of the car, and walked toward the chapel doors.
* * *
The air inside was cool and smelled vaguely of lilies and lemon polish. That smell tugged at a memory before she could stop it.
Grandma Hart’s funeral had smelled the same with lilies everywhere, and vases packed so tightly they looked sculpted from porcelain. Grace had arranged every stem herself, stubborn about it even with red-rimmed eyes. She’d said Grandma deserved beauty, even if it made her hands bleed.
Emmie had been two then, squirming in a black lace dress while Grace tried to keep her subdued.
Manny had sat beside her, one steady hand resting on Grace’s knee, whispering something only she could hear.
He was twenty-two and looked older that day with his sleeves rolled up, and grief weighing him down but never spilling over.
When the service ended, he carried Emmie out in one arm and helped Grace to her feet with the other.
Jenna watched them from the front row, thinking that somehow they already looked like the future. Grace with her calm composure, Manny with his sure hands, and Emmie’s head resting against his shoulder were the picture of something solid. Back then, no one knew how little time they had.
The swell of organ music pulled Jenna back into the chapel. It drifted softly from a speaker somewhere in the corner, the kind that was supposed to soothe, but only reminded her how much silence was hiding underneath.
A few people turned when she walked in. Family faces she hadn’t seen in years, familiar but blurred by time. Her aunt Marilyn Whitaker stood near the front, talking tacitly with the funeral director. When she saw Jenna, her expression softened with relief and exhaustion all at once.
“Oh, honey, you made it.” She pulled Jenna into a hug that lingered a little too long, like she was afraid to let go. “You look tired.”
“I am,” Jenna said, because anything else would’ve been a lie.
Before Marilyn could answer, movement caught Jenna’s eye: a girl sitting at the end of a pew, head bowed, dark hair pulled into a messy bun. For a moment, Jenna didn’t recognize her from this angle. Then the girl looked up, and her breath caught.
Emmie.
Emmie Cruz looked so much like Grace it hurt, though every now and then Jenna would catch something of her father in her too. The same steady eyes. The same quiet way of holding space, as though silence could say what words couldn’t.
Manny Cruz, Emmie’s father, had already sat in a box in this room.
Cancer had taken him fast. Too fast. There hadn’t even been time to find the right doctor, to pin down a treatment plan, to hope.
One week, they were charting test results, the next week, Grace was calling Jenna, voice shaking but controlled enough to say the words no one should have to: He’s gone.
She’d found him unresponsive that morning, sunlight cutting through the blinds in cruel stripes.
At his funeral, Emmie had been two, too young to understand, and too young to sit still.
Grace had held her on her hip through the entire service, rocking gently even when the hymns ended.
Manny’s parents sat beside her, their grief settling deeply, the kind that fills a room without sound.
Jenna remembered sitting in the second row, watching her sister’s composure and wondering how someone so young could already know how to survive this much loss.
There had been lilies then, too. Rows of them.
Grace’s choice. She’d said they were Grandma Hart’s favorite, and they had been, so it felt right.
Two funerals that year, her grandmother and her husband, both marked by the same scent.
Maybe that was Grace’s way of keeping something familiar when everything else was falling apart.
A pew creaked somewhere behind her, pulling Jenna back into the present.
Emmie was still sitting at the end of the row.
“Hey, Em,” Jenna said delicately, stepping forward.
The girl blinked, almost like she’d been yanked out of a dream. “Oh,” she said after a beat. “Yeah. Hey.”
No hug. No smile. Just a recognition, delayed, polite, and distant.
Jenna nodded, uncertain if Emmie was being cold or just lost in the fog of grief. She remembered that same fog from Brooks’s funeral, how sound and color had gone flat. Maybe it was that. Or maybe not.
Aunt Marilyn touched her arm. “We’re still waiting on the director to bring out some paperwork,” she whispered. “We’ve got a few things to figure out before the service.”
At that, Emmie’s gaze darted to Jenna so suddenly that it almost startled her. “I want white roses,” she said. “They were her favorites.”
Jenna nodded, but Emmie wasn’t finished, “And for the music, ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ Not the regular boring one, but the acoustic version from the Philippines or whatever. Those Eat, Pray, Love guys. Can you find it?”
“I’ll find it,” Jenna reassured.
At that, Emmie’s shoulders eased, and she slipped back into the numb fog she’d been floating in when Jenna arrived.
Jenna followed Aunt Marilyn into a small side room, the one reserved for making arrangements, which really just meant decisions no one wanted to make.
The small arrangement room was quieter than the chapel, the air cool and close.
Her parents were already there. Her mother rose first. Lillian Hart crossed the room quickly, despite the stiffness in her joints, and gathered Jenna into her arms with a small broken sound that undid something immediately inside her.
Her father followed more slowly, but when he embraced her, his grip trembled.
No one spoke for several moments. They simply held one another.
Jenna thought she had prepared for everything, but she had not been prepared at all to see the age of her parents here.
Her parents had always seemed immovable to her, fixed points around which the rest of life shifted. But now her father’s shoulders stooped where they never once had before, and her mother’s hair, once only touched lightly with gray, had gone nearly white at the temples.
They looked tired. Older than they had any right to look. And with sudden, brutal clarity, Jenna realized she had not truly seen them in years, not beyond rushed holidays and brief visits squeezed between obligations.
Ten years. Ten years of phone calls instead of presence. Ten years during which grief had continued shaping this family without her there to witness it.
Her mother touched her face gently, as though to reassure herself that Jenna was truly standing before her.
The funeral director, a thin man with kind eyes, laid out the paperwork, casket, flowers, and services, all with numbers written neatly in black ink. Every line item felt like another weight pressing on her chest.
Aunt Marilyn hesitated halfway through a question about payment. “Grace didn’t . . . she didn’t have anything set aside for this, right?”
Jenna frowned, “Didn’t she have life insurance?”
Lillian sighed, “There was a policy, one she took out when Emmie was little. Troy was the beneficiary. He was set to collect it, but said he needed it to settle things.”
Jenna’s stomach turned. “Settle what? These are the things that life insurance is meant to settle.”
Marilyn’s eyes dropped to the table. “He already took her car to sell. And Emmie’s. Said he couldn’t afford to keep them. But Emmie said they were already paid off.”
Jenna pressed her lips together until they hurt. “So he will get the money. He just won’t be using it for this.”
Marilyn nodded softly. “We are hoping he’ll do the right thing, but we’re not sure what he’ll do.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Jenna said.
“Sweetheart—”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Her father shook his head at once. “Jenna, now is not the time.”
“We can discuss money later,” her mother added wearily. “Not today.”
But Jenna looked between them and thought of retirement accounts, fixed income, medications, mortgage payments, and the cruelty of growing old after burying two children. And she knew they could not afford this. Not truly.