Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Hog
The funeral home chairs fit normal-sized humans.
I sat with my knees jammed against the chair before me, trying to make myself smaller—impossible physics.
My dress shoes pinched. The suit jacket Rhett had loaned me pulled tight across my shoulders.
I'd borrowed it because mine was somewhere in the back of my closet, probably covered in cat hair from a neighbor's pet I'd never owned.
The air smelled like lilies, furniture polish, and something else underneath—formaldehyde, maybe, or whatever they used to make death look presentable.
I kept my hands clasped in my lap. If I moved them, I knew I'd knock something over. A hymnal. Someone's purse. The entire fragile ecosystem of grief that required silence and stillness.
Three rows ahead, Rhett sat between his mother and Sloane. His shoulders were rigid under his black suit—the good one he kept for job interviews he never needed. I watched the back of his neck, where his hairline met his collar, and tried to send him messages through the air.
I'm here. You're not alone.
He didn't turn around.
The minister spoke. I'd lost the thread somewhere around "loving father" and "dedicated craftsman." The words were generic and pre-packaged, like someone had pulled them from a template marked "Trades, Male, 60s."
I wondered whether Rhett's father had been a loving father.
Someone coughed. A child—one of Sloane's kids—whispered something, and an adult immediately shushed them.
I shifted my weight, and the chair creaked. The sound was deafening. Everyone heard it. They had to have heard it. The woman to my left glanced over, and I froze, willing myself into invisibility.
I didn't know how to show up for Rhett's father's passing. Didn't know the protocol for funerals or the right way to arrange my face into something that looked like sympathy instead of terror.
The minister said something about ashes to ashes. I thought about sawdust and how Rhett's hands always smelled like cedar.
Someone cried, soft, muffled sounds. It was Rhett's mother. I stared at my knees and counted the threads in my borrowed dress pants—anything to keep from looking around and catching someone's eye.
The service ended.
Everyone stood. I stayed seated a beat too long, then lurched upright, catching my knee on the chair ahead with enough force to make my eyes water. The people in my row shuffled past—polite nods and sympathetic half-smiles.
I waited and let everyone else filter out first. Less chance of collision that way.
When I reached the aisle, Rhett was already at the front, shaking hands with people I didn't know. His face was blank—not sad or stoic, just empty.
I wanted to cross the room and put my hand on his shoulder. Wanted to pull him away from the strangers offering hollow condolences and take him somewhere quiet where he didn't have to perform.
Instead, I stood by the wall and waited until it was time to stop by the house.
Rhett's childhood home smelled of coffee and lasagna, and too many people wore too much perfume in a small space.
The living room—where I'd met Rhett's mother three days ago, watching his father die in increments—had been rearranged.
The hospital bed was gone. In its place were folding tables covered in tinfoil-wrapped dishes and Pyrex containers with masking tape labels: Tuna casserole – reheat 350. Chicken soup – freezes well.
I stood in the doorway with my coat still on, watching the house fill with relatives, neighbors, and people who probably hadn't spoken to Rhett's father in years but showed up anyway because that's what you did.
Sloane corralled her kids toward the kitchen. Rhett's mother sat in the recliner—the same one she'd occupied during the vigil—accepting murmured sympathies.
Rhett was nowhere.
I spotted him finally, backed into a corner by the stairs, trapped in conversation with an older man in a too-tight suit. The man was gesturing, and Rhett was nodding with that same blank expression from the funeral home.
I couldn't get to him. Too many bodies between us. Too much polite navigation required.
So I did what I knew how to do.
I moved.
Boots cluttered the entryway—snow-crusted, salt-stained, and piled in a hazardous heap. I started pulling them aside, lining them up along the wall in neat pairs. Small boots with cartoon characters. Work boots caked in mud. Sloane's practical flats.
"Oh, you don't have to do that," someone said behind me.
I kept going. "It's fine."
Once I handled the boots, I moved to the coat rack. Someone had hung three coats on one hook, and the whole thing was listing dangerously. I redistributed the weight, finding space on the banister for the overflow.
In the kitchen, I found extra coffee filters in the cupboard above the sink and started a fresh pot.
"Can you grab that?" A woman with silver hair and Rhett's eyes—an aunt, probably—gestured at the top shelf. "The good plates."
I reached up and pulled down a stack of china that looked like nobody had used it since the eighties. Set them on the counter.
"Thank you, dear." She patted my arm absently. "You're tall."
"Yeah."
People kept appearing with more food. I cleared space on the dining room table, shuffling casserole dishes into common sense configurations. The work was simple. Mechanical. It required nothing from me except my hands and my ability to lift things.
A man in flannel—one of Rhett's dad's friends from the mill—needed help moving a folding table from the garage. We hauled it through the snow, set it up in the living room, and covered it with a plastic tablecloth.
"You play for the Storm?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"Thought I recognized you. Hell of a game last Thursday."
"Thanks."
He clapped my shoulder and moved on.
I kept moving. Every few minutes, I looked for Rhett. He moved from the corner by the stairs to the kitchen doorway, still trapped in conversations that made his jaw tight.
His mother appeared at my elbow. In her exhaustion, she'd forgotten meeting me three days ago. "You're Hog," she said.
"Connor. Yeah."
"Thank you for—" She gestured vaguely at the room. "For helping."
"No problem."
She studied me for a moment. I braced for something—a test or judgment. Instead, she nodded once. "You're good at this."
Then she was gone, pulled into another conversation.
Mae found me in the kitchen, tugging on my sleeve with sticky fingers that smelled like grape juice.
"We're bored," she announced.
Liam appeared behind her, all sharp elbows and restless energy compressed into a ten-year-old body that didn't know what to do with itself. "Mom says we have to stay inside, but there's nothing to do, and Tommy keeps crying and—"
"You wanna build a snowman?" I asked.
They looked at each other. Then at me.
"It's freezing out there," Mae said, but her eyes were already bright considering the option.
"That's why they invented coats."
Five minutes later, we were in the backyard.
The snow was perfect—wet enough to pack. Mae immediately started rolling a ball for the base while Liam launched himself into a drift, disappearing up to his waist.
"Okay, strategy." I crouched down to Mae's level. "Bottom's gotta be huge. Bigger than huge. Like, as big as you can make it."
"How big is that?"
"Show me."
She spread her arms wide. I shook my head. "Bigger."
She spread them wider, standing on her tiptoes.
"Perfect. Go."
While Mae attacked the base, I helped Liam extract himself from the drift. Snow clung to his hair, jacket, and the inside of his boots. He shook himself like a dog, spraying snow everywhere. "Can we make the head?"
"After the middle. Architecture, kid. Foundation first."
We worked quietly, interrupted by occasional strategy sessions. Mae needed help rolling her snowball once it got too big to push alone. Liam insisted the middle section should have "muscles," which resulted in a lopsided torso that looked like a snowman who'd been hitting the gym on one side only.
"Arms!" Mae declared, abandoning her post to hunt for sticks.
She returned with two branches that were different lengths. One was thick and sturdy, and the other was thin and bent at an odd angle.
"Perfect," I said.
"They don't match."
"Nothing ever does. That's what makes it interesting."
Liam found rocks for eyes while I lifted Mae onto my shoulders so she could place them. She wobbled, gripped my head for balance, and carefully pressed each rock into place.
"Down, please."
I set her down. She stepped back, hands on her hips, surveying our work.
The snowman was a disaster. Lopsided and asymmetrical, with a head that tilted at a dangerous angle. The stick arms jutted out at weird angles, and one of the rock eyes was significantly higher than the other.
"It's ugly," Liam said.
"It's perfect," I corrected.
"Those are the same thing," Mae said, and I laughed—actually laughed—for the first time since walking into the funeral home.
We built two more. Each one was worse than the last. Mae insisted the second one needed a scarf, so we raided the front hall closet and returned with something knitted and orange that had probably belonged to Rhett when he was their age.
The third snowman got a hockey stick Liam found in the garage—Rhett's old junior league stick, the blade cracked, and the tape peeling.
"Is Uncle Rhett sad?" Mae asked suddenly.
"Yeah."
"Because Grandpa died?"
"Yeah."
"Are you sad too?"
I thought about that. "I'm sad that he's sad," I said finally.
Mae nodded like that made sense. Then she pelted Liam with a snowball, and the moment broke.
By the time we trudged back inside, my fingers were numb, and dampness soaked my jeans to the knee. The kids were pink-cheeked and loud, arguing about which snowman was best while tracking snow through the mudroom.
Rhett's mother was in the kitchen, washing dishes that someone had already cleaned. She looked up when we came in, steam rising from the sink.
"You're all frozen," she said.