Chapter 3 #2
I swallowed all the things I hadn’t managed to say. “See you.”
I watched her go, bereft. We didn’t even hug goodbye. Squaring my shoulders, I went to take over the role of Comforter-in-Chief.
Joe glanced over at my approach, his gaze snagging briefly on my hair.
I raised my chin, daring him to say something snarky.
“You need to help Joe,” my mother said. “He told me I’m officially off duty.”
“And she listened to you?” I asked him.
Our eyes met. A corner of his mouth curved in acknowledgment. In recognition. It was eerily like the look I’d shared with Daanis, only different, because she was my best friend for life, and he was my main rival for my father’s attention and my mother’s affection.
“She listened to reason,” he said.
Jerk.
“Joe. Maddie.” Deputy Chief Petrovski, the salt-and-pepper-haired head of the island’s first responders, nodded to me before turning to my mother. “Sure am sorry about Rob.”
“You did what you could, Bruno,” Mom said.
“We came as soon as Joe called. If we coulda gotten him on the plane…But he was already gone.”
“Wait.” My stomach hollowed. “Joe was with Dad? When he died?”
Chief Petrovski shuffled his feet.
“We were on a job together,” Joe said, when no one else spoke. “Rotten fascia board.”
“I thought…” My gaze cut to my mother. “You said it was Dad’s heart.”
“It was.”
Chief Petrovski cleared his throat. “Near as we can tell, he had a cardiac event on the roof before he fell.”
“Dad fell? Off a roof?” My voice squeaked.
A pool of silence spread around us. I could feel myself fraying and reached desperately for the threads to hold myself together.
“He had no business up that ladder and so Joe told him,” my mother said.
She might as well have kicked me off that roof. I stared at her, feeling the ground fall away beneath my feet.
“I’m sorry,” Joe said.
I believed him. There was an awful sincerity in his deep voice, a terrible pity in his warm brown eyes. His sympathy broke me. My throat constricted. My sinuses swelled. I was going to cry. In front of him. Because of him. This was his fault.
“It’s your fault,” I blurted.
He went still.
“Annie,” Mom said sharply.
“If you’d been up on the roof instead of Dad, he wouldn’t have died.”
“That’s quite enough,” my mother said. “Apologize.”
I whirled on her. “I can’t believe you’re taking his side.”
“It’s all right,” Joe intervened. His gaze met mine. “I understand.”
The horrible thing was I thought he did.
I turned hot. Cold. My palms were sweating. My lips were frozen. Everybody was watching—my mother’s friends, the Altar Guild, Chief Petrovski, Mrs. Johnson—with varying degrees of judgment or indulgence. Just Annie being Annie, their expressions said. What did you expect?
And tomorrow I had to face them all again.
—
I set my phone alarm for seven thirty and then lay awake for hours.
My brain buzzed. My whole body shivered.
Eventually, I gave up, got up, and dug in my closet for the old flannel men’s shirt stuffed in the back.
Wrapping myself in its familiar comfort, I flopped back into bed.
I’d brought Anne of Green Gables on the plane with me as my emergency book, my homage to my father.
But even reading about the Christmas concert (the dress with the darling puffed sleeves!
the beaded kid slippers! Gilbert Blythe saving the rose from her hair in his breast pocket!) didn’t quiet my mental storm.
I tried, and failed, to imagine Chris saving a flower from my hair. Not that I wore flowers in my hair. Not for years and years, anyway. Not since Daanis and I wandered the woods, making crowns of dandelions and honeysuckle…
When I woke, gray light streamed through a chink in the curtains. I grabbed for my phone and groaned.
Twenty minutes later, I hopped from my room, jamming my right heel into my boot, clutching my earrings in one hand.
Mom was waiting by the door, her squat black bag tucked under her arm. Judging by her heavy eyes, she hadn’t slept well, either.
My heart wrenched. “What can I do for you, Mom?”
“This isn’t about me, Anne. Or you, either.” She swung open the door. A chilly wind sliced through my jacket. “Just try not to embarrass your father.”
And I did try, sitting motionless as Father Steve’s voice droned like a bee bumbling against a screen door. Almost motionless, only my knee bouncing up and down. It helped that I was mostly numb.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Mrs. Mosley said after the service as the mourners drifted from the church.
As if Dad were temporarily misplaced instead of dead.
My mother was descending the steps ahead of us, her shoulders square under her good black coat. I opened my mouth. Shut it before I could say something I would regret. That she would regret.
I remembered my script. “Thank you for coming, Mrs. Mosley.”
She sniffed. “I’m surprised your fiancé isn’t with you.”
“Chris and I aren’t engaged. Anyway, he had to work,” I explained.
“At the hospital,” Daanis said loyally from beside me. “Anne’s boyfriend is a doctor at Children’s in Chicago.”
“What a shame,” Mrs. Mosley said, “that he couldn’t be here to support you.”
Daanis and I exchanged looks, as if we were still lab partners in Mrs. Mosley’s seventh-grade science class. “I thought for sure she’d approve of a doctor,” Daanis whispered as Mrs. Mosley moved on, seeking another victim.
“She doesn’t approve of anybody. Even God.”
Daanis snickered and then sobered. “How are you holding up, sweetie?”
An ache rose in my throat. “I hate this,” I whispered. “I miss him so much.”
She put her arms around me. I closed my eyes, leaning my head against her shoulder, relieved of the need to pretend.
“Hey, honey. You ready?” Zack appeared in the church doorway, carrying Rose. “Anne.” He nodded to me. I liked him because he loved Daanis. He tolerated me for the same reason. “Sorry about all this.”
All this. That my dad was dead. That Zack had to be here on a Saturday morning. That he was taking my best friend away.
“It’s okay.” It was not okay. “Thanks for coming,” I said.
Rose reached out her chubby little arms. “Ma. Mamama…”
“Let’s go, babe,” Zack said. “Taxi’s waiting.”
“I’m going to walk with Anne.”
“Rose needs you,” Zack said.
I needed her. But since I wasn’t two years old, I smiled bravely. “You go. I’ll see you there.” At the cemetery.
She left me to climb into one of the horse-drawn carriages.
Zack handed up Rose. The toddler wriggled like a kitten, fitting herself around Daanis’s baby bump.
Daanis whispered to her daughter, her shiny black hair falling over them both.
They looked so cute together. The hot constriction in my chest eased.
Most of the thin crowd was on foot. I spotted Zoe’s goldendoodle head beside Mrs. Powell in a sensible knit hat. Joe was there, too, standing with his mother and a round-faced teen with brown hair I vaguely recognized as his half sister.
I fell into place next to Mom, behind the dray holding Dad’s ashes and a spray of lilacs.
The piper who played at island weddings took his position in front, his tartan bright against the winter-brown grass.
The harness creaked and jingled. Hooves clopped.
Feet shuffled. Someone coughed. We started the mile-long walk to the cemetery to the sound of bagpipes playing “Ashokan Farewell” and the whisper of wind in the pines.
Dad would have loved it.
Residents walking their dogs or collecting their mail stood by the side of the road in respect.
A few early visitors stopped to stare, their phones flashing in the sunlight as they recorded the piper and the procession.
My heart burned. I wanted to yell at them.
My dad’s funeral wasn’t some bit of local color for their social media feeds.
I imagined the headlines, the comments (crazy mourner attacks island tourist!) and took a deep breath.
Just try not to embarrass your father.
The carriage wheels rumbled under the stone arch and through the iron gate.
Past the carved wooden turtle and totem pole that flanked the Chippewa burial mound.
Past old graves to the new burial section, finally stopping by an open scar in the turf.
My bootheels sank in the muddy ground. My mother listened, her face as gray and hard as the stones, as the priest spoke.
My father was lowered into the earth.
A crow cawed. Bagpipes keened.
A sob escaped me. Maybe Mom reached out her hand? Or not. I couldn’t see. When a heavy arm settled over my shoulders, I turned blindly into the warmth, comforted by a whiff of my father, soap and wool and mineral spirits. And something that wasn’t Dad at all, a deep, delicious note of…Joe.
Son of a frickin’ biscuit. Yesterday I’d accused him publicly of causing my father’s death.
I pulled away, my face flaming.
My emotions were too raw. Our history was too messy. I did not want—I could not bear—his comfort now.