Chapter 18
Eighteen
A t five till two, there was a knock on the door. Rodney had Kevin in one arm and a bottle in the other hand.
Becky sat on the couch with Marley.
“I can get it,” he said, scooting to the edge of the recliner. She had already started to get up, but she stopped at his words.
She looked scared. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Becky scared.
He wanted to go over and hold her. But she hadn’t seemed very receptive to his explanation of why he hadn’t talked to her for the last five years.
In hindsight, it was really lame. It sounded terrible as he tried to explain it to her.
It was too bad he couldn’t figure out five years ago that it was going to be embarrassing and ridiculous to try to explain that he wanted to look like a big shot in her eyes, so he didn’t tell her that he lost everything and didn’t talk to her for five years.
Of course, at the time, he hadn’t known it was going to take so much time to build back.
Actually, he had wondered if he would ever be able to build back.
He certainly hadn’t planned to not talk to her for five whole years.
It just turned into that as he kept doing better and better financially.
He wanted to be huge by the time he got back and confessed what he had done.
It kind of made sense in his mind still, but it still didn’t make sense when it tried to come out of his mouth.
And Becky wasn’t impressed. He didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.
“Hello,” he said as he opened the door to a dude who was dressed in a suit, with no tie, the top button unbuttoned, but he still looked very professional with his hair slicked down and an iPad notebook type thing held in his hand, along with some brochures.
“Hi. I’m Mr. Carson, from Carson’s Funeral Home. I have a two o’clock appointment with Mrs. Becky Rivers?”
“Yeah. You’re at the right place. I’m her…friend.”
Not boyfriend, not fiancé, not husband. He would rather have said any of those words, but even friend felt like an exaggeration.
As he closed the door and glanced over at Becky, he almost thought she wanted to roll her eyes. She just had a look on her face that said that they weren’t friends.
He looked away. He wanted them to be. He wanted them to be more.
But even if they were more, underneath that more needed to be a solid foundation of friendship, which meant trust, which meant that when something terrible happened to him, he should trust her and be able to tell her.
It also meant that he wouldn’t go and sleep with some woman he didn’t even like, and barely knew, when he was supposed to be waiting for the only woman who had ever caught his eye and his interest.
Yeah. He hadn’t been a very good friend.
“Hello, Mr. Carson. Is it okay if I don’t get up?” Becky said as she sat, looking decidedly uncomfortable, on the couch.
“Certainly. I understand.”
“You can sit in the chair or here on the couch if you’d like,” she said.
“I’ll go ahead and sit on the couch,” Mr. Carson said, arranging himself and his papers as he sat.
Rodney wondered if he should offer him some refreshments.
He decided not to but took his place on the recliner, sitting on the edge, because he didn’t feel completely comfortable sitting back.
He felt like he needed to protect Becky.
But there really wasn’t anything for him to do.
There was no way to protect her from this.
She just had to face it. He wished that Mr. Carson had taken the recliner so he could at least be beside Becky, close enough to touch her if he needed to.
Maybe he should have stood behind her with a hand on her shoulder.
Something told him she wouldn’t have appreciated that right now with their relationship the way it was.
He sat and listened while Mr. Carson talked and then showed Becky the various choices she had.
Becky didn’t want to have a huge funeral, and she’d already talked to Rodney about that. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her sister, it was just there wasn’t much extended family, and neither Rita nor Becky wanted to make a big show. She didn’t know where to have it or how.
She didn’t know what to do, and he could see she was struggling. There were the babies to consider, and it was cold.
“I understand you don’t want cremation, but you do know that it’s cheaper.”
Becky nodded, and she worried her bottom lip.
Rodney thought it might be time for him to step in. “I’m taking care of the expenses for everything, and it doesn’t matter what the cost is. Whatever Becky decides, I will be paying for it. In full, and today, if possible.”
Mr. Carson raised his brows, and from that point on, he didn’t ignore Rodney the way he had when he first came in.
Rodney didn’t necessarily need the extra attention, and he hadn’t spoken up because of that.
He’d spoken up because of the worry in Becky’s brows.
She sold her horses, and he knew that she might have done it just for the time factor.
But she also said about needing to buy a reliable car.
He and Rita had talked about that, and Rita hadn’t been too concerned about Becky’s financial situation, but then Becky had said something about living in an unfinished apartment above the horse stable, and he wondered…
How exactly was she making money? It didn’t sound like she had any bookings at all, and…
Maybe she was worse off than what he thought.
He wondered if he could dig into it without asking her. But he didn’t know who he could ask. He had already checked in with Davis and Matt, and they said they hadn’t been in touch with her much.
Who else could he check with who wouldn’t go straight to Becky and ask?
He always thought that if he wanted to know something, especially about someone he liked and cared about, he should ask them directly. So rather than trying to figure out how he could go behind her back, he decided he would ask her as soon as the funeral director left.
It took an hour to go through all the things, and by then, the babies were done being fed, they had been burped, and Kevin had gone back to sleep. Marley was fussing, and Becky had stood up and was swaying gently back and forth.
“I can take her,” he offered as he put Kevin down in the car seat. Kevin stirred a bit but then curled himself back up and settled right back down.
“Thank you,” she said. The funeral director had her fill out a couple of forms, and then he said, “I can give you the total now, and if your friend would like to write out a check, that’s perfectly fine. Or we can bill you later.”
How awkward it must be to have to talk about death and payment all in the same business transaction.
Rodney was glad he had never gone into the funeral business. Although, he had heard that it was quite lucrative.
Becky held her arms out for Marley, and they switched her back. He was close enough to Becky to smell her scent and feel her warmth.
That was how close he wanted to be all the time. He wanted to have the right to stand there.
But he slid the baby back into her arms and prevented himself from lingering. Going to his briefcase, he got his checkbook out and wrote out a check. He hadn’t even thought to ask if the man took electronic payments. He almost bet he did. Everybody did nowadays.
Still, it was taken care of now. The mechanics of it anyway.
The emotions would linger for a while. He read somewhere that someone who was successful gave himself a limited amount of time to feel bad, and then they forced themselves to look on the positive side and see whatever opportunities had been exposed by the bad thing that happened.
It was a ridiculously short amount of time, like thirty minutes or something.
Would he be able to spend thirty minutes being sad about the turns his life had taken and then focus on the positive?
He knew that was a great business asset, to be able to pivot so quickly, and doing it within a matter of minutes would make one almost indestructible. But he doubted Becky would want to let go of her grief so quickly. Although, it would probably make Rita happy to see it happen.
“All right. We’ll see you in Raspberry Ridge at the church in two days,” the man said, shaking his hand and nodding at Becky, who held the baby, before he left.
Rodney walked over and locked the door after the man walked out.
He turned back around and saw that Becky had turned her back to him and was holding the baby with both arms, hunched over her, as though…was she crying?
“Becky?” he asked, walking softly across the carpeted floor and putting a hand on her back.
She straightened but didn’t move away from his touch, which he appreciated. Maybe she didn’t hate him, or maybe she just needed another human to share her grief right now.
“That was not what I ever thought I was going to be doing at this stage in my life,” she said softly.
“I don’t think anybody expects that. Not with her sister. Not at this age.”
“I just… I miss her. I see her shoes by the door. Her coat on the hook, her dishes in the cupboard. This whole apartment just is filled with her presence, and I’m holding her babies. But their mom is gone.”
“No. I know that’s hard.” He moved his hand from the middle of her back to her shoulder and pulled her close to him.
She turned, the baby between them.
He slipped down, putting his arm underneath hers and taking the baby from her. He was able to pull her close to him, against his chest, while holding the baby in his other arm.
He felt her arms wrap around him and her back shake silently with tears.
Becky, his fierce, loyal warrior, was crying.
That didn’t happen often, and he wished he had both hands around her.
Deciding that it wouldn’t hurt, even though the hospital staff had warned against it, he leaned over and carefully laid Marley on the couch.
She stretched without opening her eyes and then curled back up, continuing to sleep.