Chapter 26 #2
She led us into her office, which was painted a shade lighter than the outside sky. She had a soft, padded chair for every conceivable emotion. I picked the one with the lowest seat, so my knees came up awkwardly against my jacket, and Caiden hovered behind me, folding himself into a corner.
Sandra’s desk was bare except for a box of tissues, a single ballpoint, and a glass orb filled with polished stones. It rattled faintly as she sat down and scooted the chair closer to mine.
“I’m so sorry again, Amelia. I worked with your mother sometimes; she was a volunteer for the food drive when she was herself. She was a bright spirit, even when things were hard.”
“She was a lot of things,” I said, and then realized I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. “Sorry. I just mean—I didn’t expect to be back here.”
Sandra nodded, a sadness in her expression. “People rarely do. But we try to make it as gentle as possible.” She glanced at Caiden, took him in with a practiced flick of her eyes, then turned back to her paperwork. “Is this your partner?”
I barked a laugh that cracked the surface of the room. “No. Just a...friend, here for support.”
“Childhood friend,” Caiden added.
She shuffled some forms. “So, ah, there are a few things we need to go over. Your mother left some instructions. They’re not, um, specific, but I can walk you through the steps.”
I felt Caiden’s hand on my shoulder, just for a second, before he pulled it away. It left a heat mark on my spine. I didn’t need him to be strong, but I didn’t want him to vanish either.
Sandra opened the folder. “She requested burial.”
“That’s fine,” I said, not trusting myself to say more.
Sandra nodded, flipping through a thin stack of forms. “She also left a note. The sheriff found it by her body and requested that I pass it over to you when you arrived. Would you like to read it now, or—?”
“Later.”
Sandra seemed to expect that. She handed it to me, and I stuffed it into my bag.
The rest were forms: signatures and initials, legal codes and medical phrases in triplicate. Sandra narrated each line with gentleness, like she was reading from a children’s book about where people go when they disappear.
Organ donation: checked “no.” Headstone: plain, granite, no flourish. There were decisions about flowers, which felt obscene, like dressing up a corpse for Instagram.
I let Sandra suggest a budget arrangement that was subtle but dignified. It seemed wrong to let a stranger curate my mother’s afterlife, but I was too tired to pretend I cared about chrysanthemums over lilies.
Caiden listened in silence, his body angled toward the door, ready to ferry us out if I gave the signal. Only when Sandra pushed a new page across the desk did his gaze flicker: Casket Selection.
There was a glossy pamphlet with three tiers, like an ad for a hotel. The basic model: tan, cardboard, efficiency. The mid: pale wood, a hint of shine, comfort handles.
The last: a dark, lacquered thing that looked expensive enough to outlive the dead. For a moment, I almost laughed, imagining my mother’s shriveled body rattling around in a luxury box.
Sandra must have read my face. “Most people pick the Pine. It’s, ah, traditional for families who want something simple, but meaningful.”
“The Pine’s fine,” I said. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
Sandra smiled, but there was something relieved in the way she relaxed her hands against the desktop, as if she’d been bracing for a fight and now saw safe harbor ahead.
Just two ruined kids who would sign anything to get it over with.
She went over the schedule in gentle, colorless detail. There’d be a viewing, if I wanted, and a service. They could do Saturday, or, if I preferred, as soon as Thursday. “The sooner the better,” I said, and Sandra nodded.
I’d imagined funerals as thunderous things, but here it sounded more like an appointment for dental surgery. Caiden leaned closer, his knee brushing mine. He didn’t look at me, but I felt the question radiate off him: You sure?
I nodded, not trusting my mouth.
Sandra made a note. “I’ll post the announcement by tomorrow. I’ll arrange the paperwork and have the plot prepared.” She hesitated, voice lowering. “There’s no rush for you to leave town, if you want to say goodbye in your own time.”
I almost laughed at that. “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
She smiled in a way that suggested she disagreed.
The last page was signed, and the pen made a hollow sound when I set it on the glass. Sandra pressed her hands together like she was praying for us, then ushered us out.
Caiden fished his keys from his jeans and walked me to the car, as if I might lose my way on the twelve steps between the world of the grieving and the rest of the living.
Inside the car, I felt the weight in my lap: the note, sealed in a cheap envelope, with my name written in Judy’s blocky, anxious hand. My thumb traced the edge of it, pressed until the paper went soft. Caiden was staring at the windshield, jaw clenched like he was chewing glass.
“You want to talk about it?” he asked, after a minute. His words startled me; I didn’t realize we’d been sitting there in total silence, the funeral home a shadow in the rearview.
“What’s there to say?” My voice flickered, then died. I waited to feel the tears. Instead, nothing came. Just a deep, weird hum in my skull, like a radio tuned to dead air.
He reached over, gently, and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. It was a motion so uncharacteristically soft I almost laughed at how badly it fit him. I flinched before I could stop myself; he retreated.
My muscles screamed to run when he touched me, and I wished that they didn’t. I wanted so badly to lean into his touch, to let him save me from this grief, but the younger Amelia who still swam inside of me despised his company, his touch.
“You didn’t have to come,” I said.
He didn’t answer right away. He drummed a finger against the steering wheel, a near-sound, and the rhythm made me want to scream.
“I wanted to,” he said. “I mean, you shouldn’t—nobody should—” He cut himself off and exhaled, long and dark. “You did good in there.”
I barked a laugh. “I picked a casket out of a brochure and signed some papers. The real challenge will be watching them lower her coffin into the fucking ground.” Bitterness laced my voice as I spoke with grim intent.
“Right.” Caiden switched off his gentle nature and sped out of the parking lot, and I wondered if he felt regret for showing softness towards me because of how I pulled back so quickly.
I wouldn’t blame him if he did.
By the time we hit the turnoff for the motel, I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until Caiden slammed the car into park and yanked the keys from the ignition.
We sat there, side by side in the darkened car. The cold had crept up my spine, made my jaw clench with the ache of it, but I didn’t move to get out. Neither did he.
Instead, we just watched the fog roll in, the way it piled up on the grass and muffled every edge until the world shrank to this single parking space.
I wondered if my mother’s body was already cold, or if her soul was still drifting, like steam off cheap coffee, waiting for the world to stop spinning.
My throat felt tight. I wished I could cry, just to let some of it out, but nothing came. I’d trained myself out of tears years ago, long before I left the Bury for good.
Back then, Mom would start with the silent treatment and escalate to hours locked in the bathroom, curled up on the floor with a bottle of off-brand gin and a box of cigarettes. She used to say that if she had any sense, she would have run long before she had me.
A part of me wanted to tear the envelope in two, to deny my mother her final confession, but I couldn’t. I’d spent my whole life chasing scraps of her love, decoding every silence and apology. And now?
I was starving.