Seven Grace
Seeing your own grave is a weird experience.
I imagine most of the town gathered around a hole, much like they are now.
My chest gets tight when I imagine Geny alone, no hand to hold, and my parents having to bury their daughter.
The grief and the guilt are heavy in my stomach.
No parent should have to bury their kid. They didn’t. But they didn’t know that.
I can feel Wyatt’s presence even though I can’t see him in my peripheral. I can smell his cologne. The same one since high school. He’s always been a creature of habit. Is that why he ended up with my twin sister?
I can see their kids. My nephews. Geny’s discomfort is palpable, though I can tell she’s trying very hard to act normal in this most abnormal circumstance. What a messy situation we’ve gotten ourselves into.
Pastor Don stands at the podium next to Dad’s closed casket.
His eyes travel to me often but look away quickly.
He gives another speech, different from the one at the church.
This one is more scripture than personal.
When he finishes, Geny steps forward, pulling me with her.
We walk to the casket. She takes a rose from a large vase and tosses it onto the lid as it begins to lower. I follow her lead and do the same.
My vision blurs, and I wish I could see his face one last time. Not like I did earlier, but alive. With blood beneath his skin instead of formaldehyde. I wish I could hear his voice. Hear him shout, Go, Grace, go! Like he did at every single one of my races.
Goodbye, Daddy. I promise I’ll get to the truth.
A line forms and everyone tosses a rose into the hole. Some people are tearful. Geny is trembling. I know I should comfort her. I want to. But my own emotions are starting to get the best of me and that isn’t good for anyone.
All my feelings end in rage.
I focus on my breath. Force myself to stop gritting my teeth. To stop gripping Geny’s hand so tight. Relax. Breathe.
Slowly, people begin to come up to my sister and me.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Tina Gibbs says. She’s Wyatt’s mother and now Geny’s mother-in-law.
She and I used to be close. She was a second mother to me. She’d always take my side in arguments Wyatt and I had, and she’d take me shopping from time to time. She said I was the daughter she always wanted.
Now she can barely meet my eyes.
“I can’t believe you’re here, Grace,” she says in a whisper. “God’s miracle.”
“Something like that,” I say.
She looks like she wants to say more, but she just squeezes my arm and backs away. I wish I would have waited a few days to come back. But I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I knowingly missed Dad’s funeral.
I missed my mom’s. The guilt that sits with me is a constant companion.
It was back when I went longer between checking in on things.
A year had passed since I last checked in, and my mother had been dead and in the ground for four months by then.
I cried for weeks and visited her grave in secret.
I wasn’t going to let the same thing happen with my dad.
Not with the article I’d read online the week prior.
It was the push I needed to finally come back and do what needs to be done.
Raven High School principal put on administrative leave pending investigation into child abuse material found on his computer.
One by one, people tell us how sorry they are that our dad is dead. Each one stares at me in varying degrees of obviousness. I see two people chatting toward the back of the group, their heads close together but their gaze on me. I’d recognize them anywhere. Tara and Murphy.
They were part of our close friend group. Me, Geny, Wyatt, Tara, and Murphy. We were an odd bunch with golden boy, Wyatt, and town burnout, Murphy. Perfect Christian, Geny, and voted most likely to sleep with your boyfriend, Tara. And then there was me. An athlete. A prankster. Whatever else I was.
Tara bear-hugs me the moment she’s in range. I jump at the sudden touch, but after a second I manage to wrap my arms around her frail shoulders in return.
“Your hair is long,” I say.
She touches it with a smile. “Yeah. I left the pixie cuts in my teens.”
Her dark, wavy hair comes past her shoulders. It’s strange to see her so different. Though I guess she couldn’t stay an angsty teenage rebel forever.
Murphy looks different too. No longer the lanky twenty-one-year-old who bought us beer and whose eyes were permanently half closed on one drug or another.
“If anyone was going to rise from the dead it’d be you, Grace Chandler,” he says with a grin. He doesn’t try to hug me, and I relax a little.
“You don’t look surprised,” I say.
“I was surprised at the wake.”
I nod. “Only ten minutes of processing needed to come to terms with your dead childhood friend actually being alive?”
“Like seven and a half.”
I smile despite myself.
He tilts his head toward the gravesite. “Sorry about your dad. Tough timing. I’m sure he wished he’d been able to hang on just a little longer to see your face again.”
I swallow. “Yeah. I wish I would have come back sooner.”
“Why didn’t you?” Tara asks.
My mouth opens, then closes without having said anything.
Geny clears her throat. “Maybe a conversation for another time, guys.”
Tara takes half a step back. “Of course. Sorry. It’s good to see you, Grace.”
“You too, Tara. And you, Murphy.”
Tara hugs me again, but this time I’m prepared for it. I hug her back, and they step aside. As they do, I lock eyes with Wyatt. He’s holding their youngest son with his right arm, and their oldest stands beside him. He looks away quickly, turning his focus to Geny.
He goes to her, wraps her into his arms where she all but disappears.
My heart pounds in my ears, being this close to him.
Getting another whiff of his cologne sends unwanted memories flashing through my mind.
Being teenagers, in love and infatuated.
Everything more intense. Everything great or horrible, scalding or frigid, ecstasy or torture. There were no in-betweens back then.
I look down at my shoes, so I don’t have to see it anymore, taking in my black heeled Converse ankle boots. Nothing I would have worn when I was younger. I preferred sneakers or being barefoot. I guess Geny isn’t the only one who didn’t end up as expected.
I gather my nerve to look up again and stare straight into the face of Wyatt and Geny’s oldest son. I don’t even know his name. But he’s got my eyes — Geny’s eyes. And Wyatt’s mouth and brow line.
He looks gorgeous and sad and confused, and I have the overwhelming urge to hug him even though I spent the last twenty minutes trying to avoid hugs.
I don’t hug him, of course. That would be weird. I’m his zombie aunt that he’s never met before. His father’s ex-girlfriend. Though he probably doesn’t know that.