Chapter 10 #4
Eventually, Steel stood. Without saying a word, he bent and picked up Jenna from her wheelchair. She did not reach for him or lean on him as he carried her to their daughter. Placing her on her feet, Steel kept a tight hold around her middle to support her so she could stand.
Jenna’s entire body trembled, but that could have been her flare-up or her grief. Likely a lot of both. Her grip on the edge of the casket was tight, like she wanted to hold on with all her strength and never let go. Tears continued to flow down her cheeks, a steady stream with no end in sight.
“I can’t do it.” Her voice was wet and shaky. “How am I supposed to say goodbye?”
Steel leaned forward, his forehead barely resting against the back of her head. “I don’t know.” His voice was cold, distant.
“I hate you a little bit right now.”
He nodded. “I hate me, too.”
“You left me alone.” Jenna reached forward and cupped the side of Melanie’s face. “You’re going to leave me again, aren’t you?”
Steel straightened. He adjusted his right arm around her waist to reach forward into the casket to cover Jenna’s hand over their daughter’s cold cheek. “Yes.”
“How long?”
“As long as it takes.”
Jenna never looked back at him. She didn’t tell him to be careful or that murder was wrong. She didn’t tell him to let the police handle it or beg him to stay with her. She just nodded her head once. “Make him suffer.”
The church was old with peeling paint, fading carpeting, and chipped wooden pews, but the structure was sound.
Recent fundraising had gotten them an updated PA system and a web camera so people who were unable to attend services could still worship.
Several of the bibles and hymnals in the pew shelves were donated by the Duncan family.
Melanie’s picture and closed coffin were positioned on the dais with a funeral wreath and a casket spray.
Some who attended the viewing were not present and some who couldn’t make the viewing were now in attendance.
The first several pews were reserved for family, first with the eight Duncans, then Via Daemonia, and then Non Cras.
The seating area was divided into three sections with two aisles.
Several of the ol’ ladies sat in the back so they could leave inconspicuously if their babies started to fuss.
The other club kids sat with their families.
Spot and Aerial were also in attendance.
Lucky had to quiet Scotty when he wouldn’t stop asking when Melanie was going to wake up.
Cassie had been unable to get herself out of her home to see the viewing, but she was fighting tooth and nail to be here for her cousin now.
After the sermon, hymns, and prayers, Jordan stepped up to the podium. His was the second eulogy, the first given by Melanie’s Aunt Lilly.
“Well,” he started out, “this just sucks. I hate the fact that I’m here, that all of us are here.
I stayed up all night just trying to figure out what to say.
How am I supposed to stand here and tell you how great my sister was when all of you already know it?
You’re here because you knew her, and you loved her.
” He held up a stack of notecards. “I jotted down all this information about Melanie, but to be honest, that just makes all of this even worse. I don’t want my sister’s life to be summed up to the bullet points of a eulogy.
” He tucked the cards in the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
“So I’m just going to talk, and we’ll see how this goes. ”
Jordan took a deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling heavily.
“For as long as I can remember, my parents have claimed that I acted so much like a middle child that they had to make me one. I have always been the problem child in the family. Mom blames every one of her gray hairs on me. I was the only one of the three of us—now four,” he indicated to Ollie, “to get grounded as kids. I wasn’t exactly the most well behaved of children either.
I stole, I cheated, and I didn’t care too much about school.
After all, why did I need to learn history when I was going to become a famous rock star?
” He paused after the rhetorical question as the audience chuckled lightly.
“I get it now, what my parents said. It wasn’t the fact that Melanie’s birth changed who I was or defined me as a middle child.
It was that having her in my life made me who I am today, made me a better man.
“As far as little sisters go, I guess Carter and I could have gotten worse. Melanie was always in her own little world of books. We were awful to her at times, picking on her as big brothers do. I remember the first time Dad saw us. I think Melanie was five or six, and Dad came back for a quick R-and-R weekend. Mom would scold our behavior when she saw it, but it was nothing compared to Dad’s reaction.
Carter and I thought he was going to whoop our asses.
Instead, he sat Carter and me down and explained that we were ‘men’ and we were never to treat a woman like that, sister or no.
Said that we were her last line of protection and it was our job to ensure that she had our love and support, always.
That she knew she could come to us for anything, and we would never turn her away.
That if something happened to him, or even Mom, that we would be there for her, no matter what.
“I didn’t really realize what Dad meant until we were older.
Carter went through school on his own, but Melanie and I overlapped in the same building at times.
Not only is middle school hard, but it’s even harder when you’re the new girl and your dad is trying to build a motorcycle club in a town divided about whether that means the criminals are moving into the old distillery.
This group of ‘tough guys’ decided that somehow them beating on Melanie would show our dad that they weren’t intimidated by him.
Word spread fast, and I ran across campus to rescue my little sister.
All I could think was ‘Dad’s going to kill me if I don’t get to her in time’.
Well, it turns out, Melanie didn’t need me.
“As a black belt, she could have done some damage to those boys even though they were all bigger and taller than she was. But instead, my little sister used her brains, not her fists. She must have known the fight was coming, because at some point that day, she sent an email to all the teachers reminding them of the principal’s surprise birthday party in one of the classrooms that faces the parking lot.
Every single teacher saw the entire thing, including the principal, and that fight was won without Melanie ever needing to throw a punch.
“But that was my little sister for you. Like my dad, she was always steps ahead of you.” He paused to take a breath.
“I know we’re in a church and we’re supposed to practice forgiveness, but damn, I’m struggling right now.
How am I supposed to forgive a man who took my baby sister from her family?
Who lowered the window of his car and shot a gun at her without even giving her a chance to fight back?
How am I supposed to face the world knowing that I wasn’t there to protect her as I promised I always would be?
I might have been a typical middle child, but the one thing I have never been is a liar.
Yet that is what this man who murdered my little sister has turned me into: a liar.
I broke my promise. I wasn’t there, and I’m going to have to find a way to live with that for the rest of my life. ”
Jordan wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Melanie was the best of us. She might have been the wallflower in the back of the room with her nose in a book, but she always shone the brightest. And now that light has been snuffed out from the world. I fucking hate that. Sorry, God,” he added to the ceiling.
Jordan let out a shaky breath. “My little sister is gone, and I think my biggest regret is that I let her sit in that corner with her books instead of showing her this world. So this is my vow, to Melanie, to my parents, to God: every day I will do something to honor my sister. To try—even in vain—to bring a little bit of her light back into this dark, crazy existence we call life. To make sure that her memory is never lost and that Melanie’s legacy, her dream to advocate for foster kids like our new little brother, Ollie, lives on.
“I hope all of you will too. Thank you.”
Steel didn’t feel the rain. He didn’t feel much of anything, not these days at least. Numb. Shock. Whatever the fuck it was psychologists wanted to call it. He didn’t give a shit because none of it mattered. Nothing mattered.
“I love you, Jack Duncan, and I’m going to marry you in one year, one month, and twenty-eight days.”
For most of his life, Steel had kept some sort of count.
As a child, it was how many days since he’d last eaten or how many days since he’d last seen his mother.
As he got older, as a teenager, it was how many days until he was eighteen and could get him and his sister, Lilly, out of that fucking trailer.
And then he’d met Jenna. With her fiery hair and that fucking yellow dress… He’d never felt the effects of gravity as much as he had in that moment. He’d fallen. Hard. She’d shattered his world, using herself as the glue that held him together as she rebuilt him into the man he was today.
A new countdown had begun. How many days until she was eighteen and Steel could legally claim her. It had taken years, but finally they stood before that proverbial altar and said their vows. They’d become Mr. and Mrs. Jack Duncan.
He never, never imagined standing in this fucking cemetery forty years later.