CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
Ike continued to stare at me, an inferno blazing in his eyes. "How? Why the hell do you know before us? Why didn't you say anything?"
I shook my head, preparing myself only momentarily before telling the biggest lie I'd ever told to the people who mattered to me most. "The hospital called me late last night.
You guys were asleep, and I didn't have time to wake you up.
Then everything happened so fast, and there was nothing you could've done if you had been there anyway. But … I'm sorry. I should've—"
"What happened?" Shawn asked, cutting me off.
"Heart attack," I answered easily. Too easily. "They thought they had him stabilized when he was brought in, but …"
Ike's resolve to argue with me, to fight, started to crumble as he deflated with a sigh and hung his head, the anger leaving, only to be replaced by a soul-crushing sadness.
"Shit," he whispered, brushing the heel of his hand beneath his eye. “This is real? You’re not fucking with us?”
I shook my head solemnly. “I’m not fucking with you.”
“Shit,” he repeated, his voice trembling and taking on a higher octave. "Shit, shit, shit … I'm … fuck, I'm gonna miss him, man."
"So much," Shawn replied as he reached out to grip Ike's shoulder.
Together, they fell apart. Shawn slid from the chair first and then Ike, both of their knees on the floor of Leonard’s office. They cried unabashedly as grown men, holding each other, cradling each other’s head. Sobbing and blubbering, pouring their souls out until there was nothing left to spill.
And I wished I could join them.
I wished I could crumple. Wished I could fall apart, lose my shit, fucking break to honor the man who’d taken pity on a few homeless, wayward boys and turned them into men.
But I couldn’t.
Couldn’t give myself the permission, knowing Leonard wouldn’t have been proud of the thing—the monster—I’d become far, far too easily in the wake of his passing.
Besides, one of us had to hold their shit together … and it might as well be me.
It was always me.
Shawn was the first to compose himself with a slap on Ike’s back and a clearing of his throat. He wiped his eyes as they both took their seats once again, and then he asked, “Okay, so what now?”
I met his eye with a hint of incredulity. “You’re not serious, right?”
Even through his despair, Ike managed to laugh. “Shit, Shawn. Where’ve you been for the last how many fuckin’ years?”
"Oh, shut up. You know what I meant," Shawn grumbled, shaking his head. "I mean, we have to get his body, right? Then … fuck, did he want to be cremated or—"
"I have his body," I said, dropping my gaze away from Shawn's. "I'll handle his cremation."
"You have him already?"
I nodded. "The hospital released his corpse to me. They figured we'd be handling everything here anyway. Might as well send him home instead of letting him take up space in their morgue."
The lies kept rolling off my tongue with ease. It was better this way than to tell the truth. But how far would they take me? How long until I got caught?
Shawn nodded as if it all made perfect sense. "Right. And you're sure he wanted to be cremated?"
"Yeah," I replied, grateful to finally speak a bit of truth. "His family has a columbarium garden. His son, wife … I think his parents and grandparents might be there, too, but I'm not entirely sure about that."
They nodded in unison as Ike said, "Cool. All right. And you’re sure you're okay doing it? ‘Cause, I mean, I don't really wanna do it, but if you don't, I could—"
"Nah, it's all right," I said. "I got it handled. Did you guys want to … you know, say goodbye or—"
"No," they both said, just as I had known they would.
Ike didn't mind handling a corpse as long as he didn't know the person in life, and Shawn had never developed a taste for that side of the business. He had done what he had to in order to get his funeral director’s license, and that was about it unless I needed him to handle preparation or a removal.
"What about services?" Shawn asked. "Wake? Mass?"
"We'll do it all," I answered without hesitation.
Because if I couldn't save him, the least I could do was give him the send-off he deserved.
I would give him the best one there was.
***
After Shawn and Ike left Leonard’s office and returned to their respective rooms to get dressed for the day ahead, I went out to the hearse to collect Leonard’s sheet-wrapped body and transport it down to the basement with the help of a stretcher and the house’s elevator.
A hollow ache swelled from my heart to the depths of my gut as I stared at the part of the sheet that I knew concealed his head.
I could picture the bullet wound piercing his forehead.
I was grateful for that wound now, knowing it’d been a serendipitous bit of mercy at the end of his life instead of him suffering the same agonizing death as the waiter I had killed.
But I was scared to look at it now, terrified to be alone with the body of the man I’d loved as if he’d been my own father, as if seeing it would make it all the more real.
“God, I don’t want to do this,” I said, talking to him the way I’d spoken to countless bodies before.
I pulled my stool over and sat beside the stretcher, still wearing clothes that weren’t mine. They felt wrong—too small and tight—and I thought, But does anything feel right? Will anything ever feel right again?
My elbow plonked against the stretcher beside his body, and I held my head in my hand, grinding the heel of my palm against my eye socket, shaking my head, and deflating more with every burst of breath from my quivering lips.
“Dammit,” I whispered. “What the fuck were you doing there? God, you shouldn’t have even known him.”
He shouldn’t have, but he had.
I shouldn’t be talking to him like this—dead on my table, never to return again—but I was.
I didn’t know how, but I knew, somehow, it led back to me and Isaac. And I knew I’d feel guilty for that association for the rest of my life.
“I’m sorry,” I said, exhaling past the harrowing despair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, man.”
Yet, no matter how many times I said it, I knew it wasn’t enough to erase the things that had been done. Because he had trusted me, and I had gotten him killed, and what could possibly be said to make that better?
I swallowed against my grief and fear, and without a second thought, I pulled the sheet back to look at his face, grateful to find that his eyes had been closed.
The blood from the bullet wound had been smeared and wiped away, as if someone had tried to clean him up a bit before wrapping his body.
It was an act somewhat close to respect, and I guessed, all things considered, I appreciated it for what it was.
I tore my gaze from his face to look over the rest of his body.
I wouldn’t bother dressing him in anything else, and I wouldn’t bother preparing his corpse in any way—there was no point when there would be no open casket viewing.
But I looked over him anyway, making sure there wasn’t anything on his person that I didn’t want to be put into the retort to be cremated.
That was when I noticed his clenched fist, laid over his heart.
Had his fist been clenched when I entered the library to find him dead? I couldn’t remember. I’d been too focused on the man who’d fired the gun to truly assess the state of Leonard’s body.
But I noticed it now, and my curiosity ran away with me as I gently took his hand in mine.
It took a bit of effort to pry his stiffened fingers open enough to find what was hidden within, but when the light glinted off a hint of silver, my heart jolted with recognition, and the need to work quicker swept over me as the rosary beads I’d come to know well were revealed.
He had known death was coming for him, and he had held on to his rosary—his faith—in those final moments.
“Oh, Leonard,” I whispered, staring at the rosewood beads and silver crucifix.
He should’ve been holding on to me instead.
I looked at them for a moment longer before closing my hand around them, the pointed ends of the cross digging into my palm.
A rage unlike anything I’d ever felt blazed a trail through me as I thought about him grasping for a god who had never given a single shit about him.
A god who had taken his son, taken his wife, given him three fucked-up kids who did nothing but give him more grief.
A god who never gave him a break, never gave him a moment of mercy in his seventy-eight years, while he remained a faithful servant, never faltering, not even in the seconds before his brutal, tragic death.
A god who had failed him … just like I had.
“You deserved better than all of this,” I said, my voice gruff with crushing sadness as I tucked his cherished beads into the pocket of the too-small sweatpants. “You deserved so much better than me.”