“I sicced his parole officer on him when I went to warn Norma, so he’s on a short leash.”
Heath relaxed a little at that, and he and Ripley waved us off.
Liam drove us to the church in Providence. The same one where I’d said goodbye to my sister only a few months ago, her body buried in the graveyard at the back.
I squeezed my eyes shut and clutched my purse. I needed to visit her grave, but it was hard. It only reminded me that the person who’d murdered her had gotten away with it.
She would have hated that. I could practically hear her voice growing louder as we walked toward the church, screaming at me to do more. To fight. To find the truth.
Heads turned as we walked in, none of them familiar. I realized I didn’t know the people in my father’s life. Angela had been the right person to organize this service. I wouldn’t have known where to start. It was clearer than ever that she and her children really had been his second family. She wasn’t just some woman he’d screwed when it was late at night and he was feeling lonely. She knew his friends. His work colleagues.
I knew nobody.
Liam gripped my hand tightly, and Rowe put his to the small of my back. They guided me into a seat at the back of the room, and I sank onto the hard wooden pew gratefully. At the front of the room, the wood of my father’s casket gleamed in the morning sunlight flooding through the church windows. They’d placed it perfectly, so it looked as if it sat in a beam of light sent straight from Heaven itself.
I fought the urge to rush up there and shove it into the darkness where it belonged.
The priest stood to the right, his hands folded in front of him. He wasn’t the same priest I remembered from Jayela’s funeral, or the one I’d seen outside the church the day I’d confronted Will there. This one couldn’t have been much older than me. His gaze met mine, and he nodded slightly, like he knew who I was.
Liam leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and squinting a little. “Does that priest have a tattoo on the back of his hand?”
Like he’d heard us, the priest tugged at the sleeve of his robe.
I dropped my voice to a whisper, something Liam seemed incapable of doing. “He might, judging by the way he just pulled his sleeve down. Also, are you ever not loud? Pretty sure he heard you.”
Liam shrugged. “I’m just curious. Not often you see a priest with a tattoo.”
Rowe sniggered quietly. “You’re such a gossip. It’s the lawyer in you. You gotta know everybody’s business.”
Liam straightened against the backrest, at least attempting to whisper. “I’d deny that, but it’s true, so whatcha gonna do?” He shrugged with a grin.
I picked up his hand, remembering that this was about the same spot he’d sat in the day of Jayela’s funeral. “I’m kinda glad you got in my business last time we were here.”
“You and me both.” He leaned in and brushed his lips over mine. When I didn’t stop him, he took both sides of my face in his hands and kissed me properly.
I kissed him back. In fact, I encouraged it. I opened my lips and pressed my tongue into his mouth. It was partially a fuck you to my father and partially a thank you to whatever higher being had brought me this man who I loved with everything I had.
There was a throat clearing from behind us, and Liam and I broke apart. I turned, expecting to be told off by some asshole friend of my father’s.
But instead, there was a smiling face I recognized. “Will! What are you doing here?”
Isaac gurgled happily on his lap, aiming a gummy smile at me.
I reached out and touched his soft cheek, smiling at my godson and wishing I had Ripley here so they could meet.
“I hope it’s okay. I’m here all the time, and I saw your father’s name listed on the funeral services for the week. I know you’d prefer Tori, but since she’s not well, I thought I’d come and be her stand-in.”
Tears welled. I knew he was probably still mad at me and at Liam for what we’d put him through during Heath’s trial. Maybe he hadn’t fully forgiven us, but he was here to support me anyway.
That spoke a lot to the sort of friend he was. He and I weren’t really huggers, but I squeezed his arm, and when I said thank you, I meant it with every part of my heart.
My family wasn’t the people I was born to. It was the people I’d chosen to do life with. Will and Tori were part of that. I missed my best friend so desperately. “Have you spoken to her?”
Will shook his head. “I’ve tried. They keep making me fill in paperwork, and then nothing comes of it. When I’ve chased it up, I’ve been told she either doesn’t want to talk or her doctors don’t feel she’s strong enough for contact with the outside world yet.”
“What the hell kind of program are they running there?”
He screwed his face up and glanced down at the baby. “Aunty Mae didn’t just say that in the middle of a church, did she?”
Rowe chuckled. “Aunty Mae probably needs to start a swear jar if she doesn’t want to end up there herself.”
I elbowed him roughly. “That’s rich coming from you. You drop F-bombs like they’re going out of fashion.”
The church doors closed behind us before we could talk anymore, and the priest got up behind the pulpit to begin the service, but I didn’t really hear what he was talking about. Will disappeared halfway through the service when Isaac started crying, but it was Tori on my mind.
Angela got up and gave a eulogy. It was neither glowing nor hateful. It portrayed a man who’d loved and lost and been damaged by that. She spoke of me and my sister, as well as her own children. She reminisced over years together and the life they’d shared. She didn’t make it sound like they’d been the Brady Bunch, but she didn’t paint him to be the evil ogre like I would have.
The casket was carried out by pallbearers I didn’t know, and we sat quietly, waiting for the rows at the front to leave behind it.