“I’m so sorry.”
I nodded. Not another fucking apology.
“We can call the funeral home for you. Do you know—”
“Carrington’s please.”
Dr. Kimpson nodded. “Would you like to see him? You can stay with him until the funeral home arrives.”
“Him?” I asked before I could stop the word from coming out. “He’s…” I shook my head as I collapsed into the chair behind me. “He’s not a him anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Thorson,” Dr. Kimpson said kindly.
“I don’t want to see … him.”
“Okay. We have your contact information on hand from Shady Oaks, and we’ll make sure Carrington’s Funeral Home is given that information as well.”
“Thank you.”
And then it was over. Just like that. A life ended. A life I’d always wanted to love. A life I’d always wanted to love me. Over. There was something oddly relieving about it—as though I could give up whatever remnant I still clung to of the juvenile fantasy that one day the man would realize he gave a shit about me. I guess I didn’t have to wonder if that was possible anymore. It wasn’t.
I didn’t bother waiting for Carrington’s to call. I ran straight home, grabbed my file that contained all my father’s legal documents including his life insurance policy, and then I drove to Carrington’s. I completed what paperwork they needed, scheduled a burial for Wednesday morning that would likely be attended by no one, and chose a casket that was neither the cheapest nor the most expensive. It was gray, it shined, there was nothing more to say than that.
When I left, I stopped by the grocery store and bought a frozen pizza and a bottle of wine—something red. Surely my father’s death was cause to drink something. By the time I got home, it was early evening. I shoved the pizza into the freezer, deciding it wasn’t worth the effort. And when I picked up the bottle of wine, I stared at the label for a moment.
And then I threw the bottle straight down into the new pristine white farmhouse sink, shattering it as the shards of glass mixed with the dark magenta liquid. I dropped my elbows to the sink’s rim, propping my head up with my palms to my forehead, and I stared down at the mess, watching the wine run and trickle around the glass to the white porcelain and then down into the drain.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
And then I went to bed.
The undertakers went to a lot of work for me to stand there by myself and watch them lower the coffin into the ground. It was a little ridiculous really, but they’d covered the mound of unearthed dirt with fake green grass, hiding it respectfully as though the dirt that would eventually cover the casket was offensive in some way. The sides of the hole were straight, impressively so, and they lowered the coffin into a larger box… I hadn’t realized they would do that. I’d simply assumed the shiny silver coffin would be put into the dirt and covered over. It seemed strange.
When one of the undertakers glanced up and his focus paused on something just beyond and to the side of me, I turned to see, and I sucked in a quick shocked breath. Helene stood there, ten feet away from me. She was wearing a gray dress with a wide black belt and black flats. Her wool coat was black too. I stared at her, and she pulled her attention from the casket to my eyes for a brief moment. Her chest rose as she inhaled deeply, and then she looked back at the undertakers as they continued to slowly lower the casket. I looked forward again too.
And I finally felt something again. Pain.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Helene
Kane had always looked powerful to me, felt powerful to me. But it wasn’t just his strength. It was the self-assured way he’d always been able to move back and forth so easily between his popular bad boy persona and the boy I’d known him to be who could never put stock in anything so trivial as popularity. It was the way he’d never cared who was looking when he was sitting across from me at lunch, even when his group of friends had saved him a seat at their always full table and I was sitting alone. It was the casual way he carried himself as though life could never touch him unless he gave it permission to. He was so powerful in my eyes that even the tears I’d seen him shed didn’t touch the masculinity that coursed through him to me—and frankly it was all about me when it came to those tears, because I was likely the only one who’d ever seen them.
But he wasn’t powerful right now. His shoulders were slumped, and his eyes stared at the hole in the ground, watching the coffin disappear more and more and more with every turn of the hand-crank. And when the undertakers were finished lowering the coffin, they stood there patiently, waiting for some direction.
“Is there anything we can do for you?” One of the young men asked Kane.
Kane didn’t respond; he was still staring at the hole in front of us.