After we had shaken the last hand and accepted the last hug, only family remained in the viewing room. Peter stepped out to confirm arrangements for the cremation and funeral on Aunt A’s behalf, and his daughters slouched in back, their fingers skittering across their phones. Aunt A bid a quiet goodbye to my sister and her family, and Ellen and I sank into straight-backed chairs, completely exhausted. I stared numbly ahead, marveling that the visitation had left me so emotionally depleted I no longer found the sight of the coffin unnerving.
“How are you doing?” Ellen asked, rubbing my knee. She paused and frowned. “I think you missed a spot shaving.”
I swatted her hand away. “Thanks, Ellen. I’m okay, I think.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lanie and her family exit the room. My heart twisted a bit to notice she hadn’t even glanced in my direction before leaving, but how upset could I really be? I wouldn’t have returned a smile even if it was offered.
“At least that’s over,” Aunt A said, collapsing into a chair beside Ellen. “It feels obscene to finally be in the same room as your mother again, and for it to be like this.”
Fresh tears stabbed my eyes, evidence that I wasn’t as spent as I thought. I wiped them away, turning my head as I did so, and glimpsed a figure hovering in the doorway. I gasped involuntarily.
“Of all the nerve,” Aunt A hissed.
Melanie Cave wore a maroon dress, dark enough to almost resemble black but far too red for propriety’s sake. She had faded considerably in the last ten years. Once trim with youthful, unlined skin, she had grown paunchy in her midsection and her face sagged. She was still poised, still elegant, but she was no longer the siren she had once been.
The three of us sat frozen like proverbial deer in headlights as Melanie made her way across the empty room, the twenty feet from the door to our chairs seeming to take an eternity. She came to a stop directly in front of Aunt A and leaned down to reach for her hands, her neckline gaping to flash an expanse of sun-spotted cleavage.
“Amelia,” she said, her voice raspier than it sounded on the podcast. “I’m—”
“Get out,” Aunt A growled, her eyes flashing steel.
Melanie’s painted lips parted, ready to say more, but then her gaze landed on me. Drawing herself erect, she said coolly, “It’s been a long time.”
I was conflicted. In some ways, Aunt A was right: Melanie Cave was the one responsible for our misery. She was the one who had been having an affair with our father, the one who had done such an abysmal job of raising her child that he resorted to murder, the one who had contacted Poppy Parnell and turned our tragedy into a pop culture commodity. I wanted to spit in her face, insist that it hasn’t been long enough. But part of me knew that Melanie Cave was a victim in this, too, either an unhappy woman whose son did the unthinkable, or if Poppy Parnell was right, a woman whose son was unjustly jailed for life. It wasn’t necessarily her fault that she wanted to free him. She was his mother, after all.
But my mother was lying in a coffin in the front of the room, and someone had to be responsible.
“You shouldn’t be here, Mrs. Cave,” Ellen said.
Ignoring Ellen, Melanie held my eyes unflinchingly. “It’s time to tell the truth.”
I blinked, startled.
“Mrs. Cave,” Ellen repeated firmly. “Don’t make me have you removed.”
“Shut your mouth,” Melanie spit with sudden savageness, whirling on Ellen. “My son is wasting away in prison while this bitch”—she emphasized her words by throwing a pointed finger at me—“runs around without a care in the world.”
I began to protest, to tell Melanie that she had it all wrong, but she wasn’t done.
“All I’m asking,” she continued, her volume rising, “is that she tell the truth! She needs to stop lying and admit that she didn’t see my son that night. She didn’t see anything.” Melanie snapped her attention back to me, her finger once more wavering in my face. “You didn’t see anything.”
“All right,” Ellen said, rising. “That’s enough. Keep your witchy fingers with their half-rate manicures to yourself.”
“He’s spent twelve years in prison,” she continued. “The best years of his life! And still you circle the wagons and refuse to talk.” Melanie leaned down to me, her face close enough that I could see a vein throbbing in her temple, could smell the cloying floral of her skin cream. “Your father was at least an honorable man, which is more than I can say for the rest of you.”
I was too shocked at the mention of my father to say anything.
“I was a better match for him than your crazy mother, and he knew it. Is that why you lied about seeing Warren? To take away my son and punish me? You cold, vindictive bitch.”
Finally, I found my voice and hissed, “I’m not Lanie, you dried-up old hag.”
Melanie narrowed her mascara-laden eyes at me distrustfully. “Then you tell ‘your sister’ that I want to talk to her.”
“Stop,” Aunt A interrupted loudly. “I won’t let you harass my nieces. You’ve done too much harm already.”
“I’ve done too much harm?” Melanie scoffed. She backed out of the room, pointing a finger at me. “I’m watching you, Lanie. You know what you need to do. Tell the truth.”
“ ‘I’m watching you’?” Ellen repeated mockingly as the door shut behind Melanie. “Was that supposed to be a threat? Does she think we’re afraid of her?”
I laughed along with Ellen, but a chill ran down my spine.
Aunt A’s friends were waiting for us on the front porch, bearing trays of cheese and crackers and bottles of wine. Aunt A, whose upper lip had been admirably stiff all day, dissolved into tears when she saw this, and her friends swarmed around her, making sympathetic noises and enfolding her in their arms. I waited until Aunt A came up for air, and then told her I was headed upstairs to rest. I shut the door to my old bedroom and pulled the curtains, blocking out the fading daylight. In the darkness, I stretched out on the bed and checked my phone. Over the course of the day, I had accumulated four missed calls from Caleb and six unread text messages.
Caleb’s voice was warm and sticky when he answered the phone, and I dearly wished I were home with him, spooned underneath his arms, listening to his musty breathing.
“Oh, babe, I’m sorry. Were you asleep?”
“I shouldn’t have been. Just this bloody jet lag. You’d think I’d learn to conquer it one of these days. But I’ll be all right. How about you, love? How are you doing?”