CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
“If a thing loves, it is infinite.”
~William Blake
Dante’s father Leo sat on the row with us, but not close. Father and son did not speak. Husband and wife, one mere feet in front of the other, did not exchange greetings of any kind.
That was the normal way of things in the Durant family.
The sight of the father had me doing another surreptitious glance around the room, clocking at least four of his other sons, all by different women.
I wasn’t sure if somehow Leo had only sired boys or if he just never acknowledged the daughters. With what I knew of Leo, if I had to guess, it’d be the latter.
None of the siblings were sitting together, none of them so much as acknowledging each other.
Only one of them ventured into our row. It was Bastian, Leo’s second oldest son, his first child with mistress number one, born mere months after Dante.
Bastian sat on the far side of Leo, exchanging a brief but civil greeting with his father.
Dante was Leo’s only legitimate child, but he was far from his favorite. If I had to guess which one was, it’d be Bastian.
Dante stared straight ahead, not acknowledging his half-brother. Again, expected, but I sent Bastian a little nod of a greeting that he returned solemnly.
I’d never had a problem with Bastian. Despite getting along too well with his bastard of a father, he wasn’t a bad sort, which was not something you could say about all of Dante’s half-brothers.
I made another scan of the swiftly filling room. It would be standing room only soon it’d gotten so crowded, but still most seemed loath to take the front row seats, which were traditionally reserved for family.
My eyes stopped dead on a familiar face.
I nodded at my grandmother.
Her tightly drawn mouth drawing tighter at the sight of me, she nodded back.
I hadn’t seen her in almost ten years, but I was still shocked at how much she’d aged, how haggard her homely face appeared.
I knew Gram’s death couldn’t have been easy on her. I had never been sure if my grandmother loved me, but I was certain of her love for Gram, and losing her must have hit her hard.
After that I faced forward and looked neither left nor right. I’d seen enough familiar faces for the moment.
The service was brief but emotional. Even Leo’s speech had me struggling not to lose my composure. Leo was a shitty human being and a worse father, but he had loved his mother and didn’t even try to hide his grief at her passing.
For Dante’s speech, I had to put on the dark sunglasses I’d stowed away in my bag and look down at my hands while Dante spoke of his grandmother and all that she’d meant to him.
His words were sparse but worthy of her.
The shades hid my eyes, but they couldn’t hide the tears that ran under them and down my face.
When he finished and came back to sit beside me, I covered his hand with my own for a few brief moments, Adelaide and my grudges be damned.
We were at the front of the procession that flowed out of the funeral home, into cars, and along the short drive to her gravesite.
She’d been allotted a beautiful spot in the sprawling cemetery, right next to her long deceased, much beloved husband.
I stood stiffly beside Dante as Father Frederick recited Gram’s favorite poem and it made me cry all over again.
By that point I wanted nothing so much as to lock myself away somewhere, curl up into a ball, and cry until the tears ran out. That was the irony of funerals, of gathering to grieve when no one who was really grieving wanted anything to do with company. I was worn out, and we still had the reception to get through.
I almost (almost) considered escaping to my room for that ordeal, just running from it all, but I knew I couldn’t do it.
I was a lot of terrible things, but I was not a coward.
I would, however, be getting the hell out of dodge in all due haste.
“My flight home is tomorrow, right?” I asked Dante as we began to walk away from the gravesite.
“Hmm,” he responded, and I could tell just with that noise that I was about to be manipulated. “I’ll have to double check. Didn’t you get all of the info yourself in that email I sent you?”
“No,” I answered, knowing full well that he’d asked a question he already knew the answer to. “You only sent me half of the itinerary.”
“Oh, I see. An oversight. I’ll look into it and have it sent to you as soon as I can.”
I kept my narrowed eyes on him. The problem was, I knew him too well. I could tell when he was planning something, even if I couldn’t have said what precisely it was.
I decided not to push it here. It didn’t matter what he planned, besides. I’d be out of here come morning, that was a fact.
Unfortunately we ran directly into my grandmother on our way back to Dante’s car.
I wasn’t going to say anything to her, we’d never had much to say to each other, but she had other plans.
“Hello, Scarlett,” she sneered at me. Not a good sign.
I nodded at her, making cursory eye contact. “Hello, Glenda.”
I tried to walk right by her, but she moved into my path, her small frame squaring off in front of me. “Did you really have to wear red shoes to a funeral?” She made the dig quietly but with effect. My grandmother had never had to raise her voice. Her vicious tongue was just as damaging with or without being loud. “And could your dress be any tighter? You look like a Hollywood whore. Is that what you’ve been doing down in California? Whoring for old directors, trying to sleep your way to the top? Must not be working.”
I gave her an unpleasant smile. She hadn’t changed a bit. I hadn’t expected her to, but my old resentment for her flared anew.
Just my luck it was the nice one that had died.
Everyone has a little voice in their head, holding them back from showing enthusiasm, forcing them into pessimism.
Oftentimes that voice takes the shape of someone we know. Sometimes it’s a snarky friend, a cynical parent.
In my case, especially back when I was a kid, it was my grandma. Every happy urge I ever had she tried to talk me out of and a lot of the time she succeeded.
When she’d kicked me out at seventeen, I’d left and never looked back. In fact, it’d been a relief because after that I got to live with Gram.
Though I shared no blood with Gram, in a lot of ways, most ways, she’d always felt more like family to me than my own grandma, and unlike my complete adoration for Gram, my feelings for my own grandmother could only be described as complicated.
She resented me because I was a burden she’d been forced to shoulder but never felt she’d owned.
And I resented her because I was really, really good at it.
Also, she was mean. Deep down to her core mean. She was cold, stubborn as a mule, and vindictive to a terrible degree and with very little provocation. There was no give in her, and if you caught her in the wrong mood, she would absolutely cut off her nose to spite her face. She could self-destruct like nobody’s business if it meant taking someone else out with her.
Her entire wretched life was pretty much a testament to that.
Obviously, I’d taken after her with at least a few of those undesirable traits. The irony was not lost on me. But in my defense, I do believe that many of the toxins that resided inside of me had been set into motion quite early on and a good number of them had been planted by her.
But then again, sometimes it just feels better to have someone to blame, and my grandmother had always made herself into a very convenient target. It was one of the few nice things I could say about her.
I opened my mouth to give my obligatory scathing retort, but Dante beat me to it.
“Have a little respect,” Dante told her, voice low and mean. “What would my grandmother think about you talking like that at her funeral? For shame. And the red shoes are perfect. You of all people should remember how much Gram loved red.”
I lowered my head and started wringing my hands. The day had gone from bad to worse.
Dante defending me was perhaps the most cruel thing he could do. More than anything else, it made me remember why I’d been so devoted to him for most of my life. Reminded me of a time when I had absolute faith in him.
Made me almost forgot that all of that had only set me up for a more brutal fall.
“Oh, well,” Grandma derisively bit back, “you’re carrying on with this one again? Didn’t he dump you?” she asked me. “Like trash,” she added. “Didn’t you marry Leann’s girl?” she asked Dante. “I always told you he’d break your heart,” she told me.
This was typical. She lobbed out hurtful things like steady grenades until one hit its mark, and she never stopped before something vital was damaged.
Story of my childhood.
I began to walk away as Dante answered. “No and no. And I know what you’re doing, Glenda. You’re lashing out because she cut off all contact with you. Maybe if you’d try to be less awful to her, she’d give you a ring every once in a while.”
I didn’t hear my grandmother’s response because I’d picked up my pace.