Chapter Seven
A WEEK BEFORE the wedding, Randy went to Cherry Hill.
It had snowed three days ago, but now it was fifty and sunny, and Randy had been in Iowa long enough to find that nearly tropical. As he parked his van on the street in front of Delia and Norman’s house, he squinted at the sun and glanced around, imagining Sam living in the crispy-pressed, high-sterilization that was his aunt and uncle’s housing development. Simply standing there made Randy feel depressed. He couldn’t imagine coming home there every single day.
He couldn’t imagine having to call this home.
As Randy ambled up Delia’s sidewalk, he could feel the eyes of the neighbors on him, metaphorically if not literally. He knew without looking Delia would be at her window, trying to work out who it was coming to her front door. Randy hadn’t made any extra effort to clean himself up, so he imagined she was freaking out over the grubby, jean-jacket guy in motorcycle boots heading up to her house.
Good. In his opinion, Delia Biehl could do with a little squirming.
He almost laughed out loud when she answered the door without opening the storm door that separated them. If his mission wasn’t so important, he would have fucked with her, tried to live up to her fantasies of a dangerous stranger. But he had a job to do, so he smiled his least-alligator smile and held out the wedding invitation. “Delia. I’m Randy, Sam’s friend who’s planning his wedding. You keep not replying to the invitations I’m sending, so I thought I’d bring one to your house so you could tell me yes or no to my face.”
He liked the way that made her sputter. Poor thing didn’t get many blunt speakers, did she? “I—” She opened and closed her mouth several times, but she couldn’t seem to speak.
Randy braced a hand against the doorframe, leaving space for her to open the door if she chose. “I know you aren’t Sam’s biggest fan, but I am. He doesn’t have a lot of family, but I know he’d want me to reach out to you. Emma also thinks I should. Me, I wanted to skip it because I figured you’d do this, pull passive-aggressive shit where you string everybody out. I hate to tell you, it didn’t work. I’m the only one who knows you haven’t sent a reply. So you’re going to tell me, right now, if you’re coming or not. And if you are coming, I’m letting you know here and now if you try to sour Sam and Mitch’s special day, I will visit ruin on your head like you don’t even know to dream of.”
Delia gasped and drew back, pulling her best well, I never face, but she still didn’t know how to respond to Randy, how to behave around him at all. She simply stood staring at him. She wasn’t quite stripped bare, but she was undone and vulnerable.
“I don’t know who you think you are or why you think you have a right to threaten to assault me in my own home, sir.”
“No one is threatening to assault anyone. Listen carefully to what I’m saying, Mrs. Biehl.” Randy stretched his smile to dangerous lengths. “I’m saying, if you come to their wedding and make them miserable with catty comments and ill-timed remarks, I will return the favor. You’re an active, social person in this town. It wouldn’t take me a day to make you achingly sorry you spoke out of turn.”
Delia’s mouth fell open, and she clutched at her pearls—yes, she really was wearing a string of them.
Randy went in for the kill.
“I know you.” He leaned closer to the storm door, speaking softly enough that she had to strain, but loud enough to get through the glass. “I know who you are, Delia, and I understand. When Sam first told me about you, I thought you were a cartoon, because he made you out to be such a bitch it was hard to believe, but then I saw you at the store, around town, and I got it.”
He jerked his head at the fireplace mantel behind Delia, at the funeral urn sitting there—the one Randy knew was empty because Sam had stolen his mother’s ashes. “She was the pretty one, wasn’t she? Sharyle was smart and pretty and bubbly, like Sam, and everybody liked her. Even when she got knocked up, everybody liked her. Even when she got sick and died, everyone liked her—and then she was gone, and she was a saint. You loved her because she was your sister, but you hated her too, hated how she got what you always wanted. She was dying, and you had a husband and a fancy house, but you still wished you could be her. And then she did you one worse—she had a son when you couldn’t. A sweet, wonderful boy who everybody loved as much as his mom. Who couldn’t love you.”
Delia blinked at him, tears in her eyes. “How—?”
Randy waved a hand. “Easy. Nobody hates like you do without a reason. And why else would you be such a bitch? Except that’s where you fucked up, sweetie. Because Sam’s amazing. You had him that whole time—no, he’d never have been your biological son, but he could have been close. You wouldn’t have had an empty, lonely Christmas this year or any other year. You’d have had Sam and his boyfriend. You could have been helping him plan. Instead of me befriending strangers so he can have a crowd, you could have provided the real deal. You could be filling a church with your friends who would give him gift cards and twenties and make him feel included and wanted. Which was all you ever wanted, ironically enough. Except you never figured out that the way to feel included yourself was to be that for other people.”
He held up the invitation, pressing it against the screen between them. “Here’s your last chance. Come to his wedding. Be his family. Send him into the next part of his life with a smile. Just know if you decline, this is it. He won’t come to you again. And with Sam, there might be grandchildren one day. There might be a lot of amazing things. You come to his wedding, he’ll remember. You don’t, he’ll remember that too.” Randy waited, letting that sink in. “So what’ll it be, Delia? Yes, or no?”
She stared at him a long time, full of hatred and misery and sadness. “No,” she said at last, and slammed her front door in his face.
Randy pulled the invitation off the screen, tucked it into his pocket. “That’s what I thought,” he said, and ambled back down the sidewalk to his van.
FOUR DAYS BEFORE the wedding, Sam and Mitch sat on the couch watching TV when a knock sounded on their apartment door. Since Randy was off playing poker and laying schemes, Sam went to answer. When Sam gasped in surprise and said, “Delia,” Mitch got up and went to stand with his husband-to-be.
Usually when Delia showed up at their apartment she was angry about something, but this time she seemed beaten up. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying, and she held a ceramic urn in her hands. “She’s gone. I—I don’t know how, Sam, but she’s gone.”
Mitch was about to ask who was gone, but something in Sam’s expression made him pause.
“Come on in.” Sam stepped back to let his aunt inside. “Why don’t you come sit down?”
Delia went to the kitchen, where she put the urn on the counter and lifted the lid, tipping it to show Sam. “Nothing. I lifted it, and it was so light, so I opened it, and it was almost empty. I—I don’t know what happened, Sam. I’m so sorry.”
Sam put a hand on hers, but even as he comforted her, he appeared battle-ready. “She’s gone because I took her, Delia. When I went off with Mitch, I took her with me.”
Ashes, Mitch realized. Sam’s mother’s ashes. Apparently Delia never knew Sam had them.
Shit.
Delia blinked at Sam, over and over. “You…took her? The ashes? Out of the urn? On a…road trip?” She said the word road trip like most people would say sex-fueled orgy.
Not far off the mark, really. Though it had been more than that. So much more than that. Especially for those ashes.
“Yes, I took her with me.” Sam folded his hands in front of himself, patient but firm. “She would have hated that urn. She would have loved a road trip. I sprinkled her ashes all over the western United States. She’s still on Mitch’s dash, and now she’s been all over the continent. To Mexico. To Canada. She’s been more places than I have. That seemed a lot better end for her than sitting in an ugly urn on your shelf.”
Mitch got ready for a fight, but to his surprise, Delia deflated. After fishing a tissue out of her purse, she dabbed at her eyes. “I was going to give you the urn. As a wedding present.”
Sam softened, but not much. “That was nice of you. Except she wasn’t ever yours to give. She was my mom.”
Now Delia’s eyes lit with anger. “She was my sister.”
“Yeah. And you loved her about as much as you love me. Which is to say, not at all.”
Delia turned to stare out the kitchen window. They stood there awkwardly, nobody sure what to do next. Then Delia spoke.
“When Sharyle was pregnant with you, I was pregnant too.”
Sam blinked. “But you weren’t even married to Uncle Norman yet.”
Delia kept wiping her eyes. “We got engaged because I was pregnant. Neither one of us was ready, but after watching Sharyle go through everything with no husband or boyfriend at all, Norm felt he should do the right thing. We didn’t really love each other, but we decided that would come with time. So we announced our engagement and made plans. We set it up so we’d have the wedding before I’d show, but not so soon it appeared that’s what it was. We planned to tell people after the ceremony, quietly—people would figure it out, but at least we could have a nice wedding first, without a scandal.” She swallowed hard and shut her eyes. “Three weeks before our wedding day I miscarried.”
Mitch’s breath caught in his chest. He watched Delia’s shoulders shake, saw her sorrow, and for the first time in his life, he felt pity for Sam’s aunt.
Sam looked like he wanted to go to her but didn’t dare. “Delia,” he said, but that was all he could manage.
A bottle uncorked, she kept going. “We never told anyone about it, so no one knew. Sharyle did, but I couldn’t stand to see her because she was almost ready to give birth to you, and now I was empty. Empty for good—I couldn’t have any more children, they said. So now I was getting married, barren, to a man I didn’t love and who didn’t love me. We thought about calling it off, but we were both too scared of what people would say. So we got married. Meanwhile, Sharyle had you out of wedlock with no support and developed MS, and then cancer, and yet I envied her every single day.” She bit her lip, let out a short sob, and shook her head. “I didn’t want to hate you. But I couldn’t love you. It hurt too much.”
Sam went up behind her, shut his eyes, and hugged her.
She wept silently, brushing his hands as they closed over her arms, as if she didn’t dare touch him. “I can’t come to your wedding,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I just can’t.”
Sam patted her forearm. “It’s okay.”
She shook her head. “It’s not. But I still can’t.” She extricated herself, shaking, from his embrace. “I’ll take the urn back, because it still reminds me of her. But I’ll send you a check. And I’ll think of you on your big day.”
“Thank you.” Mitch took Sam’s hand in his.
She hugged Sam awkwardly and touched Mitch’s arm. Then she scooped up the urn, and she left.
They stood in the kitchen, staring at the door where she’d disappeared.
“Wow,” Sam said at last.
Mitch kissed his hair and led him back to the couch. “Let’s finish our show.”
They sat back down together, holding each other close. Though while they both stared at the television, Mitch knew neither one of them could think about anything but Delia Biehl and her sad, lonely story.
It wasn’t something Mitch or anybody else could fix, that sorrow. But it was something he’d never forget.