CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
~William Shakespeare
PRESENT
I was just stepping into my shoes when someone knocked on my door.
It was Dante. He’d changed into a dark, dark suit that set off his golden hair and skin to an unfair degree.
This was the look that suited him best; he was born to be a villain in black.
My shallow, superficial self was devastated by the sight of him.
It should have been against the law for him to go out in public like that. It did indecent things to me.
“Are you ready?” he asked me, eyes on my feet, though he didn’t comment on the shoes. “It’s almost time to go.”
“I won’t share a car with her,” I said quietly and vehemently.
I hadn’t even realized I was thinking the words. They’d flown out of my mouth completely of their own accord.
But I meant them. I would not, could not share a car with Tiffany. I refused to share anything with her for the rest of my life. I had shared enough.
He nodded solemnly. “Of course not.” He held out his arm. “Let’s go?”
“Is Eugene driving me?” I asked.
He went from looking stoic to annoyed, which had been my intent. “No. I’m taking you. Are you ready?”
“Is it . . . just us driving together?” I wanted to know what I was in for. The dreadful possibilities were endless, and it was telling that being alone with him was far from the worst option.
“Yes, if you’re all right with that,” he bit out the words. I could tell he’d misunderstood the reason for my question, and it was almost a relief to realize that sometimes he could completely misread me.
“Fine,” I said. I grabbed my small purse out of the room, taking his arm but giving him nothing, letting him stew on the misunderstanding. “Let’s go.”
He led me out of the house without another word.
Moving with him, the way we walked together, how he opened every door and handed me into his car like it was his personal duty, all of it was painfully familiar. If I let myself, I could forget for a moment, two, three, four, that we were years away from the time when we’d belonged so desperately to each other.
I tried to distract myself from it on the drive by antagonizing him. “Is she staying at Gram’s?”
He glanced at me, then back at the road, tugging at his collar. “I’ve no clue. I assume she’s staying either at my mother’s house or with her parents. I didn’t ask.”
“I won’t stay under the same roof as her.”
He started chewing his lip so intently, a nervous tell of his, that I had to look away. “The only accommodations I arranged were yours and mine. I honestly have no clue what anyone else is planning. Well, besides my father. He’s staying at Gram’s, as well.”
That didn’t surprise me one bit, and I couldn’t have cared less. Still, it was a sore spot for Dante, so I did a bit of picking at it.
“Did he bring his mistress?” I prodded.
His mouth twisted bitterly and the look he shot me was not hostile so much as wounded. “No.”
“Don’t you find it ironic how much you resent his mistress, all things considered?”
Oh, ho. Big point for me. That one was a doozy. The black look he sent me for that had my heart beating faster and had me fighting not to smile.
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” I hummed under my breath.
He hit the brakes, stopping the car so fast that I had to brace myself against the dashboard.
“Oh my God. Really?” he ground out. “Is there any low fucking blow you won’t resort to, on today of all days? Can’t you save it for even one fucking day? On this fucking day, when we bury Gram?”
My high at riling him went instantly to a low, and I had to look away, flushing with shame. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. Not even I was this big of a bitch, not even to him. “I was just trying to distract myself by antagonizing you,” I admitted to the window.
“I’m well aware, but can you give a rest for a few hours? Please.”
I nodded, stunned at how freely the P word seemed to roll off his tongue lately.
He began to drive again and the car fell quiet for a time.
Without even the distraction of messing with him, my thoughts went dark, to Gram, to the past, to how long it’d been since I saw her last, and how that was all my fucking fault.
“I still spoke to her every week,” I told him. “She’d call me like clockwork, and I always made sure I was available to talk to her for at least an hour.” It was a small bit of comfort for him, and I offered it up as a defensive apology.
“I know. I know,” he said with jaw clenching stiffness. Clearly, he was still upset.
That had been my whole repertoire on trying to make him feel better, so I gave up after that.
I couldn’t even make myself feel better. How on earth would I know how to fix him?
My talent lay in making him feel worse, and if that was off the table, I figured I should just shut up.
It was a bit of a drive to the funeral parlor, I vaguely remembered, though I’d only been there a few times my whole life.
We were maybe halfway there when Dante put his hand on my leg. His warm grip squeezed the spot just above my knee.
It was so familiar, something he’d done hundreds of times at least, that at first I just stared, my sensory memory at war with my current perception.
It took me a minute, but finally I managed to get out a quiet but firm, “Stop touching me.”
“It calms me, you know that,” he returned, his deep voice still rough with the storm of his temper. “I need to get a handle on myself before we get to the funeral home, okay? Need to.”
Who could argue with that? Apparently not even me.
But a few minutes later I was glaring at him again. His hand just kept inching higher. Now it was at mid-thigh, my skirt going up with it, and I knew he was doing it deliberately.
“Knock it off,” I told him, tone as scathing as I could manage.
With a smile, he took his hand away. Apparently it’d worked. He was in a markedly better mood.
“Did you want to speak at the service?” he asked me. “I’ll be getting up to say a few words.”
“No, thank you,” I replied. I didn’t even have to think about it. I couldn’t do it, couldn’t speak about Gram to a roomful of hostile faces. Oftentimes I flourished under the heavy weight of that contempt, but this was so personal. I couldn’t speak about her and not share too much about myself and in the sharing, expose my too raw emotions. Also, this was just the sort of thing that brought my stutter back. I couldn’t bear the humiliation if that happened.
Gram wouldn’t have asked that of me. It would have been enough for her that I was there, that I’d come home for her.
Dante didn’t pursue it any further.
“Who else is speaking?” I asked him.
“My dad, me, Father Frederick. We’re keeping it brief. You know how she hated funerals.”
I was relieved to hear his mother wasn’t speaking. She’d hated Gram, her mother-in-law, but she rarely turned down an opportunity to be the center of attention.
“There’ll be a short viewing,” he continued, “then the service, followed by a reception at her house.”
I’d figured as much, with all of the prep going on at the estate.
A short, tense length of time passed and suddenly we were there, parking, Dante handing me out of the car, giving me his thick arm to hold, heading inside, passing by countless, faceless black clad people.
I didn’t look at any of them. I tried to look only at the ground, determined to get through this without breaking down.
She lived a good life, I told myself. A long life, full of joy and surrounded by people who loved her.
But I already missed her. I wasn’t ready to let her go.
The viewing was unpleasant, seeing her for the first time like that, her face so still in death.
I wanted to remember her smiling and animated, her eyes open, and filled with mischief or delight.
Still, it was like I felt her there. I spoke to her coffin as though she could hear me. “It won’t surprise you that I’m not too keen about being back here,” I told her quietly. “Only you could get me into a room with these people, Gram.”
Of course there was no response, and the loss of her hit me anew, because there was so much I wanted to tell her from just the last few days alone, the last hours, things I’d only ever vent about to her. She’d been my shoulder to cry on for so many years, held so many of the secrets that I couldn’t tell anyone else, not even my closest friends, and it struck me then that I would never again have anyone who I could talk to in just that way, as a child does to a parent. She was the only adult figure in my life that had ever given a damn, and now she was gone, and I felt more alone than I ever had.
In a moment of utter weakness, I closed my eyes and set my shaking hand on her casket. “What am I going to do, Gram?” I asked her quietly. “I feel so alone in this world without you.”
Dante, who’d been a silent presence at my back, spoke then, “You’re not alone,” he said, his voice emotional. Intense.
I acted as if I had not heard, as if he had not spoken. Those words meant nothing to me, particularly coming from him.
“You were wrong, Gram,” I said softly, tone emotionless because I was resigned to the awful, lonely truth of it. “Love doesn’t save our souls. It kills them.”
I could hear Dante literally grinding his teeth behind me.
For some strange reason, Dante sat me next to him in the front row for the service. I didn’t have the energy to fight him on it, so I took my seat, glancing surreptitiously around at all of the familiar faces and the significance of where they were sitting and whom they were sitting with.
Predictably, I clocked Tiffany’s location first, but she’d placed herself so close to us, directly behind Dante in fact, that it was hard not to.
I almost moved when she first sat down, almost got up and made a scene, but something kind of wonderful happened to stop me.
As she sat, mere moments after we had, she perched herself on the edge of her seat, putting both of her delicate hands on Dante’s shoulders.
I had my head craned around to stare daggers at her. She was opening her mouth to say something, I’ll never know what, because we were all distracted by what Dante did next.
Without looking at her, without so much as acknowledging her, he pulled his shoulders out of her hands, leaning far forward to avoid her touch completely.
As he did this he glanced at me, his hand cupping the spot on my leg that had so soothed him earlier.
I allowed it to stay there purely for spite and turned my head again to meet her eyes, letting her see what was in mine.
You might have had him for a bit, my triumphant gaze told her, but it was all you’ll get.
You’re nothing to him. Insignificant.
Whether he’s with me or not, it won’t help you. He’s done with you.
Whether I was the love or hate of his life, nothing and no one would ever overshadow me.
I swallowed the memory of every woman he had ever known.
Swallowed it whole.
I covered his hand with my own, still staring at her until, finally, her face drawn tight, eyes flashing at me, she looked away.
The victory was short lived, however.
I took my hand away from Dante’s when I saw who was taking the seat beside Tiffany.
I faced forward right as his hand fell away from my knee.
He hadn’t turned around, but I could tell he knew that his mother was behind him.
Dante never touched me when she was near. It had been this way for as long as I could remember.
I used to have a problem with it, used to be sensitive about it, but just then it suited me fine. The less he touched me the better.
His mother, Adelaide, made a big show of greeting Tiffany. Kissing both of her cheeks, telling her how wonderful she looked, complimenting everything about her, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.
She didn’t acknowledge me, nor I her. This was not the place for it.
There wasn’t a civil word to be had between the two of us. There never had been.
I thought she was evil, and she thought I was trash. Neither of us would ever change our minds.
I was surprised, though, that there was no greeting between her and Dante. He didn’t turn around, and she didn’t take exception to it.
That was a new and interesting development, to be sure, one that I didn’t mind at all.
Adelaide’s lifelong friend and Tiffany’s mother, Leann, soon joined them. Again there was not a word or gesture of greeting between the first row and the second, and for the same reason.
Adelaide by herself was an evil force to be reckoned with. Add in her best friend, and any sane person would run in the other direction. Two more manipulative women I had never met. They were a team made in hell, and if they were ignoring me, all the better.