We picked up an apple pie at the pastry shop, then stopped again on the way home and got a bucket of chicken with fries and coleslaw for dinner.

"You shouldn't encourage me to eat my feelings," I told her in my severest tone.

"Every once in a while you should take those self-help books and shove them, Llewellyn," she said with gimlet eyes. "There's nothing wrong with a good grease filled heart attack for dinner every once in a while. We just won't make a habit of it."

"They aren't all bad," I said as I picked through the bucket looking for another wing. I loved this coating, whatever it was that they put on the chicken. If I ever needed the death penalty, this was how I wanted to go—fried chicken. Just chicken me to death, honestly. "I can't figure out what to wear tomorrow. I don't want to wear the suit again." It was the only one I had, but I'd wanted to make a good impression.

Okay, so I'd wanted to make the bastard regret dumping me. I thought it had worked—he'd looked crushed at the end of it.

Why didn't it feel better? I'd expected some sort of catharsis, like lancing a bad pimple or getting a bone set. Not this unsettled feeling, like I was the one in the wrong. I hadn't done anything except show him what he'd left behind. Although, really, that was little enough. It wasn't like I was anything special, not compared to the Hollywood starlets that he had draped all over him every time I saw his picture.

"Lew," Mom said. "You're getting yourself worked up again. Stop thinking about him and tell me why you're even planning to go to the funeral tomorrow if this is how it upsets you."

I stared down at my plate—I'd completely decimated that poor chicken wing, shredded it, then pulled the bones apart. Even the skin was in tiny, tiny bits, scattered over the plate. "Damn." I'd wanted that skin.

"Never mind the chicken," Mom told me. "Why are you going to the funeral?"

I shook my head. "It's not him, Mom. Seriously, it isn't. It's her. She was my favorite person on the ward and not because she was some big time star back in the day." She'd never call me Lew, always Llewellyn. Your name is beautiful and distinctive, just like you. Don't try to be something you aren't, she'd say.

And then I'd laugh and make jokes about my mother not knowing the difference between Ireland and Wales and how Lew was easier to spell. And still, every day, she'd call me Llewellyn.

And I still didn't know why that made me want to cry, but it did.

Mom watched me wipe my eyes, then she reached out with one greasy hand to pat one of my own greasy hands. "Finish up, we'll go get you a new suit for tomorrow."

"Stores'll be closed by now," I reminded her.

"Not all of them."

"No, Mom, I'm not spending that much on a suit!" I also didn't want to get one from Mike's family's store. One of them—they owned a whole bunch of stuff.

"You're not. I am. If you want to pay me back half of the cost of it over time, that's fine. Do you want people to think you can’t afford a second suit? And I'm not going to have you go to Maddie's funeral in jeans and a dress shirt. It's not proper."

She was right. I hated to admit it, but she was right. Small town gossip was hell—I had good reason to know that. “I can pay for my own suit.” My parents weren’t poor, but they helped out my oldest brother a lot with groceries and money for emergencies since his wife had died. There wasn’t a lot of extra to go around. And I had my savings.

“I’m your Mom. If all I can do to make you feel better is make sure you have a good suit to go to Maddie’s funeral, then that’s what I’ll do. Besides, after feeding you all this today, you might need to size up and that’ll be my fault.”

I choked on my drink. “Mom!”

She twinkled at me. “So eat as much as you want.”

“Argh,” I groaned, but I still reached for another piece of chicken. And after a moment’s thought, a second one. Wouldn’t want it to go to waste.