The funeral takes place four days later in a historic cathedral in Boston. It’s a private affair, with only me and Mom and Christopher and a handful of very close business partners. One of them gives Mom a look of undisguised hunger and makes her promise to let him know if she needs anything. Another one of them gives the same look and extracts the same promise from me.
I walk through the whole thing in a daze. Vaguely I’m aware that I’ve taken a leave of absence from school, that I should be dealing with grief. And maybe I could, if I could bring myself to really believe that it happened. Mostly I keep waiting to wake up.
Keep waiting for a hand to reach into the water and pull me out.
Christopher doesn’t approach me at the funeral.
He doesn’t write any more letters.
It’s like a second blow, his absence, a fatal one where my father’s death has maimed me. I try not to think about it, the same way I try not to think about Daddy.
While the funeral was a quiet affair, I’m dreading the reading of the will, because it will be a circus. Every single one of his wives and most of his past stepchildren will be in attendance to see if anything was bequeathed to them.
“Please don’t make me go.”
The words come out as a hoarse murmur, because I’ve only said them for the millionth time. It’s not like my inheritance is a raffle ticket that will be forfeited if I don’t show up. The actual will reading is just a formality. An anachronism. A public stoning. Someone will tell me what Daddy gave me, whether it’s two dollars or two billion. It doesn’t matter whether I’m present at the will reading. And God, I don’t want to be there.
Mom sits on the sofa beside me, her eyes rimmed red from crying. She’s mourned the loss of him more in the past two weeks than she did in the decade they had been divorced. “You and I are the only ones who deserve to be there.”
She thinks he’s going to give her something, and it kills me. Could he have changed that much? God, the child support arguments were so bitter. So freaking specific. By the end he had seemed to soften toward her. At the art studio there had been a moment when he’d looked at her and I’d had the thought that every child of divorced parents has at least once, a desperate hope, a terrible dream that they might get back together.
I shake my head. “Neither of us should be there. It will be terrible.”
“We hold our heads high. All of those money-hungry bastards can sit there and be embarrassed when it comes out that they aren’t getting anything.”
And what happens when it comes out that you aren’t? “Mom, whatever happens… you know that whatever I have, it’s yours. Right?”
“You think he’s going to leave me out?”
I look away, at the nondescript painting on the nondescript hotel wall. We’re living on borrowed money right now, paying for this hotel room on credit because surely Daddy will have left us money.
Except I’m not so sure.
He loved me; I know that. And he even loved my mom in his own way. But he was always tied up about money. I could see him leaving me nothing as some kind of character-building experiment. I would have to quit Smith College without any way to pay the tuition, but I’m not as worried about me.
I’m more worried about what would happen to my mother’s fragile sense of self if she holds her head high against all those wives and then ends up humiliated. She hasn’t even met most of them. I’ve met them, on my annual spring break visit.
There would be glee, to see the first and most coveted wife taken down.
“I just think it doesn’t make sense to put ourselves through that. Everyone’s going to see someone else get taken down.”
“They’re going because they think they were important to him.”
I’m not sure Daddy was that black-and-white. He cared for his other wives; at least he didn’t treat them with disdain. But they got their small piece of their fortune with the ironclad prenup he made them sign. He won’t give them more than that, but not for the reasons that Mom thinks.
The other children will be there, too. Not biological children. I’m the only one he had, but there are plenty of other stepchildren through the years.
Including Christopher. Will he be there?
It will kill me to see him salivating for Daddy’s fortune. Except why wouldn’t he? He’s always wanted money, and Daddy’s money is as good as any.
“Whatever happens, we’ll be okay,” I say, but I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince.
Mom gives a firm shake of her head. “He wouldn’t leave us empty-handed.”