Chapter 19
After spending every minute of the past two days with Leo, it felt weird to leave her behind on Sunday, but Holly’s mother would have killed her if she hadn’t shown up for dinner with the family. None of them had missed a Sunday since their father had died.
She had pondered asking her mother if she could bring two guests. No one would have batted an eye since they often had friends join them, but Sharon didn’t feel up to the lively family setting, and Leo didn’t want to leave her mother.
When Holly saw what was for dinner, she was glad she had come.
Zack barely waited until everyone was sitting at the table before he pounced on the ham balls. He gobbled one down almost straight from the pan. “Oh shit. That’s hot,” he mumbled around a mouthful but still reached for a second.
“Serves you right,” their mother said. “Let them cool down a little.”
Holly heaped scalloped potatoes on her plate and took the bowl of carrots her sister-in-law handed her.
“How are Sharon and Leontyne doing?” her mother asked from the head of the table.
“They’re hanging in there, but tomorrow is going to be tough.”
Her mother stared right through the bowls on the table, as if remembering a day five years in the past. “Once the funeral is over, it’s going to get better. At least it’s sinking in, and then you can really start to grieve. We’re all going to be there to show our support, right?”
Zack and Ethan and their wives nodded.
“It’s nice of you to keep looking after Sharon,” Lisa said to Holly, who paused with her fork halfway to her mouth.
Damn. She hadn’t told her family about her and Leo yet, so apparently, her sister-in-law now assumed she was over at the Blakes’ because she’d been Gil’s nurse. Holly hesitated. Should she really tell them now? Or would it be better to wait?
Wait for what? For the funeral to be over…or for either of you to fuck up and ruin what you have? She put her fork down. You can’t keep thinking like that. If she wanted their relationship to work, she had to believe in it—starting right now.
“I’m not over there as a nurse,” she said loudly so she would be heard over the background noise of conversation, cutlery on plates, and Noah pretending the carrot on his fork was a tractor. “Leo and I… We’re together. As in, a couple.”
Zack took another ham ball and grinned at her. “Does that mean we get to fly on her private jet and stay on some Caribbean island for your wedding?”
“She doesn’t own a private jet,” Holly said, choosing to ignore the other part of his question.
“Oh, honey!” Her mother jumped up, hurried to Holly’s end of the table, and hugged her. “That’s wonderful news!”
Holly sank into her mother’s warm embrace, aware how lucky she was to have a family who took this as good news. “Thank you. And thanks for talking me into giving the long-distance thing a chance.”
Her nieces and nephews rushed her for a hug too, even though most of them were too young to really understand what was going on. But Holly was happy to accept their hugs anyway. She ignored the fact that some of their hands were sticky from the brown-sugar glaze on the ham balls.
“I thought you dumped her?” Ethan said when everyone had settled back down.
Holly stared at him. How the heck did he know that? Sometimes, the very effective Fair Oaks rumor mill amazed her. “Who said I did?”
“Leo.”
“Leo?” Holly echoed. “When was that?”
“Thursday, I think. She was crying into her beer at Johnny’s.”
Holly’s stomach plummeted. “Crying?”
“Not literally. More like sulking.” Ethan shrugged. “But she said it wasn’t because…” He flicked his gaze to the other members of the family. “Because of you being…um, unique. She said that wasn’t a problem for her. Cool, hmm?”
Their mother frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean? Of course your sister is unique. Why would that be a problem for Leontyne?”
Holly glared at her brother. Great. Now he had gotten her in trouble. Maybe she finally needed to have that conversation with her mother. “There is no problem, Mom. I’ll explain it later.” Coming out to her entire family in one big swoop was a bit much for her, especially with the kids right there, listening in.
She spent the rest of dinner picking at her food. Normally, she loved ham balls as much as everyone else in her family, but suddenly, every bite sat in her stomach like lumps of chalk—and tasted about the same.
Her mother eyed her the entire time but didn’t say anything until Zack, Ethan, and their families had said their goodbyes.
Holly rinsed the last of the dishes while her mother packed leftovers for her to take to Sharon and Leo.
“So,” her mother said as she clicked the last container shut, “what was Ethan talking about earlier?”
Holly closed the dishwasher, leaned against it, and wiped her damp palms on her shorts. Why was this so hard? She wasn’t a teenager anymore, and even if she were, her mother would hardly kick her out of the house for not sleeping with someone. The thought made her giggle almost hysterically.
Her mother eyed her. “It’s nothing bad, is it?”
“No. It’s not,” she said firmly. “It’s just something about me that I want you to know.”
Her mom steered her over to the breakfast nook and had her take a seat. “What is it? Is this the secret that you never talked about? And don’t bother saying you’re not keeping secrets. I know there’s something you keep to yourself.”
“It’s not exactly a secret, but…yeah. I’m not ashamed of it. It’s just unusual and hard to understand.” Holly gripped the small table between them with both hands and looked her mother in the eyes. “Mom, I’m asexual.”
Somehow, it didn’t have the same oomph as Mom, I’m gay, she thought wryly—and it didn’t get the same reaction.
Her mother furrowed her brow until she looked like one of the bassets she treated. “What do you mean?”
Holly took a deep breath. “It means that I’m not attracted to people. Not sexually, at least.”
“Not attracted to people?” Her mother’s eyes widened. “You don’t expect me to believe that you’re one of the people they showed on TV? The ones who are attracted to their rubber plants or something.”
“What?” A startled laugh escaped her. “No, Mom. That’s not what it means. I’m not attracted to anyone…or anything. I never have been.”
“But…but…I don’t understand. You’ve been with Dana.”
“Yes, but…” Holly cleared her throat. Talking about this with her mother was awkward. “I never experienced a strong desire to sleep with her.”
Her mother nibbled her lip. “Have you seen a doctor? Maybe there’s something wrong with your hormones.”
Holly sighed. She should have expected a medical explanation from her mother, the vet. “No, Mom. My hormones are fine.”
“And you’re sure it wasn’t just Dana who couldn’t…um, who wasn’t right for you?”
Holly shook her head. “I’ve been with other people, and it was the same. It’s not them. It’s me. This is my sexual orientation, just like being straight is yours.”
The lines on her mother’s forehead deepened. “I thought you were a lesbian?”
“I am,” Holly said. “At least I still identify that way. Being a lesbian isn’t only about sex. It’s also about who you fall in love with…about who you want to date and kiss and build a life with. I think Leo is absolutely beautiful. I could stare at her forever, and I love holding her and kissing her, but that doesn’t make me want to…um, get horizontal with her.”
“Then it’s more like a friendship?”
“No, Mom. What Leo and I have isn’t platonic. There’s so much more to a relationship that makes it different from a friendship, not only sex. Just because I’m not eager to sleep with her doesn’t mean that I don’t love her.” She pressed both hands to her mouth. Had she really just said that, and…had she meant it? She breathed in and out deeply. Yes, she admitted to herself. They had only been together for a very short time, but that didn’t stop the feelings from being there—or from being real.
A careful smile replaced her mother’s frown. “You do?”
Her heart thudded in her throat, so Holly couldn’t speak. She just nodded.
“Does Leontyne know?” her mother asked.
Holly shook her head. “I only now admitted it to myself.”
“That you’re…what did you call it…asexual?”
“No. I’ve known that for years. I just wasn’t ready to tell you. I meant that I only now admitted to myself that I love her. But she does know that I’m asexual.”
“So that was what your brother was hinting at?” her mother asked. “That she doesn’t mind you not wanting to sleep with her?”
Holly nodded while her mind was busy repeating that last phrase. Not wanting to sleep with her… That wasn’t exactly what being asexual meant, although it did boil down to this for most aces. But it would probably overwhelm her mother if she tried to explain the finer nuances of sexual attraction right now.
Her mother let out a deep sigh. “If you feel this is the way you are, then I’ll accept it. It just makes me a bit sad to think that you’re missing out on such a wonderful aspect of a relationship. Your father and I—”
Holly slapped her hands over her ears. “Lalalalala. I really don’t want to hear about this.”
Her mother laughed. “Okay, okay. No details. But it’s still something wonderful that I would have wanted for you.”
“Wonderful by your standards,” Holly said. “Do you ever feel like you’re missing out by not eating broccoli?”
Her mom wrinkled her nose and shook herself as if smelling something foul. “Why would I? You know I hate broccoli.”
“See? It’s not that I hate sex, but I wouldn’t seek it out, and I certainly don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.” She made eye contact. “Please don’t judge me by your standards or think my relationship is any less normal or important.”
Her mother stared down at her folded hands on the table, then back up. Finally, she nodded once. “You’re right. I don’t understand it, but I accept it.”
That was it? She had agonized for years over whether and how to tell her mother, fearing she might not understand, and now her mother just accepted it?
Holly struggled to speak through the lump in her throat. “When was the last time I told you how much I love and appreciate you?”
The laugh lines around her mother’s mouth deepened, and her eyes shone. “Earlier, when you came in and smelled the ham balls.”
They laughed together.
Then her mother sobered. “I just want you to be happy—by your standards, not mine.”
With tears in her eyes, Holly got up and rounded the table for another hug. “I’m getting there,” she whispered into her mom’s shoulder.
Leo sat in the front pew of the church, next to her mother.
When the organist began to play Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” her mother’s silent tears turned into all-out sobs.
Leo wrapped one arm around her and bowed her head. If only she had picked another piece of music… But maybe it wasn’t the music that had made her mother cry. Maybe it was that her father had played the organ in this very church every Sunday for more than thirty years.
Finally, the organ faded away, and the minister began his homily.
The words rushed by Leo without her grasping their meaning. All she could do was stare at the casket at the end of the central aisle. The mahogany shone in the sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows. Her father lay on the white satin in the starched shirt and tie he had always worn to church. Part of her still couldn’t believe that this was him, that she would never again be able to talk to him. Now, in death, he looked softer, more approachable than he had when he had been alive.
Leo hoped that meant he had made peace with his life before he had died.
The minister started to read from the Bible. When he was done, it would be her turn.
She shifted on the pew. Why did they have to be so hard? She resisted the urge to bounce her knee up and down while she waited for her turn to speak. Her hand repeatedly slid to the folded piece of paper in the chest pocket of her blazer, just to make sure it was still there.
Finally, the minister wrapped up his reading. “Leontyne, Gilbert’s daughter, has some words she would like to share with us.”
Suddenly, Leo wanted nothing more than to keep sitting on the uncomfortable pew. She squeezed her mother’s arm, got up, and walked over to the lectern to the right of the altar.
She took out her notes, slowly unfolded them, and smoothed out the pages before laying her speech on the lectern. The microphone was a little too low, so she reached out and adjusted it to her height. She must have stood in front of a microphone a few thousand times during her career, but never had her fingers been this unsteady.
Slowly, she looked up and out over the casket at the crowd of black-clad people.
The church was filled to capacity. A few people even stood at the back of the church because every seat was taken. Everyone in town had known her father, and now they were all staring at her, waiting for what she would have to say.
She searched out Holly’s face in the sea of people. There she was, sitting with her family. Last night, during the visitation at the funeral home, Holly had been by her side, helping her through it all, and when Holly now gave her an encouraging nod, Leo nodded back. She could do this.
Her gaze zeroed in on the slightly wrinkled notes. She had labored over them all day yesterday, but they hadn’t gotten any better. They sounded more like the introduction of a keynote speaker at a conference than a eulogy for her father.
Holly made eye contact and mimed crumpling up her notes and tossing them aside. She mouthed something, and Leo could guess what it was. Speak from the heart, Holly had told her.
She’s right. Anything was better than this impersonal speech. After she had finally found the courage to talk—to really talk—to her father that last night, this felt like a step back.
She folded the pages and put them back into her pocket.
Holly smiled at her, thawing that frozen feeling that had overcome Leo.
She leaned in to the microphone and did what she had done with “Odd One Out”: she just let everything pour out. “I had a speech prepared, but a very wise woman told me to speak from the heart, so I think I’ll try that instead.”
An approving murmur went through the audience. Well, they didn’t know yet what she was about to say.
“First, thank you all for being here today. I think it would have made my father proud to see how many people came to honor him. For the last two days, I tried to find the right words to do the same—to honor him with this eulogy. After all, that’s what giving a eulogy is all about: talking about the traits of the deceased that you admired and sharing some happy memories, right?” She let her gaze sweep over the pews.
Several people in the front rows nodded.
“Right. And I wish I could stand here and do that, but I feel like I hardly knew him at all.”
Someone in the back of the church cleared their throat.
Leo clutched the sides of the lectern with both hands and continued. “You see, my father and I hadn’t talked in fourteen years. Even when I went home for my grandmother’s funeral, we sat next to each other in this very pew,” she nodded toward where her mother sat, “like we were complete strangers. In many ways, that’s what we were. We never understood each other, even before my father had the second stroke and could hardly talk anymore.”
She kept her gaze on Holly while she spoke, without glancing toward her mother. If she saw a look of disapproval on her mother’s face, she wouldn’t be able to finish this—and she needed to.
“Truth be told, I didn’t try very hard. I thought I already knew how every conversation with him would end: with us going our separate ways in anger. So while I’ve been home for four weeks, I didn’t spend much of that time with him, and he seemed to prefer it that way.”
It felt strange to stand up here and say that, almost as if she were talking about someone else. Her face and mouth were so stiff that she could hardly form the words.
“It wasn’t until the night before he died that we finally talked, and I started to remember all the good things about him that I had forgotten. His integrity and strong work ethic. His sharp mind and his tenacity. If he made a promise, he always followed through, no matter what, and he expected the same of others. He taught me the value of hard work and to stand up for what I believe in…even if he didn’t always like my beliefs. I discovered that we had more in common than I had thought. Not just our passion for music, but the way we dealt with problems—by avoiding them.”
She tried a smile, but her lips didn’t cooperate. “We avoided talking for fourteen years. We almost waited too long. I nearly missed my last chance to talk to him. I would have never known a lot of his attitudes toward me had changed over the years.”
Her eyes burned, so she reached up to wipe across them with her thumb and forefinger. She stared at the tears on her fingertips. God, this was hard. “Don’t make the same mistake. Don’t leave too much unsaid. Tell the people in your life how much they mean to you before they’re gone.”
More words wanted to come, but they all tangled up somewhere between her chest and her mouth, so she finally gave up and stepped down from the podium.
On the way back to her seat, she touched her fingers to her father’s casket. The smooth mahogany beneath her fingertips grounded her a little. She took several deep breaths and slid back into the pew without glancing at anyone.
What would her mother say? Airing their dirty family laundry in front of half the town certainly wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she had asked Leo to deliver the eulogy.
A handkerchief appeared in her line of vision.
Leo took it and blew her nose before reluctantly turning her head.
Her mother was smiling at her, even with tears in her eyes.
Smiling! Leo stared.
“Thank you,” her mother whispered and took Leo’s hand.
“But…but that wasn’t exactly what he would have wanted me to…”
Her mother squeezed her hand, interrupting her. “Sometimes, it’s not about what you want; it’s about what you need. He needed to hear that years ago. All three of us did. And maybe some of them,” she tilted her head toward the people in the pews behind them, “did too.”
The opening notes of the organ amplified around them, and everyone stood to sing a hymn.
Leo didn’t let go of her mother’s hand as she rose too.
The rest of the service passed in a blur. Before Leo knew it, they were following behind the hearse to the cemetery.
Again, she barely heard a word of the minister’s prayer.
The sun beat down from a cloudless, blue sky. Leo stood next to the open grave, which was surrounded by countless wreaths and flower arrangements. Ashley had picked lilies for the casket spray, she realized only now.
The minister nodded at them to come forward.
Her mother’s hand trembled as she placed a rose on the closed casket, but Leo’s was strangely steady. What she had said in the church had been her farewell to her father, not this flower.
One of her father’s colleagues played a mournful melody on the violin as the casket was lowered into the ground.
When the minister finished with “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and dropped a handful of earth onto the top of the casket, her mother clutched Leo’s arm painfully tight, and Leo gently rubbed her hand.
When the last notes faded away and the violinist lowered his instrument, a very familiar sound interrupted the sudden silence: the click of a camera shutter.
Leo looked up.
Two paparazzi stood at the edge of the cemetery, half hidden behind a stand of trees. Another had stalked closer, clad in black so he would fit in with the mourners. Several black SUVs with dark-tinted windows were parked along the gate.
As the press vultures continued to snap picture after picture, Leo clenched her hands into fists. For the first time, she really understood how helpless her father must have felt after his stroke.
God, she had been a fool to reject Saul’s offer to send PR people and security guards for the funeral. She hadn’t wanted the pack of babysitters that guided and guarded her career to intrude into her life in Fair Oaks, and she had assumed she wouldn’t need them. So far, the press either hadn’t found her, or they had something more interesting to report.
She should have known they would want to cash in on pictures of a mourning Jenna Blake.
“Oh my God!” Her mother gasped. “What are they doing? They’re taking photos—here?”
Leo gritted her teeth. “Not much is sacred for them.”
Instead of dispersing now that the funeral was over, the townspeople crowded around Leo and her mother, shielding her from the paparazzi.
The rapid-fire click-click-click of cameras ended abruptly as a very determined Holly, followed by her brothers, Travis, Jenny, Ash, Chris, and several others, marched toward them.
Leo’s eyes stung with tears. She had expected the people of Fair Oaks to rat her out to the press the day of her arrival in town, but not only had they not given her away, now they were closing ranks and standing up to protect her.
Hidden behind her circle of human shields, she couldn’t see what was going on at the other side of the cemetery, but a minute later, the black SUVs pulled away and sped down the street as if the devil were chasing them.
Holly pushed through the crowd to get to Leo. Her blue eyes were lit up with righteous fury but then gentled when they turned onto Leo. “You okay?”
Leo could only nod.
“Don’t worry.” Zack gave her a pat on the shoulder. “They won’t be back.”
“I know.” Leo sighed. “Why would they? They’ve already got the shots they were after.”
“No, they didn’t.” Grinning broadly, Zack held up an SD card.
Next to him, Travis presented two more.
Leo gaped at them. “How did you…?”
“You don’t want to know.” Zack straightened his tie, which had become askew.
“You didn’t hit them, did you?” Not that they didn’t deserve it, but she didn’t need headlines such as Violence at Superstar’s Dad’s Funeral.
“No,” Holly said quickly. “It was Sasha who got them to hand over the SD cards.”
“Sasha?” Leo blinked over at Holly’s friend.
“Well,” Sasha said, “I told them I’m a police officer and that if they weren’t gone within three seconds—without the SD cards—they’d get to enjoy the hospitality of our local jail for a week while I came up with some creative charges and lost the paperwork a few times.”
Leo stared at her. “You bake scones for a living.” Fantastic scones, but still…
Sasha smiled and shrugged. “But they don’t know that.”
With a shaking hand, Leo pocketed the three SD cards. Maybe without knowing it, Sasha had found the only thing that could stop the paparazzi: the threat of being stuck in some backwoods county jail while their deadlines were ticking away and other paparazzi were out there, making boatloads of money on celebrity photos.
“Thank you,” she got out, her voice rough. It wouldn’t keep the paparazzi away for good; she knew that from experience. But it meant the world to her that the townspeople had stood up for her, and maybe it would make the press vultures more careful about where they took photos.
Holly put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get back to the church. The lunch they prepared for us should be about ready.”
Still surrounded by half the population of Fair Oaks, Leo and her mother made their way back to the car. Apparently, she hadn’t just misjudged her parents; she had also misjudged the entire town.