“Hello again,” I paused and looked over to Damon. ‘Hello’ was pretty much all I had planned. He nodded his head toward me in encouragement. “Thank you for coming. It’s great to see you all . . . even with . . . even under these circumstances.”
Stay positive, Hat. Stay focused. Say something good.
More flour in my throat.
“I wish my mom were here,” I said. “Not only because I miss her, but because she loved you all so much that she’d really enjoy seeing you together.” A bit of nervous laughter shot out my mouth, through the microphone, and over the heads of the silent room. Damon’s hand appeared next to me, holding a glass of water. The crowd stirred uncomfortably as they waited for me to drink from the glass.
Okay, Hat, get it together. You’ve got this. You’ve got this.
My siblings had moved closer to the riser and were looking up at me with supportive eyes. Charley and Sydney flanked Finn, all three holding hands and waiting to hear what I would say next. It was sweet, but I wanted to throw the microphone at them for making me stand there by myself.
“So, this sucks,” I said.
A mixture of laughter and throat clearing filled the room. I knew only my family would appreciate my candor, the rest probably found it inappropriate given the circumstances. “I’m sorry, but it does.” I drank more water and handed the glass back to Damon. “I wish we weren’t here. We lost a great person . . . actually, a great person was taken from us, too soon. I’m not just saying she’s great just because she’s . . . dead, and that’s what people always seem to do in situations like this, right? They stand up and talk about how great someone was, even if they weren’t. But she was . . . she was great every day and to all of us.”
Okay, bring it back now Hat, get it together. You’ve got this.
“I don’t know what to say, except that you’ve probably noticed today is not a wake, or a funeral, or anything else like that. My mom . . .” I looked over to my siblings again, “. . . our mom was someone who liked to celebrate life. She wouldn’t want us all here being sad for her because she’d think it was a waste of time. She always told me she was so loved that she couldn’t be anything but thankful for every moment she was living, and that when she died, she’d die surrounded by people that loved her, and how could you be sad about that?”
Tears filled the room as everything got a little more real than anyone was prepared to handle. “And . . . and those of you who knew her well know that she always said death only sucks for the people left living. I know she’s here somewhere, smiling at you all and sending the comfort and support that . . .”
It’s Mom, Hat. She’s dead.
My body could no longer hold back. My stomach started contracting and tears streamed down my face.
“I guess that’s all I have to say. I love you . . . we love you and . . .”
The contractions and tears became so violent that I couldn’t take it anymore. I tossed the microphone to Gloria, jumped off the stage and rushed through the crowd to lock myself in a nearby bedroom.
“Hat was right,” I heard Gloria say into the microphone as I leaned up against the bedroom door. “This does suck.” The crowd laughed a little again.
“As many of you know, this is not the first time I’ve been up here, looking out at all of you. Mia is the third sibling to leave us, and her death saddens me in ways I can’t express to you. She was often my source of advice and comfort, and I miss her so much. Today, I try to accept the loss of a sister, a friend, an ally, and . . . a pretty wonderful woman.”
She paused briefly as one of my cousin’s babies started crying hysterically and then giggled a little to herself.
“Speaking of babies . . .” Gloria continued over the noise, “I was only about seven years old when Mia was born, but I remember the day our parents brought her home from the hospital so clearly. She was smiling and happy then, too. Just like she was for the rest of her life, Mia’s presence as a baby was . . . all encompassing, and the rest of us would always look at her in such awe. She hardly acted like the middle child she was born to be. She was electrifying . . . strong-willed . . . a leader, and she loved her children and her family more than anything else in this world.”
There was a long pause and a sniffle from my aunt that I could hear even behind the closed door. “This family always takes care of each other, and we’ll handle this sadness together just like every other challenge we’ve ever faced. Mia will be missed, but if she was here she’d be yelling at me from the back of the room telling us to stop crying over her and to have a good time. So, in honor of her, that’s what we’re going to do. We always listened to Mia in life, but now we must listen to her in death. Celebrate. Enjoy your time together. That is all.”
A knock at the bedroom door followed a few minutes later. “Hat, you have some people here,” Paige said.
By then, I had mostly composed myself. And by composed, I mean I shoved all signs of emotion down so deep you’d need a drill, a hammer, and a circus contortionist to get it out. I re-emerged from the bedroom to see Talia, Graham, and a few other people from work standing by the door.
“Hey, handsome,” Talia said, wrapping her arms around my neck.
I gave a forced laugh and reached my hand around her to shake Graham’s. “Thanks for coming, you didn’t have to.”
“Of course we did,” Graham said.
When Talia moved away, he came close to me and put his arm around my shoulder. “Listen buddy, if you need some time to rest, recoup, whatever . . . you take as much as you need. Paid. Whatever you need, really.”
“Thanks, that’s really nice.” I shifted underneath his lingering arm and looked at Talia. “Wait. How did you hear about this?”
“Um,” Talia’s eyes widened and looked around the crowd, “Damon.”
Of course, Damon. Those two could never seem to stay away from each other very long.
The crowds started to thin out, and my obligatory acceptance of condolences was becoming sparse. I was watching two of my cousin’s kids fidget anxiously and I couldn’t help but feel bad for them. While both were well-behaved, they were too young to be so somber and still for that long a time. Everyone moved so mechanically around us, and I don’t think they knew how to act. Having never lost a parent before, I had no idea how people were supposed to act around me, and certainly had no better of an idea on how to act around them.
Fake laughter was what brought me out of my quiet observation. I turned and watched as Camille flirted shamelessly with a tall and handsome man with salt and pepper hair. Regardless of her surroundings or the situation, Camille considered flirting, and all the things that came after flirting, in good taste. Her bedroom had seen more men than a barbershop, yet she was the only one of my mother’s sisters to never marry. She also loved leftovers, and I was fairly sure that the man she was talking to had been around before with at least one of her sisters.
I stole a cigarette from Sydney’s purse and walked outside to light it. Camille’s cackling was an uninvited guest in the already overfull ravine my mind had turned into. Loving people in your family is natural, but liking them—that takes work. And it was just too hard that day.
“Let me know if you need anything,” Damon said to me quietly as he was leaving. He and my mom were close, and if I could have stepped outside of my own head for a few minutes, I might have noticed that her death was hard for him too.
Self-centered, party of one, your table is now ready.
At least he wasn’t leaving alone. Talia said goodbye to me and walked with Damon down the street, stopping for a tender kiss and a long hug. Then they moved slowly through the pockets of cars, and passed someone I couldn’t see at first, who walked unhurriedly toward the house.
Fuck! I thought, when I realized who it was. He was the last person I wanted to see, but it was too late to hide from him; he’d already seen me.
; Chapter 6
“What’s up, Fattie?” he asked as he approached the door. I leaned in for an uncomfortable hug, but he pushed past me into the house without saying anything else. My eye started twitching, something it only ever did, but usually always did, when he was around. I bit my lip and followed him back into the house.
“Hat,” Sydney called to me before rushing over from the kitchen as I was grabbing my keys, “You’re not leaving just because he’s here, are you?”
“No, I’m just really tired,” I said, kissing her on the cheek and then making my way back to the door.
“Hat,” Sydney yelled behind me. The door was closed behind me before she finished. One second with Victor Walker, older brother or not, was one second more than I could handle.
* * * * *
Sleep that night was onerous. I tossed so barbarically that my sheets somehow ended up wrapped around my neck. Poor Cat didn’t know what to do with himself as he tried to find a spot on the bed free from my constant movement. When I did fall asleep, it was brief, and I’d wake up only to remember the events of the prior two days.
It’s Mom, Hat. She’s dead.
Each time it happened, it was like I was experiencing it for the first time. After a while, it just wasn’t worth trying anymore. I decided that if anything in my life was going to start feeling normal again, I had to force it back to normal. That’s what people do right? That’s how they move on? It had to be better than reliving those days over and over again.
People were surprised to see me in the office so soon. Their eyes roamed cautiously over me as I tried to sneak to my desk unnoticed. If I was going to have a normal day, I couldn’t spend it listening to people tell me how sorry they were for me.
“Hat?” Graham yelled from his office when I walked by it later with my third cup of coffee.
“Hey,” I said without lingering near the door.
“Come in here for a minute. We need to talk.”
All my life, whenever someone said, “We need to talk”, something in me snapped, and a survival reflex would prompt me to immediately start scoping out an exit plan. It was like the alarm that sounds at the fire station: fierce, absolute, and impossible to ignore. No one ever said, “We need to talk”, and then followed it up by telling you how nice their day was, or how much they enjoyed the shirt you were wearing. It was always, always, a way to start a conversation I didn’t want to have. It was the trumpet announcing Confrontation, my arch-nemesis, before he entered the arena to battle me.
I slipped into Graham’s office and shut the door. “What’s up?”
“I thought we decided you were going to take a few days off?”
“I just needed to be somewhere, doing something. I’m fine. Really,” I said, slowly sipping from my coffee cup.
“I don’t know if I believe that you’re fine, but I guess I understand.”
The door opened and Talia peeked her head in. “Ballari’s on the line,” she said to Graham.
“Got it. Buddy, I have to take this, but just try to take it easy. Okay?”
“Sure,” I said, escaping his office and closing the door behind me.
Talia followed me back to my desk, shaking her head. “I cannot believe you’re here,” she said, taking my cup of coffee from me and sipping from it. She was wearing what I liked to call her reporter outfit: a crisp collared shirt and a long gray skirt that gave her an extra-sharp look, especially with her dark-rimmed vanity glasses and her hair up in a tight bun.
“Yeah, I just couldn’t stay away,” I said. “I needed to get out, get moving, you know. There was too much time to think at home.”
“I get it. It’s been a rough couple of days for you. I can distract you . . . if you want. I went home with Damon last night.”
“So I saw. How’d that go?”
“Good,” she said playfully. “I don’t know. He was sad. I was sad. I figured a good fuck would do us both some good.” We both laughed a little at the truth of it. “I gotta get back to work, more on this later.”
As she turned to walk away, her skirt got caught on the rough corner of my metal desk and ripped a little. “Damn it!” she screamed.
“It’s okay,” I said, looking at the rip. “It’s only a little rip. I bet it’ll be easy to fix.”
“No, it won’t. It’s ruined,” Talia said, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. Even after having known her for a few years, I couldn’t say that I really understood what went on in that head. One moment she was calm and collected, and the next, something small like that would tip her over the edge and she’d become nearly apoplectic.
“Talia . . .”
Talia shook her head eccentrically and then smiled. “You’re right,” she said, “it’s just a little rip. No big deal.”
Women.
Okay, Hat. It’s a normal Monday. Everything is normal. Time to do some normal stuff.
I picked up the phone and work continued just like it always did. Despite how I felt about my job, there was something comforting about knowing that a bomb could blow up the city, and aliens could enslave the surviving population, but Cartwright & Company would still be open, business as usual.
When I turned back to my computer screen, an instant message from our receptionist was waiting for me. “Someone is here with a package, but he says that you have to sign for it yourself.”
In the lobby stood an overweight and damp looking courier from my mother’s lawyer’s office. “Just some paperwork. Sign this here,” he said. He wiped his greasy forehead, and then used the same hand to give me a clipboard stuffed with crumpled papers.
Lovely.
“Thanks,” I said insincerely. I opened the envelope slowly as I wandered back to my desk. The first word that peeked out was “estate,” and quickly I shoved it back in the envelope.
The word “estate” was almost funny. Like my mother was some kind of socialite heiress. It more likely was that she had little more than her house, and I would have traded it, and anything in it, to have her back. It was weird to think about her having an “estate” at all, a term you only seemed to hear when someone died. She was really dead, and I didn’t know if I would ever get used to that.
“Hey, can you help me?” a woman’s voice asked from behind a large box.
“Oh, sure.” I dropped the envelope and took the box out of her hands.
“It’s Manhattan, right?” she asked.
“Yeah.” I balanced the box between my desk and my hip so I could shake her hand. Her handshake was assertive, but her skin was soft and smooth. “You can call me Hat, or whatever.”
“Okay ‘Whatever’, call me Liv—well, call me Liv if you want me to answer. Listen, I have to bring this stuff and a bunch more to a house I’m working on and I could use some help. Do you think you could come along?” She gracefully brushed a piece of blond hair out of her eyes. Her naturally golden locks were in a constant state of flux around her pleasant, almost familiar face.
Dear god, yes . . . get me out of here. “Sure,” I said.
I had seen Liv around the office from time to time, but we had never officially met. She was Cartwright’s interior decorator and usually worked alone off site. On the rare occasion that I would hear about her, it was usually eavesdropping on some new guy trying to figure out if she was seeing anyone. She was indeed beautiful, so their interest wasn’t surprising. If her charmingly slender body and bright blue eyes weren’t enough to make a man instantly fall in love with her, then her hair was. That hair. It smelled like a tropical forest, and it went on forever.
“Thanks for coming,” she said as we rode in her sleek BMW SUV to the job. “There’s just so much to do.”
I wiggled in my seat. “No problem.”
“Was it your mom who just passed away?” she asked bluntly as she steered through lunch hour traffic without bothering to use her blin
ker.
Please don’t make a big deal about it. Please don’t make a big deal about it. Please don’t make . . .”Um . . . yeah,” I finally said.
“Well that sucks,” she said.
I laughed a little. “My thoughts exactly.”
We arrived at a large home off Federal Hill, and you could tell that whoever lived there spent a lot of money to keep it looking nicer than the houses around it. Liv haphazardly examined various paint chips, fabric squares, and carpet samples while I unloaded the boxes from her SUV.
“This is the third time I’ve redecorated this house in two years. This woman gets bored easily,” she said as she flipped through a wallpaper booklet. “I just can’t even be creative in here anymore. What do you think of this?” She held up a green and yellow pin-striped wallpaper sample.
I squinted at the paper. “It’s nice,” I said. I turned away from her and continued to stack more boxes in the corner of the room.
“Ugh, please. That’s not what you really think, is it?” She took a couple steps closer to me and stuck the sample in my face.
“What? No . . . no, it’s fine.”
“No, it’s fine, huh?” She turned her head and leered at me through one eye. “Why don’t you tell me what you really think?”
I took a deep breath and exhaled. “It looks like baby vomit.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” She laughed a little and dropped the book on the couch. “And you’re absolutely right; it’s awful.” She jumped backward onto the couch, stretching out her arms and letting her stylish, brown suede boots land on the antique coffee table.
“I bet there’s hope for you yet,” she said as she idly fingered the little gold plate necklace that fell over the short-sleeved, tan dress she wore.
After I finished bringing in all the boxes, Liv sent me to the kitchen to fetch some waters. Doing so made me feel a little like an uninvited guest fumbling around the house of someone I didn’t know. Apparently though, that four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom palace with a massive solarium was just a summer home. Can a house with a solarium qualify as just a summer home? But what did I know? I lived in a four hundred square foot hovel underneath a Colombian fish market, and regularly found emptied purses and wallets tossed aside, post-crime, on my stoop.
Secrets The Walkers Keep: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Casters of Magic Series Book 1) Page 5