“Fine, I’ll call.” He lifted my hand to his lips to kiss it. “I’m sorry I worried you.”
“We’ll talk about it later. Let’s just get through this week. I know it’s going to be hard for you.” I searched his expression for any indication of grief or sadness. Mainly, he just looked tired.
“It will be. I suspect I won’t fall apart until after the funeral, though. At the moment, I’m just…numb.” He shrugged. “It was this way when my father died. It was so sudden, I shut down.”
“Is that why you were on the psychotropic train to Blissville?”
The suggestion of a resigned smile crossed his face. “I needed to feel something. And to not feel anything.”
“Not what you were feeling before. I get it.” I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Your mother loved you so much.”
“She did.” He put his arm around me and squeezed me to his side.
“It’s okay if you’re still in shock. There aren’t any rules for how to grieve.” I wished I was better at comforting people. “You can’t beat yourself up over what you’re not feeling. Especially when you know that, eventually, you’ll get there.”
He kissed the top of my head. “Thank you for being sensible when I can’t.”
“And thank you for being sensible enough to get some counseling.” There. I was being so earnest he’d have to go through with it.
Neil stood and took a few unsteady steps. “Oh dear god, the head rush.”
I started to get up to rescue him, but he straightened out on his own, albeit staggering like a sailor. He dragged his hands down his face. “You’re right, Sophie. I have been incredibly stupid.”
“Your equilibrium is punishing you worse than I ever could,” I chirped happily.
There was a knock at the door, and Michael asked, “Mr. Elwood, can I speak to you?”
“Come in,” Neil called, straightening his shirt and combing his fingers through his mussed hair.
Michael entered and quietly closed the door, but he kept his hand on the handle. “Are you a little more together now?”
“Yes. And thank you, Michael, for helping Sophie—”
“I wasn’t helping Sophie,” Michael interrupted. It took me a second to figure out what was off about him. Michael was angry. We’d never seen it before.
I wondered if Neil even recognized it yet.
“I was helping you,” Michael went on, with the calm, controlled anger of Tom Cruise learning he’s been betrayed in a movie. “I was helping you so that your daughter, my wife, who is carrying the baby we worked incredibly hard to conceive, isn’t subjected to any more stress than she’s already under from the death of her grandmother.”
Neil said nothing. Though his face didn’t give it away, I knew he had to be shocked at this, coming from Michael.
After his initial outburst, he was much more subdued. “Look, I understand you’re hurting. And I’m probably being overprotective—”
“Neil wouldn’t know anything about that,” I said, forcing a laugh that earned me two very terse looks. If Neil could have sent me a mental message, it would have been something like, “Sophie, now is not the time.”
I was pretty sure those were the exact words in his head at that moment.
Michael went on. “If I’m being overprotective, it’s because I love her. And she’s been disappointed so many times. I couldn’t take it if—”
“It’s understood,” Neil said uncomfortably. “And you’re right. I’ve acted very selfishly.”
“Emma’s going to be fine,” I assured both of them. “God, you guys treat pregnant women like they’re made out of glass. We don’t have to lie to her about this. If she asks what’s going on, we’ll tell her.”
“No, we won’t,” Neil said firmly.
“So, we’re just going to keep it this weird family secret, then? The time Daddy almost ODed at Grandma’s funeral? That sounds like a really bad country song.” I looked to Michael. “You don’t have to march in there, right now, and wake her up and tell her all this. Neil’s going to get treatment, and he can tell Emma, then. He’s going to need support, and she’s going to need to know what’s up with her dad. Under no circumstances are the two of you to conspire to keep her in the dark because of your crazy, overprotective man-vibes.”
“I think Sophie’s solution sounds pretty sensible, don’t you?” Michael asked Neil.
“Yes, well, Sophie is often sensible,” he grumbled in reply. “Yes, fine. When we get back to New York, I’ll sit down with her and discuss it.”
“At least you can see that you have a problem,” Michael said with a look of empathy. “You hid it really well.”
“You hid it really well from me,” I added softly.
“I’m sorry we had to have this conversation.” Michael stuck his hand out, and when Neil took the bait, tall, lanky Michael went in for an inescapable hug. He clapped Neil on the back and said, “I have nothing but respect for you, Mr. Elwood.”
Neil cleared his throat. “Best you should go check on Emma.”
“Right.” Michael turned to me. “Sophie, sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I said breezily, and instantly felt like a weirdo. “It’s fine,” like my steak was slightly overcooked or something. When he’d gone, I looked up at Neil and sing-songed, “Awkward.”
Neil checked his watch and winced. “Now I’ve done it. I’m supposed to be at the funeral director’s in forty minutes. Can you call for the car while I wash up?”
“Yeah, no problem.” I paused. “Do you want me to go with you?”
“If you wouldn’t mind?” He asked as though he were asking whether or not I minded going to a particular restaurant. “I think it would be…easier if you were there.”
“Of course I’ll go. I just didn’t want to crowd you during all of this. I can stick to you like glue, if you want, and then, if you need to, you can tell me to take a hike.” I reached for the phone on the nightstand.
“Thank you, Sophie. I’d like that.” He smiled, despite the dark circles under his eyes. He held my gaze for a long time. “Stuck to me like glue. As if I could ever doubt that.”
There are times when I see another facet of Neil I hadn’t known before, and it overwhelms me. My chest feels like it’ll collapse under the weight of the sweet ache there. And, in those moments, I can’t say what I want to say because I feel too much.
So, this time, I said, “Go get cleaned up, dummy,” and smiled at him, and he smiled back, and we both knew how we felt.
* * * *
The purpose of the funeral home visit was two-fold. Neil and his siblings were all meeting the funeral director together to go over the plans their mother had left behind regarding her burial wishes, and Neil, Fiona, Runólf, and Geir would be able to see their mother one last time.
We stood beneath the awning over the funeral home doors. Neil adjusted his scarf around the collar of his black wool coat. He’d been fidgety since we’d left the house. I wondered if that had to do with the Valium and THC still muddling his head. More likely, it was a reaction to facing the unknown. Neil hated doing that.
“Are you ready?” I prompted him, not out of impatience, but cold. It was freezing, even though I’d opted for slacks instead of a skirt.
He nodded, his breath showing in the winter air. “I think so. Best to get this over with, I suppose.”
Inside, Neil’s brothers, Runólf and Geir, stood talking near a fireplace. Their wives sat with Fiona, consoling her.
“Neil,” Geir said with his characteristic gruffness somewhat subdued. Neil didn’t bother to take his coat off before enveloping his brother in a long hug.
“Have you seen her?” Neil asked them both when he stepped back.
Runólf nodded and gestured toward a set of double doors. “Shall I go with you?”
“No, no.” Neil waved his brother off, as though it were far too much to ask of him. Then, he turned to me. “Sophie, would you mind?”
I am not a fan of dead bod
ies. The thought that we were in a building with one, probably more than one, utterly creeped me out. But he was my fiancé, and I loved him, and he needed me.
The undertaker opened the doors for us, and we stepped into a neat, softly lit chapel. The casket was a shock; it was an honest to god coffin, nothing like the refrigerator shaped ones in the states. Neil’s mother lay in gentle repose, but she didn’t have the waxy pallor of an embalmed body. She looked…dead. Rose was dead. It was hard to believe it, even seeing her there.
A shuddering sound escaped Neil, and I took his hand. I laced our fingers together and squeezed, but I waited for him to speak.
He gave me a very brave, very grim, closed-lipped smile and squeezed back before he let go. He stepped up closer to the casket and reached out to lay his hand over his mother’s folded ones. He pulled back in surprise. With a soft, embarrassed laugh, he looked up at me and said, “She’s so cold.”
I struggled not to cry for him. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to lose a parent. Granted, I only had the one, but Neil had been through the loss of his father years earlier. It seemed unfair that people had to do this more than once.
Tears shone in Neil’s eyes, and a muscle in his jaw ticked. “After Emma’s wedding, I promised Mum that we would come visit soon. I wish we would have.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.” I put my arm around his waist, and he turned to me for a hug. There were times when I leaned on him— most of the time, actually—but every now and again, he needed me. I was grateful for each of those moments, because he didn’t display emotional vulnerability to many people.
“I would give anything to hear her call me little bird, just once more.” He wept into my hair.
I hugged him tightly, one arm around his waist, one across his shoulder blades. I hadn’t known Rose well, but I grieved for her, because Neil loved her. And because she was the woman who birthed and nurtured and raised Neil, shaping who he was today. I owed her my entire heart.
He raised his head and stepped back, sniffing through his tears. It somewhat ruined the look of composure he tried to affect. He reached into his coat for a handkerchief and held the square of red fabric bunched in his hands. “You know…” he began, his speech thick with tears, “I’d really rather go back to being numb.”
Since there was nothing I could fix, I put my arm through his and led him from the chapel.
CHAPTER THREE
Rose Elwood’s funeral was dignified and respectful, which made sense because she’d planned the whole thing. After the private family viewing, Rose had been cremated, and her remains sealed in a tasteful bronze jar. A high mass at St. Paul’s Knightsbridge, packed to the brim with mourners, was followed by a dignified reception at Fiona’s townhouse in Kensington. Rose had spent her last days there, being cared for by her daughter.
The house was beautiful, and perhaps a little bigger than our townhouse. The doorways were topped by classical friezes of slender maidens in togas, the floors carpeted in area rugs that probably cost more than a mid-sized sedan. I looked into the parlor, where Fiona sat on a mauve satin chair, accepting the condolences of guests.
There was an unfairness to the situation that nagged at me. Fiona had cared for her mother in the years after her stroke, while her brothers had been off having their own lives. I knew Fiona had been married and divorced before I’d ever met Neil, and that she’d had some financial troubles following the dissolution of her marriage. Neil had purchased this house for her, but that didn’t really make up for the fact that he and his brothers hadn’t pulled their weight in caring for their mother. The year he’d spent battling leukemia I forgave, obviously. But what about his brothers, Runólf and Geir? They hadn’t even visited their brother when he’d been sick, and I knew they hadn’t been regularly seeing their mother.
It seemed extremely unfair to Fiona. She’d put her life aside, and why? Because she was the only girl?
To her credit, she was holding up well, despite how difficult it must have been to care for her mother for this whole time.
Everyone was holding up surprisingly well, though. I chalked it up to the fact that Neil and his siblings didn’t have time to emotionally break down; every moment was packed with family friends and distant relations. I stood beside him, calm and supportive, and shook hands when introduced to people. It was a bit draining, and I worried for Neil, since he was under about ten times more emotional stress than I was.
After a while, I could tell he needed a break. “Let’s go out for a smoke,” I said, nudging him.
“We don’t—” Then, he smiled gratefully. “All right.”
We stepped out the back doors and onto the terraced patio. The shrubs in the garden and large swaths of flowerbeds were covered with black plastic to weather the winter. The cold air hit us like knives, and our breath showed on the air.
“Still better than being inside, at least for the moment,” he said, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“The funeral was really nice, Neil. The flowers were lovely.” I had to compliment the flowers. He’d picked them out himself, which I thought was incredibly sweet. There had been plenty of roses, of course, but also gorgeous irises that complemented them. They were his mother’s favorite flower, he’d told me, and said that she lamented the fact she hadn’t been given that name, instead.
He nodded. “I think Mum would have been pleased with the way it turned out. And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” My mind veered off down a painful path. I remembered when Neil had told his funeral plans to Emma and me. I didn’t want to think of that any more now than I did then.
“What do you think happens when you die?” He scuffed the heel of his shoe across some ice on the pavement.
I shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.”
“I think that’s what I believe.” He looked up at the sky, his hands in his trouser pockets. “I wish I could imagine a time when I could see her again. But it seems unlikely.”
“That’s what I hate the most. Not that I’ll cease to exist, but that my loved ones will.” I shuddered at the thought of Neil someday dying. Unless I got horribly sick or suffered an accident, he wasn’t going to outlive me. Our twenty-four year age gap would probably leave me widowed in my fifties. Rose had warned me about that, about the loneliness she’d felt when Neil’s father had died young. A world without Neil, for me, wouldn’t be much of a world at all.
He cleared his throat, but no amount of coughing would erase the thick emotion from his voice. “People say ‘they’ll live on in your memory,’ but it isn’t the same. I don’t want my mother in my memory; I want her here, with me. And I wasted so much time.”
“Then, you just have to be thankful for the time you didn’t waste.” I wished I could siphon the hurt from him and take it for a few hours. Just to give him a break.
A click of heels on pavement alerted us to the presence of someone else. I turned to see Valerie approaching.
“Neil, I have to go, but I need to speak with you and Sophie before you return to New York. At your earliest convenience.”
“Oh?” His eyebrows shot up. “Valerie, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my mother has just died.”
“Believe me, if it could wait, it would.” Valerie looked to me, imploring.
Neil frowned. “Is this business related or—”
“Come by the house tonight,” I interrupted. Whatever it was she wanted to tell us, I owed it to Valerie to listen. She’d listened to me.
“Thank, you Sophie. I will. I’ll call first.”
“Thanks.” I watched her go inside then I turned back to Neil. “It sounded important.”
“Your idea of important and Valerie’s idea of important—”
“Don’t.” I held up a hand to stop him. “If you don’t want to talk to her, I will. But she really helped me out when you were trainspotting it up yesterday.”
“Fair enough,” he grumbled. I wasn’t sure if he genuinely didn’t want t
o see Valerie—he was still touchy on the subject following my admission of the fight she and I’d had before Emma’s wedding—or if he was trying to protect my feelings. It wasn’t time for that, though; Valerie seemed really upset over something.
When we went back inside, Neil found his brothers and a few assorted cousins I’d already met chatting beside the thoughtfully provided whiskey. I drifted off to find Emma and spotted her lingering near the crudités.
“How are you doing?” I asked, glancing down at her swollen ankles.
“I am avoiding my husband,” she said, casting a wary glance around the crowded sitting room. “There’s concern, and then there’s blatant overprotective worry. I feel like I’m in prison.”
“In prison, they don’t give a shit about your health, though,” I reminded her. “I watch Orange Is The New Black. I know things.”
She snorted. “Can Larry just die or fall into a hole or something?”
I laughed. “But, seriously, are you doing okay?”
“I’m fine. A bit sad, but really, it’s a relief. She wasn’t herself anymore.” Emma looked down at the glass in her hand. “In a way, it was a bit like she died when she had that stroke.”
“I’m so sorry.” My own grandfather had suffered a minor stroke that had paralyzed a part of his face; it hadn’t done anything to his mind, the way it had to Rose. It made me even more grateful that he’d been able to spend his days in some version of coherence.
“I can’t believe how unexpected this was.” Emma wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. “I’m sorry, these damned hormones.”
“Yeah,” I said sympathetically. “Or your grandmother just died, and you’re grieving.”
She laughed through her tears. “Shut up, Sophie, you’re not helping.”
We stayed until the last guests left then the family retired to the drawing room, where I listened to Neil and his siblings reminisce about their mother with affection and sadness. There were so many stories: the time Rose had slipped in manure at a polo match, and Prince Philip had made an off-color remark about it. Family trips to the seaside. Funny phrases Rose had used through their childhood. All the comedy and tragedy of a life well lived.
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