Rain squeezes my hand.
It’s a warning squeeze, signaling that I’m getting too worked up.
I take a deep breath to calm myself. When Rust told me he was making me executor to his estate a few years ago, I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it. I definitely didn’t think that, at twenty-four years old, I’d be planning a closed-casket funeral for him. But now that the police have finished gathering evidence off of him—there’s no need for an extensive autopsy; it’s pretty clear that the bullet through the brain is what killed him—that’s exactly what I’m sitting here doing, with a very calm and collected Rain on my right side and the emotionally unstable duo—Mom and Ana—on my left, fighting me tooth-and-nail for a traditional Eastern Orthodox service.
“Rust didn’t want a service of any kind, or a wake. He made that very clear in his will. Which I spent all morning going through with the lawyer,” I say, tempering my tone. Rust never had much patience for the funeral process and he sure didn’t believe in God.
“But what about what we want? What his mother and father would want?” my mom cries, rubbing away the fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “If we go by those stupid papers, well . . . why don’t we just toss his body into the family vault!”
Reading between the lines, he’s basically asking for just that. But I don’t say that now.
“Are you going to keep fighting me on this? Or can we just move on with the arrangements?” Because I just want this to be over with.
“We can arrange for a lovely—and quick—service at the burial site for you that may help serve everyone’s needs while respecting Mr. Markov’s wishes,” the funeral director offers with a sympathetic smile. It’s the same smile she’s worn for the past hour, relieving it only with well-timed frowns or closed-eye nods to convey her deepest understanding. I wonder if these people are born with funeral worker genes or if they take extensive schooling for it, because everyone we’ve walked past on our way into this office is the exact same.
Rain’s ringer is off but I can hear her phone vibrating in her pocket. It’s been vibrating nonstop since we sat down in here but she hasn’t so much as pulled it out. I lean over. “You can take that if you need to. It could be about your dad.” With everything else going on, I haven’t even asked her what’s happening with him and she hasn’t mentioned it.
She frowns. “Yeah, I probably should. If you’re okay here?”
“What else do we need to do?” I ask the funeral director.
She lays a catalogue out in front of us with utmost care. “Well, there is the matter of choosing a casket, writing the obituary . . .”
Her words drift off as I turn back to Rain. “We can handle this.”
She pats my leg and then stands. “Okay, I’ll just be outside.”
I watch her walk out, feeling immediately lonely. She’s been by my side—watching reruns of my stupid favorite shows, feeding me, walking the dogs with me, lying next to me while I fall asleep—since the cops first showed up at my door. I don’t know what I’d do without her.
