Chapter 2 - The Funeral That Wasn't His
By the time we reached the funeral home the next day, Brittany had already chosen everything.
"I know exactly what he would have wanted," she told family friends, dabbing at eyes that never actually watered. "The lilies were his favorite."
They weren't. Dad hated lilies. Mom loved them, and Brittany knew it — I was sure of that the second the words left her mouth.
"And this photo. So handsome. He loved this one." It was a stiff corporate headshot from a retirement dinner ten years earlier. Dad had complained about that tie for a solid week straight.
"Brittany," I said, keeping my voice level, "we have the picture from the lake house. The one on the dock."
She patted my arm like I was a child who'd said something cute. "Oh, sweetie. That's not really funeral-appropriate, is it? He's in a T-shirt."
Eric turned and walked outside before he said something none of us could take back.
I followed him.
He leaned against my car, arms crossed, jaw locked so tight I could see it working.
"She's listing the house, Rachel."
"What?"
"The house. Our house. I checked. She's already got it listed with an agent. Photos and everything — she just hasn't posted it publicly yet."
Something in my chest went very still. "How do you know that?"
"A friend at the brokerage. She started the paperwork three days before he died, Rachel. Three days."
I stared across the parking lot, not really seeing it.
"I fixed it in time," I said.
"What?"
"Something Dad said. In the hospital. He grabbed my hand and said, 'I fixed it in time.' I thought he was just rambling from the medication."
Eric looked at me hard. "Fixed what?"
"I don't know. I don't know yet."
At the funeral, the chapel reeked of lilies Dad had spent his whole life avoiding. Brittany had ordered three enormous arrangements for the altar, as if volume could make up for the fact that she'd gotten it completely wrong.
Eric sat beside me, jaw locked, hands folded so tightly his knuckles had gone white.
Brittany sat in the front row in black Chanel, pressing a dry tissue to a dry cheek, glancing around the room every few minutes like a hostess checking whether her party was going well.
"That's not even his song," Eric muttered under the piano.
"I know."
"That photo doesn't even look like him."
"I know, Eric."
The picture propped on the easel was from some charity gala Brittany had dragged him to. His smile in it was polite. Tired. Not his.
I kept my hands folded in my lap and stared at the funeral program instead. My father's whole life, reduced to a font Brittany had picked because it "looked expensive."
Behind us, family friends whispered to each other. I could feel their eyes moving from Eric and me, to Brittany, and back again — like everyone in that room could sense something was wrong and nobody wanted to be the first to say it out loud.
Brittany checked her phone.
Once.
Twice.
Then her eyes drifted toward the main doors.
Phone. Doors. Phone again.
Whoever she was waiting for wasn't showing up.
Eric leaned toward me. "I swung by the house this morning for Dad's cufflinks. The code didn't work. She changed the locks yesterday."
Something shifted in my chest. Not panic this time.
The opposite of panic.
The pastor kept talking about a man I barely recognized — charitable, devoted, a man who'd "found love again in his golden years." Brittany dabbed at her tissue like she was on cue.
I thought about Dad in that hospital bed. "I fixed it, sweetheart. I fixed it in time."
I needed to understand those words more than I'd ever needed to understand anything.
Then the funeral director came through a side door carrying an envelope.
He walked down the aisle and bent beside Brittany. Whispered something in her ear.
I watched the color drain out of her face in real time.
Her jaw went slack. The tissue slipped from her hand into her lap.
"Rachel," Eric breathed.
"I see it."
Brittany hissed something back at the director, low and fast. He shook his head — calm, unmoved — and pointed at the envelope in his hand.
She stood up too fast. Her clutch hit the floor with a crack loud enough to make three people jump in their seats.
She didn't pick it up.
She bolted through the staff door.
The whole room went dead silent. The pastor stopped mid-sentence, unsure whether to keep going.
Eric turned to me. "What just happened?"
"I don't know yet."
"Should we go find out?"
"Yes."
I stood up, smoothed the front of my dress the way Mom used to before church, and stepped into the aisle. Every set of eyes in that chapel followed me.
For the first time in six years, I didn't shrink under them.
Eric followed right behind me. The funeral director met my eyes as we passed and gave me one small nod — the look of a man finally handing off something he'd been carrying too long.
I thought about Dad's whisper. I thought about that folded paper in the kitchen six years ago, the one I'd let slide across the counter without ever asking what it said.
At the side door, Eric put a hand briefly against my back. "Whatever's behind this door, we're doing it together."
May you like
"I know."
Down the corridor, Brittany's voice was already sharp and cracking.
