She died.
I’m alive.
I look down at Skylar. She looks nothing like Kendra. Kendra was biracial, so she had skin the color of sweet coffee, and she wore her hair natural but short. Skylar is light skinned, blond, and blue eyed. She has rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses pushed up on top of her head, holding her hair back from her face. It hangs halfway down her back in soft waves.
The preacher starts to speak at the front of the church, and Skylar closes her eyes. She squeezes her hands together in her lap, and I can’t tell what’s going on in her head. I wish I knew.
I reach out and take her hand in mine without even thinking about it. I tuck our twined fingers down on the seat between us, and I give her a gentle squeeze. She looks up at me and blinks slowly, her blue eyes startled. But then they soften and she blinks at me again, and this time she really looks at me. She squeezes my hand back, and I don’t let her go. I hold it until both our palms start to sweat.
I get so wrapped up in the feel of her hand in mine and the soft drone of the preacher, that it startles me when a cough jerks me out of my trance. I look up and see a tall man looking down his nose at me. He nudges my knee. “I think you’re in my spot,” he says.
I look at Skylar, and she is just as shocked as I am. She pulls her hand from mine and wipes it on her skirt. I scoot over, and he settles down beside her. He drops an arm around her shoulders, and she leans over to press her lips to his. It’s a quick kiss, one that makes me wonder how often he does it and if it’s always quite that chaste.
Great, now I’m thinking about how it feels to kiss her. Shit. Where did that come from?
Finally, they roll the casket from the church, and we all follow to the graveside. I am a pallbearer and so are my brothers. My brothers are really good for things like that. I volunteered them when Mr. Morgan called to ask me to do it.
I take the carnation off my lapel, lay it on top of the casket, and go to stand with my brothers behind the crowd.
Emily threads her arm through mine. “Who is the guy?” she asks, nodding toward the man who’s standing with Skylar.
I shrug. “I have no idea.”
“Does she have a boyfriend?” Reagan asks.
My brothers are silent. I wish Logan and Pete would tell their girls to shut it for a few minutes and quit being so nosy. I tap Emily on the tip of her nose, and she scrunches up her face. “Stop being so curious,” I tell her.
I wrap my arm around Reagan and pull her to me. I like it when she goes all soft against me, because when she’s not soft, she’s ready to take my head off with a karate chop. I have been on the wrong end of a startled Reagan before, and I don’t particularly want to go there again.
“You okay?” she asks quietly.
I heave a sigh. “I guess.” I shake my head. “I still can’t believe she’s gone,” I say.
Reagan kisses my cheek and then stops to wipe her thumb across the lipstick she must have left on my skin. She smiles. “I’m glad you got better,” she says quietly.
I squeeze her. “Me, too.”
But shit. I feel guilty. Kendra left behind three children.
I see Skylar walking toward us, and Emily and Reagan step back. The heels of the three-inch-high shoes Skylar’s wearing sink into the earth, and she totters a little because of it. I reach out to help steady her with a hand on her elbow. She stops in front of me.
“Thank you for being there with her,” Skylar says quietly.
“She was my friend,” I explain. I don’t know what else to say.
She looks into my eyes. “Was she in a lot of pain?” she asks. She shakes her head. “I tried to talk to Seth about it, but he pretty much pretends I don’t exist.”
I shove my hands in my pockets. “What do you mean? He’s not giving you a hard time, is he?”
She shakes her head again. “No. He’s perfect. He takes his sisters to day care in the morning and picks them up after school. He feeds them, and he bathes them. He won’t let me do anything. I think I’m just a placeholder.” She blows out a heavy breath.
I scratch my head. I don’t know how to tell her what I want to say.
“What?” she asks, her delicate brow arching.
“Kendra asked him to make it easy for you,” I admit. “When she was dying, she told him some things about how to be a good man. Always open car doors. Carry a handkerchief on dates, because you never know when she’ll cry. Never let her pay for dinner.” I take a deep breath. “And she told him to make it easy for you.”
Her mouth opens like she wants to say something but nothing comes out. She’s speechless. She closes it tightly, pressing her lips together. “What else did she tell him?”
“Just normal stuff about dying,” I tell her. It was soul-wrenching to watch. I’d finally had to leave the room so I wouldn’t upset them both with my sobbing. I missed some things as a result.
“I don’t know what to do with kids,” she says.
“They don’t really need much,” I say. “Just for you to love them.”
“I’m trying,” she says.
I want to lay my hand on the back of her hair and smooth down the length of it. I bet it feels like silk.
“I, um, should have introduced you to my boyfriend,” she says. “Do you want to meet him?”
I shake my head. I see him talking with Mr. Morgan. Skylar’s dad doesn’t look like he’s impressed.
“When you, um, took my hand…” she says. “I should have told you.”
“Why?” I look down at her. She comes up to my shoulder, even in her heels.
“I, um, didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
This time it’s me raising my brows at her. “Why did you think I took your hand?”
Her face colors. “I’m not sure,” she says.
I wrap my hand around her wrist and give her a soft squeeze. “I took your hand because you were trembling,” I say. “That’s all.” She’s trembling now, too, but I let her go.
“Oh,” she breathes.
She has her phone clutched in her free hand so I take it from her and add myself to her address book. “Do me a favor?” I say.
She looks up at me and then back down at the phone.
“Call me if you need anything. Anything at all. I promised their mom.”
“Okay,” she replies. “Thanks for everything.” Her blue eyes meet mine, and I have never seen anyone look quite so lost. But then her eyes narrow as her gaze shoots past me. “Shit,” she suddenly spits out.
“What?” I ask, looking over my shoulder toward the sedan that just pulled up.
“My mother is here,” she says. She squares her shoulders, and I suddenly see a spark that wasn’t there a moment ago. “Can you watch the children for a minute?” she asks.
“Why?”
“Just because,” she says. She grits her teeth and looks up at me. “Promise me. No matter what, don’t let her anywhere near the children.”
What the fuck? I look back at the sedan. The door opens, and an older and much harsher version of Skylar gets out.
“Okay…” I say slowly. Skylar nods her head, steels her spine, and walks toward her mother.
The rigidity of her posture makes me think of my own mother’s the time that Johnny Rickles stuck a “Kick me” note on my back and then watched all the other kids laugh. My mother went ballistic when she saw it. It’s a look that says danger will have to go through her before it gets to the children, and I think I just met Seth, Mellie, and Joey’s mom for the very first time. Her name is Skylar Morgan, and she’s tiny and gorgeous and awesome.
Skylar
I don’t know why she’s here, but I do know that she can’t stay. Mom pushes the black-veiled hat from in front of her eyes and smiles at me. “Good afternoon, darling,” she says, leaning forward just enough to not touch me as she places an air kiss near my cheek. Her breath reeks of scotch, and she sways a little on her feet.
“What are you doing here?” I hiss. I crowd my mother back toward the car until she’s standing in the open door. Her driver looks uncomfortable, and I immediately feel sorry for him.
“I came to pay my respects, dear,” she says. Her voice drips honey, but my mother has no sweetness about her.
“Get back in the car, Mother,” I say. I make a hasty motion with my hand.
“This is no way to treat your mother,” she says. Some of the sweetness has left her voice, but the mask isn’t coming off. Not yet, anyway.
“Mother,” I warn with a growl.
She heaves a sigh. “I just wanted to pay my respects,” she says again.
“Send a card,” I say.
She looks across the cemetery toward the grave, and her eyes narrow. “Are those the children?” she asks. Her face puckers as though she smells something bad.
“No,” I say.
“Then be a dear and tell me which ones they are, darling,” she says. “I want to meet them.”
“No,” I bite out.
“Rachel,” my father clips out as he quickly strides toward us.
“Oh, hello,” Mom chirps.
“Get in the car, Rachel,” he says. He takes my mother by the elbow and shoves her inside.
“But,” she sputters. He closes the back door on her and addresses her driver, who stands at attention near the car.
“Drive,” he says.
“Yes, sir,” the man replies, and he slides into the driver’s seat.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Dad says. “I need to get her out of here,” he explains.
I nod. “Why did she even come here?” I ask more to myself than to him.
“Because she is not in control of this part of my life,” he grinds out.
I look up at Dad. “Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you hadn’t married Mother?” I blurt out. No idea where that came from.
He presses his lips to my forehead really quickly. “Never, because then I wouldn’t have you.”
My gut clenches, and my head spins. “What?”
“Skylar, I love you,” he says. Then he slides in the car with Mother, and they pull out of the cemetery. I watch until their taillights fade in the distance.
“Everything all right?” a voice asks as it walks toward me. I look up and see Matthew Reed and four people who look remarkably like him.
“Fine,” I say, my hand waving breezily in the air because I don’t know what to do with it. “That was just my mother trying to insert herself somewhere she shouldn’t.”
Matt’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t say anything. He points to the men next to him, introducing each in turn. “My brothers—Paul, Logan, Sam, and Pete.” Each of them reaches to shake my hand. There are three women with them, too. “And this is Logan’s wife, Emily, and you already know Reagan.” I met Reagan by accident the day Kendra died. We shared a car ride.
The last one, a pretty, black-haired girl with tattoos up the side of her neck, steps forward holding out her hand. “Friday,” she says.
“It’s Saturday,” I say.
She laughs. “No, my name is Friday,” she clarifies. She leans into the biggest of the brothers—I think his name is Paul, but there are so freaking many of them—and he wraps an arm around her shoulders. “I work with these big lugs in the tattoo parlor.”
“Tattoo parlor?” I say. I must sound like a parrot because all I seem to be able to do is repeat what everyone else is saying.
“Reed’s,” Matt says. “We all work there.”
“Oh,” I breathe. I am usually so much more eloquent than this. At least I hope I am.
I look around the brothers and see Seth standing with his sisters. Each of them holds one of his hands. Everyone else has left the cemetery already. Have we been here that long?
Matt motions from one brother to another. “We were going to go and get a pie,” he says. “We thought you might want to go with us.”
New York pizza is one my favorite foods. “I don’t know,” I hedge. Seth has walked closer with his sisters, so I look over at them. He looks hopeful. I haven’t seen him look interested in anything at all, aside from his sisters’ well-being, in a week now. I raise a brow, asking him what he’d like to do.
He nods. Then he looks away, almost like he’s afraid to feel hopeful. He looks toward the casket being lowered into the ground.
“We’d love to join you,” I say.
Joey looks up at Seth and asks, “Will Mommy come?”
Seth has been trying to tell the little ones all week that Mommy is gone, and they can’t seem to grasp the concept of death. They keep expecting her to walk through the door.
“No,” Seth says, and I see him swallow hard. “Mommy can’t come.”
“Maybe later,” she says quietly, her face falling. He picks her up, and she puts her head on his shoulder. Mellie takes his hand, and we walk toward the funeral cars.
“Rico’s is just a couple of blocks away,” Matt explains, looking at the car like it’s going to bite him. “Do you want to meet us there?”
“We’ll walk with you,” Seth says, and they all start in the direction of the pizza parlor. I look around, thinking I’ll see Phillip, my boyfriend, but he must have left. That doesn’t surprise me, not in the least. I pull out my phone and send him a quick text message.
Me: Where are you?
I shove my phone back in my pocket.
We all fall into a line, with me and Matt walking side by side at the back end of it.