“I won’t share a car with her,” I said quietly and vehemently.
I hadn’t even realized I was thinking the words. They’d flown out of my mouth completely of their own accord.
But I meant them. I would not, could not share a car with Tiffany. I refused to share anything with her for the rest of my life. I had shared enough.
He nodded solemnly. “Of course not.” He held out his arm. “Let’s go?”
“Is Eugene driving me?” I asked.
He went from looking stoic to annoyed, which had been my intent. “No. I’m taking you. Are you ready?”
“Is it . . . just us driving together?” I wanted to know what I was in for. The dreadful possibilities were endless, and it was telling that being alone with him was far from the worst option.
“Yes, if you’re all right with that,” he bit out the words. I could tell he’d misunderstood the reason for my question, and it was almost a relief to realize that sometimes he could completely misread me.
“Fine,” I said. I grabbed my small purse out of the room, taking his arm but giving him nothing, letting him stew on the misunderstanding. “Let’s go.”
He led me out of the house without another word.
Moving with him, the way we walked together, how he opened every door and handed me into his car like it was his personal duty, all of it was painfully familiar. If I let myself, I could forget for a moment, two, three, four, that we were years away from the time when we’d belonged so desperately to each other.
I tried to distract myself from it on the drive by antagonizing him. “Is she staying at Gram’s?”
He glanced at me, then back at the road, tugging at his collar. “I’ve no clue. I assume she’s staying either at my mother’s house or with her parents. I didn’t ask.”
“I won’t stay under the same roof as her.”
He started chewing his lip so intently, a nervous tell of his, that I had to look away. “The only accommodations I arranged were yours and mine. I honestly have no clue what anyone else is planning. Well, besides my father. He’s staying at Gram’s, as well.”
That didn’t surprise me one bit, and I couldn’t have cared less. Still, it was a sore spot for Dante, so I did a bit of picking at it.
“Did he bring his mistress?” I prodded.
His mouth twisted bitterly and the look he shot me was not hostile so much as wounded. “No.”
“Don’t you find it ironic how much you resent his mistress, all things considered?”
Oh, ho. Big point for me. That one was a doozy. The black look he sent me for that had my heart beating faster and had me fighting not to smile.
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” I hummed under my breath.
He hit the brakes, stopping the car so fast that I had to brace myself against the dashboard.
“Oh my God. Really?” he ground out. “Is there any low fucking blow you won’t resort to, on today of all days? Can’t you save it for even one fucking day? On this fucking day, when we bury Gram?”
My high at riling him went instantly to a low, and I had to look away, flushing with shame. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. Not even I was this big of a bitch, not even to him. “I was just trying to distract myself by antagonizing you,” I admitted to the window.
“I’m well aware, but can you give a rest for a few hours? Please.”
I nodded, stunned at how freely the P word seemed to roll off his tongue lately.
He began to drive again and the car fell quiet for a time.
Without even the distraction of messing with him, my thoughts went dark, to Gram, to the past, to how long it’d been since I saw her last, and how that was all my fucking fault.
“I still spoke to her every week,” I told him. “She’d call me like clockwork, and I always made sure I was available to talk to her for at least an hour.” It was a small bit of comfort for him, and I offered it up as a defensive apology.
“I know. I know,” he said with jaw clenching stiffness. Clearly, he was still upset.
That had been my whole repertoire on trying to make him feel better, so I gave up after that.
I couldn’t even make myself feel better. How on earth would I know how to fix him?
My talent lay in making him feel worse, and if that was off the table, I figured I should just shut up.
It was a bit of a drive to the funeral parlor, I vaguely remembered, though I’d only been there a few times my whole life.
We were maybe halfway there when Dante put his hand on my leg. His warm grip squeezed the spot just above my knee.
It was so familiar, something he’d done hundreds of times at least, that at first I just stared, my sensory memory at war with my current perception.
It took me a minute, but finally I managed to get out a quiet but firm, “Stop touching me.”
“It calms me, you know that,” he returned, his deep voice still rough with the storm of his temper. “I need to get a handle on myself before we get to the funeral home, okay? Need to.”
Who could argue with that? Apparently not even me.
But a few minutes later I was glaring at him again. His hand just kept inching higher. Now it was at mid-thigh, my skirt going up with it, and I knew he was doing it deliberately.
“Knock it off,” I told him, tone as scathing as I could manage.
With a smile, he took his hand away. Apparently it’d worked. He was in a markedly better mood.
“Did you want to speak at the service?” he asked me. “I’ll be getting up to say a few words.”
“No, thank you,” I replied. I didn’t even have to think about it. I couldn’t do it, couldn’t speak about Gram to a roomful of hostile faces. Oftentimes I flourished under the heavy weight of that contempt, but this was so personal. I couldn’t speak about her and not share too much about myself and in the sharing, expose my too raw emotions. Also, this was just the sort of thing that brought my stutter back. I couldn’t bear the humiliation if that happened.
Gram wouldn’t have asked that of me. It would have been enough for her that I was there, that I’d come home for her.
Dante didn’t pursue it any further.
“Who else is speaking?” I asked him.
“My dad, me, Father Frederick. We’re keeping it brief. You know how she hated funerals.”
I was relieved to hear his mother wasn’t speaking. She’d hated Gram, her mother-in-law, but she rarely turned down an opportunity to be the center of attention.
“There’ll be a short viewing,” he continued, “then the service, followed by a reception at her house.”
I’d figured as much, with all of the prep going on at the estate.
A short, tense length of time passed and suddenly we were there, parking, Dante handing me out of the car, giving me his thick arm to hold, heading inside, passing by countless, faceless black clad people.
I didn’t look at any of them. I tried to look only at the ground, determined to get through this without breaking down.
She lived a good life, I told myself. A long life, full of joy and surrounded by people who loved her.
But I already missed her. I wasn’t ready to let her go.
The viewing was unpleasant, seeing her for the first time like that, her face so still in death.
I wanted to remember her smiling and animated, her eyes open, and filled with mischief or delight.
Still, it was like I felt her there. I spoke to her coffin as though she could hear me. “It won’t surprise you that I’m not too keen about being back here,” I told her quietly. “Only you could get me into a room with these people, Gram.”
Of course there was no response, and the loss of her hit me anew, because there was so much I wanted to tell her from just the last few days alone, the last hours, things I’d only ever vent about to her. She’d been my shoulder to cry on for so many years, held so many of the secrets that I couldn’t tell anyone else, not even my closest friends, and it struck me then that I woul
d never again have anyone who I could talk to in just that way, as a child does to a parent. She was the only adult figure in my life that had ever given a damn, and now she was gone, and I felt more alone than I ever had.
In a moment of utter weakness, I closed my eyes and set my shaking hand on her casket. “What am I going to do, Gram?” I asked her quietly. “I feel so alone in this world without you.”
Dante, who’d been a silent presence at my back, spoke then, “You’re not alone,” he said, his voice emotional. Intense.
I acted as if I had not heard, as if he had not spoken. Those words meant nothing to me, particularly coming from him.
“You were wrong, Gram,” I said softly, tone emotionless because I was resigned to the awful, lonely truth of it. “Love doesn’t save our souls. It kills them.”
I could hear Dante literally grinding his teeth behind me.
For some strange reason, Dante sat me next to him in the front row for the service. I didn’t have the energy to fight him on it, so I took my seat, glancing surreptitiously around at all of the familiar faces and the significance of where they were sitting and whom they were sitting with.
Predictably, I clocked Tiffany’s location first, but she’d placed herself so close to us, directly behind Dante in fact, that it was hard not to.
I almost moved when she first sat down, almost got up and made a scene, but something kind of wonderful happened to stop me.
As she sat, mere moments after we had, she perched herself on the edge of her seat, putting both of her delicate hands on Dante’s shoulders.
I had my head craned around to stare daggers at her. She was opening her mouth to say something, I’ll never know what, because we were all distracted by what Dante did next.
Without looking at her, without so much as acknowledging her, he pulled his shoulders out of her hands, leaning far forward to avoid her touch completely.
As he did this he glanced at me, his hand cupping the spot on my leg that had so soothed him earlier.
I allowed it to stay there purely for spite and turned my head again to meet her eyes, letting her see what was in mine.
You might have had him for a bit, my triumphant gaze told her, but it was all you’ll get.
You’re nothing to him. Insignificant.
Whether he’s with me or not, it won’t help you. He’s done with you.
Whether I was the love or hate of his life, nothing and no one would ever overshadow me.
I swallowed the memory of every woman he had ever known.
Swallowed it whole.
I covered his hand with my own, still staring at her until, finally, her face drawn tight, eyes flashing at me, she looked away.
The victory was short lived, however.
I took my hand away from Dante’s when I saw who was taking the seat beside Tiffany.
I faced forward right as his hand fell away from my knee.
He hadn’t turned around, but I could tell he knew that his mother was behind him.
Dante never touched me when she was near. It had been this way for as long as I could remember.
I used to have a problem with it, used to be sensitive about it, but just then it suited me fine. The less he touched me the better.
His mother, Adelaide, made a big show of greeting Tiffany. Kissing both of her cheeks, telling her how wonderful she looked, complimenting everything about her, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.
She didn’t acknowledge me, nor I her. This was not the place for it.
There wasn’t a civil word to be had between the two of us. There never had been.
I thought she was evil, and she thought I was trash. Neither of us would ever change our minds.
I was surprised, though, that there was no greeting between her and Dante. He didn’t turn around, and she didn’t take exception to it.
That was a new and interesting development, to be sure, one that I didn’t mind at all.
Adelaide’s lifelong friend and Tiffany’s mother, Leann, soon joined them. Again there was not a word or gesture of greeting between the first row and the second, and for the same reason.
Adelaide by herself was an evil force to be reckoned with. Add in her best friend, and any sane person would run in the other direction. Two more manipulative women I had never met. They were a team made in hell, and if they were ignoring me, all the better.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
“If a thing loves, it is infinite.”
~William Blake
Dante’s father Leo sat on the row with us, but not close. Father and son did not speak. Husband and wife, one mere feet in front of the other, did not exchange greetings of any kind.
That was the normal way of things in the Durant family.
The sight of the father had me doing another surreptitious glance around the room, clocking at least four of his other sons, all by different women.
I wasn’t sure if somehow Leo had only sired boys or if he just never acknowledged the daughters. With what I knew of Leo, if I had to guess, it’d be the latter.
None of the siblings were sitting together, none of them so much as acknowledging each other.
Only one of them ventured into our row. It was Bastian, Leo’s second oldest son, his first child with mistress number one, born mere months after Dante.
Bastian sat on the far side of Leo, exchanging a brief but civil greeting with his father.
Dante was Leo’s only legitimate child, but he was far from his favorite. If I had to guess which one was, it’d be Bastian.
Dante stared straight ahead, not acknowledging his half-brother. Again, expected, but I sent Bastian a little nod of a greeting that he returned solemnly.
I’d never had a problem with Bastian. Despite getting along too well with his bastard of a father, he wasn’t a bad sort, which was not something you could say about all of Dante’s half-brothers.
I made another scan of the swiftly filling room. It would be standing room only soon it’d gotten so crowded, but still most seemed loath to take the front row seats, which were traditionally reserved for family.
My eyes stopped dead on a familiar face.
I nodded at my grandmother.
Her tightly drawn mouth drawing tighter at the sight of me, she nodded back.
I hadn’t seen her in almost ten years, but I was still shocked at how much she’d aged, how haggard her homely face appeared.
I knew Gram’s death couldn’t have been easy on her. I had never been sure if my grandmother loved me, but I was certain of her love for Gram, and losing her must have hit her hard.
After that I faced forward and looked neither left nor right. I’d seen enough familiar faces for the moment.
The service was brief but emotional. Even Leo’s speech had me struggling not to lose my composure. Leo was a shitty human being and a worse father, but he had loved his mother and didn’t even try to hide his grief at her passing.
For Dante’s speech, I had to put on the dark sunglasses I’d stowed away in my bag and look down at my hands while Dante spoke of his grandmother and all that she’d meant to him.
His words were sparse but worthy of her.
The shades hid my eyes, but they couldn’t hide the tears that ran under them and down my face.
When he finished and came back to sit beside me, I covered his hand with my own for a few brief moments, Adelaide and my grudges be damned.
We were at the front of the procession that flowed out of the funeral home, into cars, and along the short drive to her gravesite.
She’d been allotted a beautiful spot in the sprawling cemetery, right next to her long deceased, much beloved husband.
I stood stiffly beside Dante as Father Frederick recited Gram’s favorite poem and it made me cry all over again.
By that point I wanted nothing so much as to lock myself away somewhere, curl up into a ball, and cry until the tears ran out. That was the irony of funerals, of gathering to grieve when no one who
was really grieving wanted anything to do with company. I was worn out, and we still had the reception to get through.
I almost (almost) considered escaping to my room for that ordeal, just running from it all, but I knew I couldn’t do it.
I was a lot of terrible things, but I was not a coward.
I would, however, be getting the hell out of dodge in all due haste.
“My flight home is tomorrow, right?” I asked Dante as we began to walk away from the gravesite.
“Hmm,” he responded, and I could tell just with that noise that I was about to be manipulated. “I’ll have to double check. Didn’t you get all of the info yourself in that email I sent you?”
“No,” I answered, knowing full well that he’d asked a question he already knew the answer to. “You only sent me half of the itinerary.”
“Oh, I see. An oversight. I’ll look into it and have it sent to you as soon as I can.”
I kept my narrowed eyes on him. The problem was, I knew him too well. I could tell when he was planning something, even if I couldn’t have said what precisely it was.
I decided not to push it here. It didn’t matter what he planned, besides. I’d be out of here come morning, that was a fact.
Unfortunately we ran directly into my grandmother on our way back to Dante’s car.
I wasn’t going to say anything to her, we’d never had much to say to each other, but she had other plans.
“Hello, Scarlett,” she sneered at me. Not a good sign.
I nodded at her, making cursory eye contact. “Hello, Glenda.”
I tried to walk right by her, but she moved into my path, her small frame squaring off in front of me. “Did you really have to wear red shoes to a funeral?” She made the dig quietly but with effect. My grandmother had never had to raise her voice. Her vicious tongue was just as damaging with or without being loud. “And could your dress be any tighter? You look like a Hollywood whore. Is that what you’ve been doing down in California? Whoring for old directors, trying to sleep your way to the top? Must not be working.”
I gave her an unpleasant smile. She hadn’t changed a bit. I hadn’t expected her to, but my old resentment for her flared anew.