“Father, please be with Linda as she makes her journey back home.” The priest was droning on and on, and it was obvious that he hadn’t known Lydia as he spoke about her in the most generic terms possible. Besides, she wasn’t a Christian, so I doubted that God would be guiding her anywhere. Even if God were, perchance, to waive the Christian-only requirement, it was way too late to accompany her. Her soul was wherever it had been going by now as she’d been dead for over a week.
The day was gloomy, which I felt appropriate for a funeral. The sky was drizzly, and there were clouds covering the sun. FunLand had been closed for the day out of respect for Lydia, and several of the employees were present at the funeral. Phillip, of course, with Antoinette at his side. It hadn’t taken her very long to switch her allegiances. By the way she was clutching his hand, I’d say that she had found herself another sugar daddy. Delia was there, too, which was sweet of her considering that Lydia hadn’t been very nice to her. Stephen was there as well, but Tommy, of course, was not. I didn’t know why I said of course as he was out on bail. Turned out that he had important connections who had expedited his release. He wasn’t allowed to return to FunLand, obviously, and I would have been exceedingly surprised if he’d shown up to the funeral. There were also others whom I didn’t know. I spotted the detectives trying to blend into the background, but they weren’t doing a very good job of it.
“You ok, Bet?” Rafe asked under his breath as the preacher kept preaching. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I scanned the crowd again, spotting Brian and Mrs. Rodriguez in the front row. While he was comporting himself beautifully, Mrs. Rodriguez was sobbing into a dainty hankie while clutching Brian’s arm. I couldn’t help but notice how lovely she looked in her mourning dress—black, demure, but fitted—even in her state of extreme distress. She was a beautiful woman, no two ways about it. She made me feel positively dowdy in my own mourning black. Even though I was wearing my best non-cocktail dress which was similar to Mrs. Rodriguez’s, I simply didn’t have the elegance she did in order to carry it off. At least I wasn’t wearing the stupid sling any more. I had one and a half functioning arms now, which was fifty percent better than what I had before. Being free of the sling made me feel better about not being as attractive as Mrs. Rodriguez, though I still felt frumpy.
“What the hell was that about? Did he think we were that stupid? No fucking way I’m going to be his patsy.”
“Goddamn it,” I mumbled, the phone breaking through the fog in my head. I squinted at the clock and saw that it was eight in the morning. Normally, that wouldn’t be too early, but Rafe and I hadn’t gone to sleep until one-thirty. “This better be fucking important,” I mumbled into the receiver without even checking to see who it was. Rafe turned onto his side, but didn’t waken. I envied him his slumber.
“The first time I met Brian, something zinged through me. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he felt the same way.” A faraway look came into her eyes and despite the serious circumstances, a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “After that, we made excuses not to spend time together, but Linda insisted. She wanted me and Brian to get to know each other, so we gave in for her sake. Every time I saw him, I felt the same pull.” Mrs. Rodriguez stopped.
“Bea? This is Brian. I just wanted to let you know that the service will be on Sunday.” He gave me the details, and I assured him I’d be there. It was difficult for me to talk to him knowing what I knew, but I managed to hide my disdain. In the corner of my eye, I could see Owen and Sidney leaving, so I waved to them before refocusing my attention on Brian.
“Happy birthday, Raphael!” My mother said, beaming at Rafe. We were at Tiburon’s admiring the fish in the aquarium they had in the middle of the room. I liked the mood lighting and the subtle atmosphere. We were the first ones there, and the server graciously led us to our table so we could wait for the rest of the clan.
“Let’s go through it one more time,” Detective Bradley said, sounding bored. We were running through what had happened when I went out to the car and almost got shot, and this was the fourth time I had told the tale. I didn’t know what else he wanted me to say because it wasn’t that dramatic. At least Detective Sands hadn’t come, which made me happy.
After all that build up, it was anticlimactic that he wasn’t at home. I called his cell, but he wasn’t answering that, either. Briefly, I wondered where he was, but realized that I wasn’t in the position to query as I was the one who had insisted on my autonomy. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, I guess, though I really wanted to know where he was. I left him a message requesting him to call me no matter how late he got home. Hey, I didn’t have to work in the morning, so what did I care? I was a night owl by preference, anyway, so being woken up once in a while was no big deal.
I decided to check my email as I hadn’t bothered for the past few days. I wasn’t one of those people who compulsively checked her email several times a day, feeling blue if nobody sent me anything. I viewed it more as a nuisance than anything else—a necessary evil, if you will. I sat at my mom’s computer and powered up. It was slow going only using one hand, but I did the best I could. I accessed my Yahoo! account and noticed that I had fifteen new emails. Most of them were advertisements from Yahoo! which I promptly deleted. There was a few emails from Liza who liked to email me during her workday when she got bored. I opened them up and saw that they were forwarded joke emails. She knew I hated forwarded emails, but she sent them to me, anyway. I deleted them without even looking.