Saga wrapped one arm around her, taking the paper gingerly with her free hand. Giving Leigh a gentle squeeze, she continued reading in her stead.
“I know my experience, while dear, is not a unique one when it comes to Eira. It was simply who she was. We will find ourselves missing the candid manner in which she expressed her opinion, or the way she tapped the bridge of her nose and winked when she knew you were of the same mind on something. We will mourn the silence that was once filled with clinking teacups or sneaky late-night glasses of port. Because we who have had the privilege of truly knowing her are now tasked with the burden of knowing life without her.
“Rest well, my darling. Thank you for changing my life for the better.”
Leigh turned and sobbed into Saga’s shoulder, an embrace that Saga returned as best she could as she helped the woman back to her seat next to her husband.
The ceremony that followed was lovely, as far as funerals go. After Leigh and Saga, Elis took the stand and spoke of what it had been like having Eira as a mother.
It was a humanizing moment. He was grounded and calm, not trying todeflect or lash out at the nearest convenient person to blame. Saga noticed the way he kept one hand in the suit pocket that held his flask. Never once did he pull it out, but his hand remained, as if the liquor might vanish if he didn’t. His reliance on it was heartbreakingly apparent as the petulant manchild she’d spoken to only moments before the ceremony allowed himself to be truly vulnerable. “She was there. When I had questions, when I was lost, when I had nowhere else to go… What I would not give to have her back. God forgive me, what I wouldn’t do.”
Saga knew she shouldn’t eliminate anyone by appearances, but seeing him there, so lost and unable to grapple with the idea that he was the last of his line, made it very difficult to imagine he could be a viable suspect. This was not the countenance of a murderer. This was a deeply broken man who had traded any healthy coping mechanism for one vice after another.
Following Elis was Carys. A woman Saga knew had to be in her early seventies at least but through the family fortune had suspended her face somewhere in her forties—so long as she didn’t try to move it too much. She spoke in a saccharinely sweet way about Eira that left an uncomfortable feeling in Saga’s stomach. She remembered the stories about Carys. Any love between Carys and Eira had been destroyed after Carys’s mother’s passing, though you would never know it the way the woman carried on, every syllable smacking with insincerity. There was something off about her—somethingwrong. Something Avery would likely want to look into.
Nearly everyone spoke at least a few words, some approaching the altar and some merely standing up from their seats.
The society papers would later report that even Hedda Schmidt had broken into tears. The self-proclaimed rival was reduced to blubbering incoherent sobs that shook her form inside the layers of fur, and the phrase that would later be quoted (and one of the few that was understood) simply stated, “She defined a generation, and so defined me. Without her, I do not know where I stand.”
At last Mr. Bowen returned to the front, a closed envelope between his fingertips. “I have with me something written in Eira’s own hand a fewnights before she passed. It was entrusted to me to be read today. I will preface that this is not related to her will, I believe, but merely a farewell.”
Saga thought his hands might be shaking as he opened the envelope.
Something passed over the lawyer’s face as his eyes swept over the words Eira had written. Perhaps it was recognition, even a little melancholy. “How very like her. She begins with an excerpt from a poem by David Harkins:
You can shed tears that she is gone
Or you can smile because she has lived
You can close your eyes and pray that she will come back
Or you can open your eyes and see all that she has left
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her
Or you can be full of the love that you shared.”
Bowen stopped, his mouth forming a thin line before he cleared his throat. “She closes with simply, ‘My dear friends, know that thanks to you, I have truly lived. And though my curtain comes to a close, I could not have asked for a finer play, and I take my final bow with no regrets. Be kind to each other.’”
The woman who had greeted them at the door spoke again from the back row. “We invite anyone to say their final goodbyes to Eira in a procession to see her off, followed by a catered dinner and cocktail hour at the Arber Garden’s Chapel room.”
A few stood and a trickle of murmurs began and eventually rose to small conversations.
Another sob escaped from Leigh, and she turned her head to muffle the sound into Reza’s shoulder.
Reza indicated toward the outside to Saga with a subtle jerk of his head before speaking to his wife. “Let’s get some fresh air, love.” He helped her to her feet and the two made their way down the aisle.
Avery stood, offering her hand to Saga both to help her rise and pull her closer for a more private conversation. “Are you acquainted with Eira’s…”She struggled with the right term. “Paramour?”
Saga’s brows raised abruptly. “I knew there were rumors of a paramour.”
“Young man,veryyoung, and very candid.”
Saga struggled a little with this information, simultaneously uncomfortable yet oddly proud of Eira. She tried to remember everyone who had shared stories. “Which one was he?”
“He didn’t speak.”
“Oh.” Saga frowned. “Is that…strange? It feels strange.”
