Page 39 of The Dearly Departed

We all did.

As it turned out, the old man we'd met nearly two decades ago hadn’t been all that old back then, but he certainly was now—seventy-eight and looking every bit of it. Yet his eyes sparkled with life, and his smile held more youth than I'd ever felt in a single moment of my thirty-three years on this planet.

"Oh, you knock it off," he said with a wave of his hand. "As long as I'm able to, I'm here for you boys. You know that."

He looked up at me and added, "I'll grab you a pack of cigarettes too. How are you on lighters?"

I wanted to laugh and brush the offer away. I wanted to tell him that I was more than capable of funding my own bad habits, considering the amount of money we each made from working full-time at the funeral home.

But I understood, possibly more than my brothers, that Leonard was playing a role in order to feel like his life was worth living. It was no different from the role I played while wearing this suit and the tie that now belonged to Robert Martin.

He needed to believe he was still a father just as much as I needed to believe I was a respectful, decent person and a son to this man who’d given me a second chance at life.

“I still have a few,” I told him.

Leonard nodded. “All right. Well, I’ll grab you a couple anyway.”

I lifted one side of my mouth with a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. And just so you all know, I might be meeting with a friend tonight,” Leonard continued, lifting his glass of water to his lips. “You boys will be around to hand out candy?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Nobody comes trick-or-treating here.”

“Excuse me, Abraham,” he said in jest, “but every year, we get one or two brave little stragglers looking to get spooked.”

Continuing to laugh, I shook my head.

He wasn’t wrong.

“Fair enough.”

“I’m going out with Shelby tonight,” Shawn said. “Her friends are throwing a costume party.”

Ike smirked salaciously. “And I’m gonna tag along and see what Rhonda is up to.”

Rhonda was Shelby’s perpetually single friend who Ike hooked up with every so often.

And every single time, Shawn would ask why they didn’t just date, and Ike would say, “Because we like to fuck,” as if that was enough to justify their occasional no-strings-attached arrangement.

For Shawn, who enjoyed the comforts and security of monogamy, it wasn’t.

But if you cut a brick of clay into three separate pieces, life and trauma would shape each one into something entirely different.

And despite everything, Shawn had turned out to be a good man with good intentions. A man who desired—and deserved—a wife and a family.

Ike, on the other hand, was smart enough to know exactly what type of man he’d be to any woman who chose to remain in his life for more than a night.

And me …

Trauma still had its hot, unforgiving hands on me. Gripping and squeezing, flattening me out and balling me up, over and over and over again. All I knew of sex was the power it gave to those who used it against others, and although I wanted to believe it could be as beautiful and pleasurable as fiction portrayed, I hadn’t yet found the courage or desire to find out.

I doubted I ever would.

“I’ll be around,” I told Leonard, who was watching me expectantly. “I’ll hand out candy to whoever shows up.”

He offered a grateful nod and finished his lunch in silence while I thought about Robert Martin in the basement and if he’d ever wished for more than casual encounters, if he’d had any casual encounters at all. I wondered what kind of trauma he’d suffered to shape him into the man he’d turned out to be.

And I wondered if, at the end of it all, he had been happy.