Page 49 of Relapse

With a sigh of release, Silas collapsed into my chest, both of us mangled and twisted together atop his desk. I was surprised that it was still intact. And that security hadn’t been called.

“See?” Silas murmured, stroking the side of my sweat soaked face.

His touch was fluorescent, like the lights in the night sky outside the window.

“I told you we’d have a good time.”

Chapter fourteen

Vending Machine

DELANE

The coordinator’s office smelled of moth balls and death. Garlic too, but maybe that was from his lunch.

“Have we decided on accompaniment? Anything you’d like to be played in the background of his picture slide show?”

I shook my head, lost amongst the overpowering stench. My stomach flipped, even though there wasn’t anything in it anyways.

No one ever told me how hard it was going to be—to plan a funeral, to buy the flowers, to pick the casket, to decide what my dad would be wearing as he entered his final resting place.

But there I was, staring at a fucking brochure, trying to decide exactly what my dad needed in order to have a proper burial. I listened to the coordinator explain how I couldn’t have a viewing unless I had him embalmed, which was an additional thousand dollars on top of everything else. Then, we started going over the differences of price from embalming and burial versus no embalming and cremation.

Burn the man who raised you, or bury him. Choices, choices. Even the sizes of the viewing rooms were differently priced.

What the brochure didn’t say was that I couldn’t afford to bring him home. Flying my father’s body back to the state where we had lived, where he belonged, cost more than I had. More than I would ever have, sitting there in that room. So the place where he died became the place where he would stay, not because it was right, or what I wanted, but because it was cheaper.

And when all was said and done here, I’d have to go back home without my dad. Maybe even without my mom too. Back to our house with their clothes and their items. And their scent.

“You would still need to rent a casket, if you want to have a viewing for him with cremation to follow. They need to have somewhere to place him for friends and family to pay their last respects.”

It was a lot of information that I never knew I needed. Not this soon. Not at nineteen years old.

And somehow, after all of this, I still had to stop by the hospital again to check on my mother and see how she was doing.

Her current status was far from hopeful. She was a body on a bed. A lump of lifeless molecules, plugged into machines and cords that were breathing for her, pumping her heart, and moving her blood around. Less of a person, and more like an incubated little science project.

She didn’t look like herself. Not at all. Not how I remembered her—or how I thought she would be. And that’s the part that messed with my head. They hadn’t been gone long, and yet she looked completely different. So different that I almost didn’t recognize her. A white cloth taped to her forehead, oxygen shoved into her nose. Skin I knew, but a face that wasn’t hers anymore.

Maybe it’s why I’d been able to stay so…distant. It didn’t feel real. I kept telling myself that I was looking at someone else. Not my mom.

“Have you made a decision on the double plots and joint stone?”

My eyes flew into focus, finally settling on him—the coordinator. His hands hastily pointed to the brochure, ushering me to tour through the options, his fingers stopping to fall on a stone made with two hearts, the deep color almost a dark blue compared to the traditional gray. It was a grave stone wide enough for both my father’s and mother’s names. A conjoined heart.

Suddenly, the thought of both of them buried together began to feel more real than I had ever imagined it would. I knew my mom would want to be with my dad. That much was certain. But picturing them sealed inside a box, knowing I would never be able to see them again, buried beneath six feet of dirt in a different state, made my head swim. I was glad to be sitting down.

The man trying to max out on my loss just kept talking.

“It’s cheaper this way. To bury them together. It’s an additional charge to dig up the ground again.”

I bit the inside of my cheeks. “My mom isn’t dead.”

He made a little sound in the back of his throat and shrugged. “I just want you to be aware of all of your options. Your dad has been in our facility for six days now, and it’s getting to the point where we will have to make some tough choices. We don’t normally like to hold the bodies past a certain timeframe.”

He stopped, looked up to me and said, “They won’t look the same after that long. The viewing might be more difficult.”

The tears were returning. I could feel them.