Page 17 of One Last Gift

There was a deep breath at the other end of the line, and Cassie found herself gripping her phone more tightly. “Your brother…Tom…” Her heart pounded at the sound of his name.

“Is he there?” Cassie asked sharply. “Are you with him?”

There was a pause that went on too long and Cassie found herself counting her heartbeats, waiting. “I’m with him, yes,” the man said eventually, his words slow, careful. “But he’s…You’re his sister?”

“Yes,” Cassie hissed. “What’s going on?” The sound of Hazel and Josh laughing washed over her and it sounded wrong, too loud.

“I’m afraid he’s…” Another deep breath. “He’s had an accident.”

“An accident?” Cassie asked sharply, as her stomach jolted painfully. Images flashed through her mind: Tom on a stretcher, groaning in pain, in an ambulance being rushed off somewhere. To where? What were the hospitals like in Argentina? God, she didn’t even know. “Tom’s had an accident?” she repeated. “What kind of accident? Is he OK? Can I speak to him?”

She became aware that the flat had grown quiet, and she turned away from the tree with its sparkling gold baubles to see Hazel stepping toward her, frowning. “Cassie, what—?” But Cassie shook her head frantically, the flat blurring around her. She needed to concentrate, needed to find out what had happened to Tom, needed to focus so she could ask the right things, figure out insurance, call the hospital.

The man—Toby—was speaking again, and the words sounded distant, almost crackling, though the line had been clear a moment ago. Her head thudded and her breathing grew quicker. “I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this. But he fell and…” The man took a breath, but Cassie was unable to. For a moment her heart seemed suspended between beats. On the edge of something, her body waiting to fall.

“By the time we got to him there was nothing we could do. He’s…He’s dead.”

Chapter Eight

It was cold inside the church, even in her coat and with Hazel pushed up against one side of her, Linda against the other. But then she felt cold all the time now, so it was hard to tell the difference. The minister’s words were washing over her, talking about how they were there today to remember a wonderful man, an adventurous and kind soul, one who would be truly missed. Linda’s hand tightened on Cassie’s and Cassie heard her muffle a sob. Hazel was crying too, her shoulders shaking, a packet of tissues clutched in her lap.

Cassie’s own tears were silent and steady as she stared down at her shoes, unable to look up at the minister, to the coffin that was up there with him at the front of the church. A sleek, wooden coffin, covered in flowers, ones that Cassie had helped choose, mutely nodding as Claire and Linda made suggestions. It was impossible to believe that Tom was inside it, even more so because it was a closed coffin. It could be anyone in there, shut away from the world, ready to be put into the ground. But it wasn’t anyone—it was Tom. It was her brother in there, the one person she loved more than anyone else, and he was gone.

Cassie took a fragile breath, feeling it quake inside her, and pressed her lips together as the tears came faster. She caught sight of Claire, sitting next to Linda, staring straight ahead, straight-backed, her whole face pinched. It looked grayer and more lined now, the last two weeks taking their toll. Her dyed hair was showing the gray too, patches of white against the bright, fake red, and her brown eyes were blinking furiously. Cassie looked back down at her lap. She couldn’t look at Claire or Linda, couldn’t take on anyone else’s grief today.

She’d been numb since that phone call. The shock had come hard and fast at first, sucking the life from her and leaving her a crumpling, sobbing mess, while Hazel and Josh had tried to figure out what to do with her, tried to get her up, to make her explain, even though she couldn’t, because words had been impossible. But after that, she had been overtaken with disbelief. She’d cried, but it had felt like she’d been crying at the idea of it. Because the actual fact of it, the true reality that Tom was dead, hadn’t hit home until today.

“And now, Tom’s sister, Cassie, would like to say a few words.”

Cassie jolted at the sound of her name and made herself look up, blink the church into focus. Would like to. It was such an odd way of putting it. She didn’t want to stand up there in front of everyone, didn’t want them to witness her grief. She didn’t want to be here at all. But she was the closest person to Tom, and she needed everyone to see how much he meant. So she got to her feet slowly, extracted her hand from Linda’s, and tried to hold her head high as she walked the few meters to the podium.

She’d been to this church only a few times as a child—she had vague memories of carol services and Christingle, which Linda, rather than Claire, had taken her to. It was where her parents were buried, though, as the local church in the village, and so even though Tom hadn’t been religious, it felt right that the ceremony should be here, that he should be buried with them. The three of them together in the ground, while she had to keep standing.

She reached the front of the church, took a breath, then turned around to look at the sea of faces, clutching the piece of paper where she’d written down what she wanted to say. She’d tried to sum up, in no more than a few pages, how much her brother had meant to her, tried to come up with something she thought he would have liked, that encapsulated the type of person he was. Now everything she’d written seemed inadequate.

Everyone was looking at her and she blinked a few times, trying to make their faces less blurry. There were still Christmas decorations around the church, she realized, even though Christmas was over: green tinsel along the railings on each side of the podium, fairy lights up above her, dull in the gray lighting. Christmas. It had passed in a grief-stricken blur this year, with her curled up on Linda’s sofa and staring into the abyss.

She placed the piece of paper on the stand at the side of her, her fingers shaking too much to hold it steady. “Tom was the most important person in my life,” she said, her voice already wavering. “He was the best big brother anyone could hope for. Kind, loving, always looking out for me.” She took a slow breath, felt her lips tremble against one another. “He saw the best in me. He saw the best in everyone.” She thought of Sam, of how Tom had tried to see the best in him, even when he’d proven, in the end, that he’d never deserved it. Sam was there, she knew. He, his fiancée, and his mum were over on the left-hand side of the church, right near the front. She looked down at her notes to stop her gaze from traveling there, knowing that, if it did, she’d feel a hot ball of anger squeeze her gut.

She went on to tell a story about when they were kids, and how he’d gotten her out of trouble when she’d fallen off her bike, lied to Claire about where they’d been so she didn’t get in trouble for riding it without permission, then cleaned her up to hide the evidence. Tell a story, Linda had said, when she’d been staring blankly at an empty sheet of paper one evening. So she did, even though it cut her up inside to do so, to remember. To think about the fact that he had always looked out for her and then, in the end, she hadn’t been there to do the same for him.

Her hands were shaking as she spoke, for everyone to see. But she didn’t care. Why shouldn’t she shake? Why shouldn’t she crumble?

“Tom was always telling me to be brave,” she said, aware that her voice was perhaps too quiet to be heard, but unable to speak up. “To be brave like him, and my mum. He was always trying to push me out of my comfort zone.” She squared her shoulders as she looked around the room. “So I’ll finish by saying that I think we could all be a bit more like him in that respect.” A lump clogged her throat, though she held it back, knowing that she had to keep it together, just a little while longer. “We could all stand to be a bit more brave, to push ourselves, to do exciting things, challenging things. Do things that might be hard, but that will make your life—or someone else’s—more enriched because of it.” Even if, Cassie thought bitterly, it was that bravery that had killed him.

“For my part, living my life without him will be the bravest thing I’ll ever have to do. But it’s because of him that I’ll be able to do it.” Her voice broke on the last word. The tears were coming again now, no stopping them. But she made herself say the final bit. “And for you, every time you do something that, for you, takes courage, think of Tom. Remember him, and celebrate him.”

—

“It was such a beautiful speech, Cassie darling.” Mel, Hazel’s mum, squeezed her shoulder as she approached the bar where Linda, Hazel, and Cassie were all standing. Claire had offered to host the wake at her house, but it turned out that she’d recently decided to move to France, and hadn’t gotten around to telling Cassie yet, so the house was half empty, and the rooms that still had furniture were a mess, boxes strewn everywhere. So Linda had said she’d sort it, that they could have it at the pub.

“Thank you,” Cassie said automatically. Her voice, her movements, everything seemed to be on autopilot, going through the motions without any real conscious effort on her part.

Mel nodded then, seeming to understand that Cassie couldn’t really face much conversation, gave her a small, sad smile, and left, trailing her hand over Hazel’s shoulder as she did so. Cassie took a sip of her drink without looking at what it was, tasted something strong and sweet. She wanted to close her eyes, to curl up in a dark room and not leave for weeks on end. In part, the thing that kept her going was the knowledge that, soon, she’d be able to do that and nobody would be able to stop her, not now that the funeral was over.

Linda turned and took a plate from one of her waitresses behind the bar, offering Cassie one of the mini quiches on it. Cassie shook her head. She couldn’t face eating, was sure that any food would just get stuck in her throat. Linda put the plate down behind her, looked at Cassie for a moment, and then her face crumpled. She pulled Cassie into a big hug. “Oh, my Cassie. It’s not fair, is it?”

“No,” Cassie mumbled against Linda’s neck. “It’s not.”