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Two days and already he wanted a do-over. He wanted to hold her again, and say, Tell me, baby, what are you afraid of?
Father Michael stepped up to the pulpit, and the congregation—already quiet—grew still.
“I’m not surprised so many people are here to say goodbye to Kate. She was an important person to so many of us—”
Was.
“You won’t be surprised that she gave me strict orders for this service, and I don’t want to disappoint her. She wanted me to tell you all to hold on to each other. She wanted you to take your sorrow and transform it into the joy that remains with life. She wanted you to remember the sound of her laughter and the love she had for her family. She wanted you to live. ” His voice broke. “That was Kathleen Mularkey Ryan. Even at the end, she was thinking of others. ”
Marah groaned quietly.
Johnny reached for her hand. She startled at his touch and looked at him, and there it was, that unfathomable grief as she pulled away.
Music started up. It sounded far away at first, or maybe that was the roar of sound in his head. It took him a moment to recognize the song.
“Oh, no,” he said, feeling emotion rise with the music.
The song was “Crazy for You. ”
The song they’d danced to at their wedding. He closed his eyes and felt her beside him, slipping into the circle of his arms as the music swept them away. Touch me once and you’ll know it’s true.
Lucas—sweet eight-year-old Lucas, who had begun to have nightmares again and sometimes had a meltdown when he couldn’t find the baby blanket he’d outgrown years ago—tugged on his sleeve. “Mommy said it was okay to cry, Daddy. She made me and Wills promise not to be afraid to cry. ”
Johnny hadn’t even realized he was crying. He wiped his eyes and nodded curtly, whispering, “That’s right, little man,” but he couldn’t look at his son. Tears in those eyes would undo him. Instead, he stared straight ahead and zoned out. He turned Father’s words into small brittle things, stones thrown against a brick wall. They clattered and fell, and through it all, he focused on his breathing and tried not to remember his wife. That, he would do in solitude, at night, when there was no one around.
Finally, after what felt like hours, the service ended. He gathered his family close and they went downstairs for the reception. There, as he looked around, feeling both stunned and broken, he saw dozens of unfamiliar or barely familiar faces and it made him understand that Kate had pieces of her life he knew nothing about and it made her feel distant to him. In a way, that hurt even more. At the first possible moment, he herded his children out of the church basement.
The church’s parking lot was full of cars, but that wasn’t what he noticed.
Tully was in the parking lot, with her face tilted up toward the last of the day’s sunlight. She had her arms stretched wide and she was moving, swaying her hips, as if there were music somewhere.
Dancing. She was in the middle of the street, outside the church, dancing.
He said her name so harshly that Marah flinched beside him.
Tully turned, saw them coming toward the car. She tugged the buds out of her ears and moved toward him.
“How was it?” she asked quietly.
He felt a surge of rage and he grabbed hold of it. Anything was better than this bottomless grief. Of course Tully had put herself first. It hurt to go to Kate’s funeral, so Tully didn’t. She stood in the parking lot and danced. Danced.
Some best friend. Kate might be able to forgive Tully her selfishness; it wasn’t so easy for Johnny.
He turned to his family. “Get in the car, everyone. ”
“Johnny—” Tully reached for him but he stepped aside. He couldn’t be touched now, not by anyone. “I couldn’t go in,” she said.
“Yeah. Who could?” he said bitterly. He knew instantly that it was a mistake to look at her. Kate’s absence was even more pronounced at Tully’s side. The two women had always been together, laughing, talking, breaking into bad renditions of disco songs.
TullyandKate. For more than thirty years they’d been best friends, and now, when he looked at Tully, it hurt too much to bear. She was the one who should have died. Kate was worth fifteen Tullys.
“People are coming to the house,” he said. “It’s what she wanted. I hope you can make it. ”
He heard the sharpness of her indrawn breath and knew he’d hurt her.
“That’s not fair,” she said.
Ignoring that, ignoring her, he herded his family into the SUV and they drove home in an excruciating silence.
