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When they lower Magda’s coffin into the ground, I avert my eyes, unable to watch. She hadn’t even been forty yet. Too young for this.
“She should have lived,” I say quietly.
Xander puts his arm around my shoulder. I let him, even though I know that people are watching and whispering. I don’t care. He’s a stranger, but I need someone to hold on to for just a moment. Yet I want to shout at him too. I want to demand to know why his fiancée did not come. How could she not care? And why did Xander bother to come?
“Did you know Magda well?” I ask.
“I didn’t know her at all.”
I stiffen. “Then why are you here?”
He looks down at me with those inscrutable grey eyes. “You know why.”
A chill runs through me. I get the feeling that he knows Magda is my mother. I quickly look away.
“It was you,” I murmur. “You paid for the funeral.”
He does not correct me, and I know it is true.
I don’t thank him because suddenly I am too angry to. I try to keep my voice from wobbling, to not make it sound personal when I say, “Your fiancée should have been here. She was one of the few people who actually knew Magda, unlike these strangers. But she didn’t give a damn. Is she really so cold-hearted? How can you marry someone like her?”
“I have my reasons,” he murmurs, not sounding upset by my words at all.
I wonder what reasons those could be. Shortly after their engagement gala they had postponed the wedding date, causing a frenzy of press speculation. Two years later they have still not set a new one.
Magda’s coffin has disappeared from view into the hole. I cannot bear to watch them pile earth on top of her. I shrug Xander’s arm off and I walk away. He follows me. A car is waiting for him at the cemetery gates.
“Do you need a lift?” he says.
But my attention is elsewhere. Not far from the car, just inside the churchyard gates, is a man dressed in somber black. A man I’d know anywhere.
“Storm!” I cry out, taking a few rapid steps towards him.
Storm doesn’t move from his spot. He doesn’t come towards me. He gives Xander a cold look over my shoulder. Xander returns it. I bid Xander goodbye, feeling awkward, as if something is going on between us even though it is not. Xander’s chauffeur gets out of the car and holds open the passenger door.
Xander lingers, his eyes seeming to see all too much. “You don’t look well.”
“Charming,” I mutter.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I’m perfectly fine.”
“If you need anything—,”
/> I cut him off. “I can take care of myself. Thanks.”
“I’m sure you can.” There is amusement in his eyes. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah, sure.” Such politeness. I doubt I will see him again.
After Xander is gone, I turn back to Storm. I open my mouth to thank him for coming. To say I am glad to see him. Seeing him has shaken up all sorts of old feelings inside me. I am surprised I am not trembling from the sheer tumult of them crashing around inside me.
“You two looked cozy,” he says in a clipped distant kind of way.
His tone flattens all the feelings bursting inside me. “I’m allowed to have friends,” I say, hurt.
“So you’re friends now?”
