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CHAPTER THREE
Cammie
When I thought of him, I thought of calla lilies.
Creamy white flowers with buttery yellow centers and sleek dark green stems.
I thought of hundreds of them.
Of thousands of them.
Cluttering tables in their extravagant arrangements.
Draped over a dark wood coffin.
Funeral flowers, my grandmother used to scoff when I would tell her as a little girl that I thought they were pretty.They make me think of death.
I never understood that.
Until, of course, they made me think of death as well.
Of all the strange aspects of it.
The mourners all in black, save for one woman who wore bold a red dress because “that is what he would have wanted.”
The way the perfumes and colognes of so many people all crushed together, like it could all hide the scent of formaldehyde and death, but simply created a noxious scent that made you need to take low, shallow breaths, so you never took too much in at once.
The way I expected the soundtrack to death to be sorrowful sounds from an organ, but, in fact, it was the sounds of crying mixed with comments about how tacky the chairs were or how hideous the carpet was and if there would be an open bar at the service afterward.
Death brought out strange things in people.
I had very little experience with death in my life up until that point. My grandfather had died when I was young, but my mother had insisted that funerals would be too confusing for a little kid, so I had stayed home.
A boy from my elementary school died in a tragic car crash, but he hadn’t been a friend, so while there had been a dark cloud over the school, I never really touched death or had death touch me.
Death touched me as an adult, though. Directly afterIfirst touchedit.
I felt like an imposter surrounded by the mourners.
I wasn’t crying.
I wasn’t kissing cheeks or shaking hands.
I wasn’t talking about all the good times we had shared.
I wouldn’t be able to conjure many up if I tried.
So I focused on the calla lilies, on what they represented.
The death of Cody.
And the man who had taken his life.
Through all the years that followed, whenever I saw those particular flowers, my mind flashed back to a quiet night at home in bed, thankful that I chose not to go out with Cody.
Then the strange glass cracking sound that had me rushing out of the room, thinking Cody had broken another of the pretty wine glasses I had picked out that he insisted to use to drink his beer out of.
Only to find him dead on the couch, his head resting on the back of it, his unseeing gaze focused on the ceiling, and a bullet hole in the center of his head.
