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“It healed pretty fast, but the scar is more pronounced.” Lyra had come up to answer his mother’s question. “I think because the one in front is surgical, and they didn’t close up the one in back.”
Zach took her hand. “Mom, this is Lyra.”
“Not even a suture or staple? They didn’t close it at all?” Mom asked in lieu of cordially greeting his girlfriend.
Lyra took it in stride. “No. They cleaned it out and dressed it, and I took care of it until it was just a hard scab. It doesn’t look bad. Just like ... well, almost like the kind of sore you get if you scrape your knee pretty bad.”
Mom nodded thoughtfully, then finally grinned. “Sorry, honey. I’m Willa.”
Lyra held out her hand. “Hi, Willa. I’m really glad to meet you.”
Mom eyed Lyra’s hand but didn’t shake it. Zach had one second to worry something was actually wrong before Mom smiled and said, “I’d really rather hug you, Lyra. You took care of my boy for me, and it sounds like you’re gonna keep doing that in the future.”
With an adorable blushy grin, Lyra said, “I hope so. I really want to,” and embraced his mother.
Oh yeah. This wasperfect.
All around them Bulls and their family were climbing off bikes and out of SUVs, getting kids back on their feet, greeting Cooper and Caleb and meeting the people they didn’t know.
It was a phenomenon he’d tracked far too many times in his twenty-five years: how much of a funeral was a reunion. Friends and family who hadn’t seen each other in a long time, or just hadn’t had a chance to get together in a while, food and drink and music, good talk and fond memories. Yes, there was sorrow, but it didn’t overwhelm. It arrived in certain moments, but was softened by the love of all these people, this family, for each other.
A funeral was a time to send off a loved one who’d been lost, but it was also a time to cherish the love that remained.
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~oOo~
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An hour or so later, all the men and most of the kids were in the back yard. Lyra and most of the old ladies were in the kitchen, putting a meal together. He’d been watching the scene through the glass doors, and it looked like Lyra was running the show. Her kitchen, after all.
But maybe not for much longer. A new wrinkle in the Haddon family had happened over the past week or two: Lyra’s parents were maybe together again?
It was all very sketchy, and Ben was not remotely forthcoming. According to Lyra, neither was her mother. But Melody was around a lot all of a sudden, and Zach, Lyra, and Reed had all seen at least one instance ofveryfriendly contact between her and Ben.
Lyra felt conflicted about it; she was worried her dad would be hurt. Reed, on the other hand, was all in. Zach’s dog in the fight was Lyra, so he felt ... watchful of her mother.
Melody Miller was an interesting chick. Really pretty—Lyra looked a lot like her, only even more beautiful—but kind of flighty, he thought. She dressed like one of the groupies in that movie Mom liked,Almost Famous, and she had a similar kind of ‘life of the party’ attitude, always smiling, totally comfortable talking to just about everyone, making herself part of any group.
In the kitchen right now, if anybody was competing with Lyra as Hostess in Charge, it was her mother. Zach could see Lyra trying to be okay with it and mostly managing.
A cold beer touched his hand, and Zach turned to see his father at his side. He took the bottle from him. “Thanks.”
“That’s her mom in there, right? The hippie chick?”
“Yup. That’s her mom.”
“Huh. Don’t tell your mom I said this, but that right there? That is a high maintenance woman. I was married to one of those once. They should come with a warning label, like a pack of smokes.”
Zack laughed. Mom would definitely have something to say about any of her men calling a woman ‘high maintenance.’ She had a riff she’d done at least three times Zach could name about how sexist that term was, how men expected women to look and act a certain way and then demeaned them for the effort it took to do it.
He could understand where she was coming from. But from his side of it, and his dad’s, ‘high maintenance’ didn’t mean it took her two hours to get ready to go out. It meant it took a fuck ton of work to keep her happy or even figure out what would, and if you missed the mark, no matter how hard you tried, you were going to get an assload of attitude for your trouble.
Zach had never known a guy who used that term to mean ‘jeez I wish she’d get ready faster.’ Every guy he knew meant, ‘holy shit she went off again and I have no idea what the fuck I did wrong.’
Having never gotten serious with a girl before Lyra, Zach had had only brief encounters with such women, so his experience wasn’t as thorough as Pop’s, who’d been married to one. But yeah, Melody seemed like a seriously high maintenance chick.
Ben did not seem like a guy who would tolerate such a woman. Yet his eyes followed her everywhere they could.
