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As far as I knew, Trevor had no one in his life, and now that he was gone, I had no obligation to hold on to the pieces of his ghost on the chance someone would crawl out of the woodwork down the line.
I still had to contact my attorney about the shady bank accounts spread out all over the world, and she was sure to be shocked when I brought it all to her. After years of helping me hammer out relatively simple performance contracts, it would at least be interesting to see her wrap her head around a handful of offshore banking hurdles.
Being independently wealthy was also a lot to wrap my own head around. I guess I had already gotten used to the idea of marrying Trevor, even though he had never given me the firm number of how much money he had tucked away.
Being the sole holder of his inheritance was a mind fuck, to say the least. That, and there was no way I would believe it was real until I had all of it safely deposited into an American bank account in my name. Until then, they were just numbers on a piece of paper.
Out of everything in the box, the only meaningful thing was the wedding band I had bought him shortly after his proposal. All the other items were just objects, but the ring had been truly his, worn against his skin as a representation of our bond.
Even if our relationship had been built on some lie I hadn’t yet uncovered, I would always believe there had been something special between us, whether that had been Trevor’s intention or not.
I slid the ring onto my thumb, twisting it around, and was glad that he had insisted on wearing it during the engagement, even though it was usually only the woman who did. Had it just been sitting on his nightstand in a box, I would have discarded it, but now, I couldn’t do that. Even if we weren’t meant to be, I still had very real feelings of affection for him and wanted to keep at least that one tiny piece of him to remember him by.
I dropped the band into my jewelry box, not wanting to wear it myself but also not ready to get rid of it completely. At least I knew it was there if I ever wanted to see it again.
The funeral home brought the urn the next day. As I disabled the security and opened the door for them to bring it in, I was shocked to see that it took two of them to carry it in.
The urn was enormous, much bigger than it really had any right to be. It reached nearly to my hips when placed on the floor for lack of any other place to put it. I had cleared a spot on the bookshelf in the living room, but I hadn’t expected something of this size.
I directed the funeral home workers to leave it next to his office door, planning to put it there once I finally got the door open. A locksmith should be able to do the job with no problem, as long as I call the security company and let them know what’s going on beforehand. There was no doubt that the office door probably had more alarms on it than anything else in the house.
It’s a bit distasteful, leaving Trevor’s urn on the floor, but unless I wanted him in the kitchen, there wasn’t a single other surface in the house I could imagine being strong enough to hold it.
I swore to myself I’d have him placed on his desk, which I knew would be sturdy. I had only seen the desk as it was moved into the house before I was locked out of the office, but it reminded me of nothing so much as the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office—Ornate, antique, and expensive. The urn might be a little gaudy for it, but it was a little late to ask for a refund now.
One of the funeral home workers wiped his forearm over his sweaty forehead once they had placed the urn. “I assume your husband had expensive taste?” he asked.
“Fiancé,” I corrected. “And sort of. He always valued form over function.”
The man looked down at the urn and back at me again, doubt written on his face. “You sure about that?”
I couldn’t really blame his incredulous tone. The urn looked so insanely out of place that I was tempted to ask if they were sure if it was the right one, but considering that the urn looked like it could pay for two more houses just like the one I was standing in, it was unlikely anyone else could be inside it.
Ugh, what a morbid thought.
The funeral director had mentioned Trevor had been insistent on using a piece of artwork he had provided as an urn, and after some minor adjustments at the funeral home, they were able to make it happen. I couldn’t figure out why he’d connected with something like this, but I guess it wasn’t my opinion that mattered at the end of the day.
It was black and almost intimidating in its wide, sweeping shape. Streaked across it, seemingly at random, were lines of glittering gold. It looked like something out of a museum, not something that a man like Trevor would want.
I brushed it out of my mind. There wasn’t any point in pondering the urn, just like there wasn’t any point in questioning any of Trevor’s other odd decisions before he died. More than likely, he had been in the midst of a mental breakdown, and it had manifested in strange purchases like the urn and odd actions like signing the accounts over.
After the funeral home workers left, obviously hesitant to leave an urn on the floor and not in a place of respect, I was able to let out a long sigh of relief. This was it, the true end of the ordeal of Trevor’s death. I would still have to live here among all of the memories, but I had no more obligations to him. I had fulfilled the simple, yet heartbreaking, last wishes he had laid out.
I laid a hand on the top of the urn, expecting to feel some kind of connection, or spark, letting me know he was still with me somehow, but there was nothing but cold ceramic.
“It’s good to have you home,” I said quietly, embarrassed to be speaking out loud but not sure what else to do. “You’ve really left me in a shitty position, you know that?”
Of course, there was no answer. Still feeling foolish, but powerfully sentimental, I kissed my fingers before brushing them over the top of the urn. It was a strange moment, being alone, but not really.
I left the urn there outside the office and went upstairs, feeling the whole time like someone was watching me. I had expected it to be more profound, more poignant, to have everything come to a close, but it wasn’t. It was just quiet, the silence of the house only broken by the buzzing of cicadas in the forest, and my bare feet padding up the wooden stairs into the bedroom I had once shared with Trevor.
I opened the windows, electric bill be damned, lit a few of my favorite citrus-scented candles, shimmied my jeans down my legs, and hopped onto the bed, leaving the pants on the floor while I enjoyed the satiny sheets against my bare skin. This place was mine, all mine, and I was alone in it, so if I didn’t want to wear pants, I wasn’t going to. No point in owning so many pairs of cute panties if I wasn’t even able to see them on myself besides shower and bedtime.
Sitting with my back against the headboard, I opened the drawer on my nightstand and pulled out two things I had been avoiding completely for the past week: my phone and my laptop. The phone had been on “do not disturb” and the laptop was off completely, but now that I had completed my obligations, it was time to un-pause my life.
Taking a deep breath, I tapped the little bell to allow all my notifications to come through, and opened the laptop to check my email. Both sad and darkly amused, I watched everything flood in, the message chimes coming in such rapid succession that it sounded more like a single alarm.
Trevor’s death had left me alone, but only because it was something so achingly private. Seeing the visible proof of everyone reaching out to me; friends, coworkers, family. It was as clear as day that now, picking up the pieces of my life, plenty of people would be by my side.
