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On the evenings we’d stayed up all night, we talked about what she wanted when she died. She’d kept pictures from glossy magazines of celebrities so she could scrapbook how she pictured her hair and makeup done for what she called the extravagance of her final performance.
While some people planned their dream wedding, my mother orchestrated her perfect funeral, right down to the finer details of what we’d eat at her wake.
There had been no wake, though, not a cucumber sandwich or frosted vanilla cupcake to be consumed. No fountain or structure of flutes was built in her honor or bottles of sparkling wine uncorked. Not even a single white dove took to the sky.
After her funeral, I’d grabbed a sandwich and a bottle of water to wash it down from the gas station, where I filled my tank.
She’d deserved so much more, but I didn’t have the vigor to make her dreams in death come true. There was the pastor, the men who worked for the council who waited in the wings to fill in the hole, and me.
There were no stories to be shared, no memories. Only a single haunting melody as the workers called upon to complete the job out of necessity lowered her coffin into the ground.
There were no tears, no overflow of condolences, only white noise, the rumble of the excavator, and silence.
There was a single message from Ryan left on my phone, which I deleted without reading. He’d ended us through his own actions but had failed to see the role he played or his responsibility.
I was his ‘in’ to the glamorous industry I’d strived and busted my hump to be part of, and therefore expendable when he no longer needed me.
He’d made the contacts needed in our industry, so I was of no further use to him.
Our relationship had begun to fail, and we were almost never intimate anymore. It was lukewarm at best—more convenience than affection.
It took me longer than it should have to see, but in the end, once the technicolor lights of the metaphorical party faded to black, his true colors shined through.
And they were ugly.
Ryan had bled me dry. He’d taken everything he felt was worth anything in our relationship, so as far as I was concerned, the relationship was bankrupt.
In the end, I showed his manipulative ass the same level of respect he’d shown me. I ended our miserable relationship over dinner, and he didn’t even fake shock at the revelation.
* * *
There was no fresh food in the house, and I mentally kicked myself for not thinking to stop by the quick mart before I traveled down the dusty road to this fate. A shovel and crowbar had seemed more important than actual nutrients which could sustain me during demolition.
I had not one piece of bread or any butter to put on it. There were no coffee beans to brew, and my stomach was protesting.
Almost everything in the cupboard had long since expired. The only save were the tea bags I discovered sealed inside a jar at the back.
I needed to go shopping sooner rather than later, so I concluded it would be better to just get it over and done with.
ChapterThree
Alina
It wasn’t a long drive, but I held my breath the whole way into town. The ride felt longer than the years from my youth when I was sitting on the school bus covered in mud or soda the other children had thrown at me.
Many of the landmarks had since been torn down or replaced, but the landscape hadn’t changed. There were a few new houses dotted along the way I’d missed yesterday, some flashy new signs with estate names on bold signposts. Some names I no longer recognized, but there were a few I did.
McArthur was one.
The sight of the name awoke the anxious feelings I had, so far, subdued successfully.
Callum McArthur.
The only boy in my class who’d been remotely kind to me.
Once, he’d walked me home from school when the bus driver refused to let me board as I was soaked to the skin and dripping water everywhere. We didn’t speak a word the whole way. He walked alongside me, quiet as a church mouse, kicking rocks and dodging puddles as we went.
From that single moment, the one kind gesture in a sea of cruel ones, Callum McArthur had won my heart…
