Time - Chapter 16
I laid crumpled on the floor until the coroner came and collected the body, and then I helped Dad strip the bed down to the mattress.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.
In the ashes of her past, she will rise up, and her death will save us all.
Lizzie ran from her past for ten years, zigzagging across the United States every few months, trying to outlast the prophesy that an oracle gave to her when she was just sixteen years old.
But nobody can run from their destiny forever.
After watching her friend brutally gunned down by a group of ruthless demons, she had no choice but to protect the woman’s child, and there was only one place where Lizzie knew the girl would be safe.
Bronard, Missouri.
Home.
She stayed away to protect her parents, but the girl needed mystical protection.
Her parents had taken in magical strays their whole lives, including Lizzie. If anyone could save the poor child’s life, it would be her mother and father.
But will returning to her home doom Lizzie even as she works to save the child she has vowed to defend?
I laid crumpled on the floor until the coroner came and collected the body, and then I helped Dad strip the bed down to the mattress. He’d had a long time to prepare for this moment. He carried out the plans he’d made beforehand in rote detail. I didn’t have the same luxury. Even though Kimberly had told me that my mother was sick, it never actually registered that she was going to die.
When I came home and saw her enfeebled and bedridden, her death imminent, some part of me still believed that she would live for years and years. Perhaps because she had been alive my entire life, and she was indomitable, a larger-than-life force of nature that nothing could topple.
But time toppled her, didn’t it? The great equalizer. Death.
I wasn’t ready to be without a mother. Then again, Veronica wasn’t ready to be without a mother, either, and I expected her to be strong. I had to be strong, too.
Most of the arrangements had already been made. They’d picked a church for the service and a burial plot. Dessertations, mom’s old shop, catered the wake. Betsy and Ed baked up a spread of bagel sandwiches, donuts, and eclairs for the occasion. The lox was a nice touch.
The wake took place three days after her death, in a small funeral parlor that I used to pass on my way to school when I was younger—when I had all the hope in the world. The funeral director’s son, Brian, had gone to school with me, though he was a few years older.
“It’s nice to see you again,” he said to me softly when Dad and I arrived at the funeral parlor for the wake. “You look lovely.”
I didn’t. I had been crying for the last three days and had only realized I didn’t have the clothes for a funeral a couple of hours before. Luckily, Mom had plenty of dresses. I picked one that was too big on me, but black even if it had fat white polka dots on it, and cinched it with a belt. I said a polite “thank you” and accepted his hand.
“Come this way. We have her set up in the viewing area.”
Mom had wasted away over the last year of being stuck on the bed, but Dad managed to find a dress that fit her perfectly, a simple black number with a white, frilly collar. She wore her favorite dark red lipstick, and they made her up to look nearly alive.
We had an hour alone with her before the people started funneling into the viewing area. First was Ben, the man who made the bourbon we drank the night of her death.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said to us both, taking our hands in turn. “I made a special case for you, old friend.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out a bottle of bourbon, and Dad started crying when he saw that Ben had labeled it Junebug, with a little cartoon June bug as the mascot on the label. I took the bottle, as Dad’s hands shook with sadness.
“That’s very sweet,” I said. “He loves your bourbon.”
“We all loved Junebug.” Ben placed his hand on Dad’s shoulder. “And we love you. I’ll deliver that case tomorrow and check on you. Louisa’s gonna make a casserole, too.”
The rest of the wake was a bevy of faces, hands, and names, some I recognized from years ago and others that were new to me. We must have shaken hands with over a hundred people during the three hours of the wake, and I heard stories from so many people that filled my heart with joy. It had been years since I heard about my mother saving the neighbor’s dog from getting run over by a tiller or how she used to make the best eclairs in the whole state—so good that the governor had asked her to cater his daughter’s wedding.
But there were also stories from the years I missed, and they ripped my heart in half, little by little. I was nearly a puddle on the floor by the time the last of them fell on my ears. That night at home, we ate a dinner of bagels and donuts, taking turns swigging from the bottle.
The next morning, I woke early with a splitting headache and realized we’d finished over half of the bourbon Ben gave us. I popped some Advil and rode into town to pick out a new dress from Dana’s, landing on a spaghetti strap, knee-length black dress with a cardigan to cover my shoulders.
I returned to the house just in time to pick Dad up for the funeral. He was looking over a set of cards and mumbling to himself.
“I forgot to mention this last night,” he said, pulling on his coat. “But you are going to need to say something at the funeral today.”
“Me?” I said. “I haven’t prepared—I have no idea what to say. I’m not good at public speaking.”
“Just speak from the heart—and remember, it doesn’t matter if everyone hates it. The only thing that matters is that your mother asked for it, and we need to follow her last” —he choked back tears— “her last wishes, okay?”
I nodded. “Okay, Dad.”
He was in no condition to operate a vehicle, so I drove us to the church. I hadn’t been to a church since I was baptized, and the fact that Mom wanted to have a funeral in one struck me as odd.
“She came to it late in life,” Dad answered the question on my mind as we pulled up to the white-washed church. “When she could still get out, they had support groups in the church, and they were kind to her.”
There were already a dozen cars at the church when we arrived, and more streamed in behind us. By the time the service started and the pastor called for his first blessing, the church pews were nearly filled. My mother was quite a woman, it seemed, and touched so many people in the town.
After the pastor delivered his remarks, Dad walked up to the pulpit and cleared his throat. “Thank you for coming. If you knew my wife, you know that she loved telling stories. I loved listening to them. I’m afraid I’m not much of a talker. That was Junebug—my wife’s job. She was the one everyone loved, and I was the one who made friends simply by being in her presence. After all, how bad could I be if Junie chose to love me, right?”
He laughed sadly. “She put out so much good into the world. It was her fuel. There was never a school fundraiser or bake sale she wasn’t willing to donate her time and her baking expertise to help—and god, could that woman bake.” There was a murmur of agreement and light laughter throughout the church. He continued, “It’s not often that a person finds something they were better suited for than Junie and baking. If you ever had something she baked, you know those hands were blessed by God—and now they have returned to his grace.” He cleared his throat. “I love you, Junebug. You were a light in the darkness, and the world has become colder without you in it. And now, I believe my daughter has something to say.”
He rushed off the stage and sat down as I stood and walked to the pulpit. “Wow. I was just thinking that I pitied the person who followed that—and um, I guess that’s me. I was only told I had to say something a couple of minutes ago, so I am just winging it—can you tell?” I sighed and collected myself, gathering the words. “My mom was one of the two greatest humans I’ve ever known, and I’ve been all over this country, met all sorts of people. Mom was one of a kind. She took me in, even though I’m not her blood, and gave me a home. She didn’t have to do that. She didn’t have to do any of the amazing things she did, but she did them anyway, no matter the cost. I’ve been gone for a decade, and I know there wasn’t a day she didn’t talk about me because at least once a day, my ears would start ringing—that was just one of the many things I learned from my mom. ‘If your ears are ringing, then somebody’s talking about you.’ What if you have tinnitus, though? She never answered that one. The minute I came home and felt the love both Mom and Dad imbued in the house I grew up, I knew I had made a mistake leaving all those years ago. I have never felt that kind of love before, or since, except in that house. Mom loved, recklessly and often, even when people didn’t deserve it—especially when people didn’t deserve it.”
I stood there for a minute, stifling tears before I sat down. When Dad squeezed my arm and looked at me with pride, I knew I had not embarrassed myself or my mother’s memory.
After the funeral, we led the procession to the burial plot and threw flowers into the grave as her body was lowered into the ground. And then it was over. The people dispersed, heading back to where they were from—and left behind two broken people grieving alone over Mom’s grave.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.