I take a deep breath of cold, sharp air.
“You ready?” Harper murmurs beside me, her eyes fixed on me, not wavering once. How did this girl get so strong? How does she always know exactly what I need?
What did I do to deserve her?
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I reply. Hand in hand, we cross the near-empty street, and I open the funeral home door for us both. Inside the overheated foyer, we’re greeted by a lackluster bouquet of lilies and a sign for the Kingston Wake pointing to the main viewing room. The lobby is empty aside from that, so I figure we’ve made it before any of Mum and Dad’s friends, at least. I wonder if any of mine or Kat’s friends from primary school will stop by—Kat keeps in touch with a few of them, though I mostly only say hello via social media on their birthdays, if I remember to even do that much.
I open the final door between me and the truth of my father’s death, and I feel my guts tie into knots. But when we step inside, my father isn’t the reason my mouth drops open and my whole body freezes, caught between fight or flight, trapped in utter shock.
At the head of the room, beside the open casket, stands my family. My mother, her sister, Dad’s sisters, my sister . . . And one more woman.
Hannah Butler.
Harper
At first I’m just confused. Jack freezes a half step inside the door, and I wonder if he’s panicking. I would be, at the thought of seeing my father laid out in his burial clothes. This is the last time he’ll ever see the man who raised him. I can’t imagine what’s going through his head right now.
I reach up to touch his shoulder, try to comfort him, but he jerks away from me, still staring at the opposite end of the room.
That’s when I notice the cluster of women there. More specifically, one woman. My history professor.
It takes my brain a while to catch up. What’s she doing here? I wonder. Is Jack related to her? Maybe she’s a distant cousin. It’s strange that he wouldn’t mention anything.
Somewhere deep down, though, I already guess the truth. I’ve dated poets, I can hear her saying to me just the other day, ensconced in her office, her tone so confident, so knowing. I watch her gaze fix on Jack’s, and his do the same on her. The history between them, the unspoken backstory, hangs so heavy in the air I swear I can taste it.
Then there’s his family standing around her. Hannah Butler’s hand still rests on an older woman’s shoulder, a woman with Jack’s eyes, except now they’re filled with tears and fixed on the casket. That has to be his mother. His mother who Hannah clearly knows well enough to comfort as though she’s family too.
And the other girl, the younger one, who looks only a few years older than me, but who shares those eyes with her mother and Jack, that has to be the sister he mentioned on the drive up. Kat, the one who organized the whole funeral for the family. He described her as the level-headed one, the one who always keeps her head in a crisis. She’s standing close to Hannah as well, though she’s looking at her brother, then at me, back and forth and back and forth, a frown blooming on her face that shifts from confusion to understanding to horror all in one smooth motion.
With a pat on Hannah’s shoulder, Kat descends the two steps from the viewing platform and crosses the empty room toward us.
Well, not quite empty. I notice a couple of older men huddled in a corner, and a younger one lingering on the fringes, a phone in hand, absorbed in a text message.
I still haven’t moved. I haven’t released Jack’s hand, either. After he cringed away when I tried to touch his shoulder with my other hand, I’m holding on to this one from sheer instinct.
“Jack.” Kat finally reaches us, and pulls him into a hug. That, at last, makes me drop his hand. Somehow I doubt I’m going to get it back. Not with someone else from his faculty here, watching us.
“I’m sorry,” Kat’s saying. “I didn’t know. You said you were bringing a plus one, and then Hannah showed up earlier today, so I just assumed . . . Shit, I’m so—” Kat glances at me, as though startled to realize I’m human, standing right here, and can hear everything she’s saying. “God, talk about horrible first impressions.” She sticks out a hand. “I’m Kat, Jack’s sister. You are?”
I swallow past the sudden lump in my throat. “Harper,” I reply as I offer my hand, trying to ignore the sudden, sinking realization.
He never told her about me. He never told any of them. Not even my name.
“Well, it’s great to meet you, Harper.” Kat smiles, though it’s obvious to anyone with eyeballs that it’s a strained-around-the-edges smile. A what-the-hell-are-you-doing-with-this-girl smile, mostly meant for her brother.