Everything You Are(9)

The car vanishes and he sits in a different church, staring dry eyed at a different coffin. His hands are swathed in bandages. His face feels stiff and lopsided, still swollen from a laceration on his cheek, the stitches pulling tight with any change in his expression. Beside him, his sister weeps for her dead husband, her shoulders shaking, but Braden has no tears.

I’ve got no right to grieve.

Mitch lies in a coffin because of him. There’s a gap in his memory you could drive a tractor through, but he knows it’s his fault.

“Are you even listening?” Alexandra pokes him with a sharp elbow.

“Sorry,” he says, shaken, trying to surface. His entire body feels cold. His cheek throbs, as if the injury is still fresh. His hands are shaking.

The limo turns into the cemetery. Crown Heights. He’s relieved to see that there are trees, that Lilian and Trey will be resting in a beautiful place.

A teenage girl is waiting when the car draws up. Black hoops in her nose and eyebrows, black eyeliner, stark black hair. Braden remembers her from the church; she was standing at his daughter’s shoulder. Now she flings both arms around Allie’s neck in a tempestuous hug.

“You okay?”

“Ish.”

The girl stares unabashedly at Braden. “He doesn’t look like the pictures. I mean, he does, but he doesn’t. You know?”

“Steph!”

“Right. Just saying—”

“Perhaps we can chat later,” Alexandra suggests. “We need to move to the graveside.”

She leads the way. Allie and Steph follow, and Braden trails behind, wishing he could blend into the anonymous crowd rather than stand with the family. He catches a glimpse of a woman who jars his memory. Unusually tall; thick waves of auburn hair. She turns her face away before he can place how he knows her, and then he sees the burial site and that consumes all of his attention.

The two coffins, suspended by a series of straps and pulleys over the waiting holes in the raw earth, are brutal. In an agony of helplessness, he sees the blood drain from Allie’s face, watches her begin to shiver.

The sermon is mercifully brief, and he thinks maybe it’s over, maybe they can go somewhere, anywhere, away from here, but then four solemn young people file up to the graveside, all carrying instruments. Two violins. A viola.

And a cello.

“Oh no,” Steph breathes. “I told them not to.”

Two men place folding chairs, and the kids sit and begin to play.

Braden braces himself, but it’s no good. The music insinuates its way past all of his defenses, goes straight to his heart. He’s not the only one. He sees Allie’s face go even whiter, sees her knees begin to buckle. He’s at her side before he knows what he’s doing. His arm goes around her waist, supporting her.

He bends and whispers in her ear, “Just breathe, little bird. I’ve got you.”

She softens into him, letting him take her weight, and the moment of trust is a thread of light in all of the grief and darkness and guilt. Even when the music mercifully ends, Allie doesn’t pull away. He holds her while friends and acquaintances come by to offer condolences, letting Alexandra revel in the pressing hands, the hugs, the lugubrious sighs and sobs.

“Yes, I agree, she is irreplaceable . . . So sad, so tragic . . . Yes, his life was cut off so short, but God knows best . . .”

“Whoa,” Steph says. “What is he doing here?”

Braden follows her gaze and sees a tall boy walking toward them. Glossy black hair, black jeans, black motorcycle jacket, black helmet dangling from one hand. His eyes are the luminous amber of a panther, and that’s what he reminds Braden of. A hunter on the prowl. His arm tightens, reflexively, around his daughter.

Allie pulls away.

“Ethan. Hi.”

“Hey,” he says, standing so close that Braden can smell leather and cologne. All of the hackles rise on the back of his neck.

“Not much to say, I know. Hang in there.” The boy nods, as if he’s said something deep, and then he makes his way through the thinning group of people toward the parking lot.

Both girls watch his retreating back.

“Whoa,” Steph says again, a little breathlessly.

Allie says nothing.

“You want me to come over?” Steph asks. “Or you can come back to my house. Whatever you want.”

“Not tonight. I’ll text you.”

“Come, Allie,” Alexandra says. “You’re as pale as a ghost. Let’s get you home.”

When Allie doesn’t answer, her aunt clamps a capable hand around her wrist and tows her toward the car. Allie doesn’t resist, doesn’t look back.

Braden, uninvited, unsure of his place in any of this, stays where he is. His arm still feels warm from sheltering his daughter. As she moves away from him, loss fills him, is going to choke him. He can’t let her go again. Whether she wants him or not, whether he deserves it or not, he needs her.

At the same moment as he takes a step to follow, Allie stops short and wrenches her arm from Alexandra’s grasp.

“Wait. Dad’s coming, too.”

“Let’s discuss that later,” Alexandra says, impatient. “You can call him.”

“No. He’s coming now.”

“Allie.” He breathes her name, takes another step toward her.