Chapter 3 - THE EMPTY SIDE OF THE CHURCH
On Friday morning, the church doors opened to a sky the color of wet concrete. Frank held my elbow as I walked down the center aisle. Three caskets stood beneath arrangements of white flowers. Someone had tucked Penelope's purple ribbon among the lilies and placed Theodore's red hat beside his photograph. Christopher's wedding band had been returned to me in a small envelope, and I carried it in my pocket until its edges softened.
The pews to the left filled with Christopher's family, neighbors, teachers, colleagues, and people from the science museum who barely knew us. The pews to the right held almost no one. My cousins had followed my parents' lead after being told the service was "complicated." An aunt sent a brief condolence message, then wished me strength. I wondered whether strength was what people called being abandoned when they didn't want to name it.
When the minister spoke about Penelope, she described a child who corrected adults gently and believed every stray animal had a story worth hearing. Theo was the boy who laughed so hard at his own jokes that no one else could understand the punch line. Christopher had taught them both how to build paper boats and had once filled our bathtub to test the designs. The room laughed softly, and the sound cut straight through me.
During the music, I looked toward the doors each time they moved. Every gust of air made me think my mother might finally walk in. She knew Penelope loved white roses. She knew Theo hated dark rooms. My father had held Christopher's hand at our wedding and called him a son. None of that put them in a pew. I stopped looking at the door when the last hymn began.
At the cemetery, Evelyn slipped her fingers around mine. Frank placed a small wooden boat that Christopher had carved beside the flowers. I stood through the prayers, though my knees kept threatening to fold. Afterward, people spoke in low voices and offered casseroles, phone numbers, promises. Many kept those promises. They took our trash to the curb, sat in the kitchen, and let silence happen without trying to fill it.
Three days later, my mother sent a text. Hope you're managing. Genevieve was deeply hurt that you didn't bother to call her on her actual birthday. I read it beneath Penelope's drawing and felt something in me go cold. I typed, They were buried on her birthday. I erased it. Then I took a screenshot, not because I knew I would need proof, but because the words seemed impossible to believe even while I was looking at them.
The following week passed in tasks that required my signature. The insurer for the trucking company contacted me. An investigator asked about the SUV. I answered as much as I could, then hired Nadia Shah after a neighbor recommended her. At our first meeting, Nadia pushed the paperwork aside when I started apologizing for crying. She told me I could stop whenever I needed to and return when I was ready.
Nadia explained that an investigation could take months. The truck's records, driver hours, dispatch messages, and insurance coverage all mattered. She would handle calls that I could not bear. She also asked whom I trusted with my finances and health decisions if I became ill. I almost said my parents out of habit. Then I remembered the empty pews and asked her to explain every option from the beginning.
At home, I wrote down the names of people who had actually come. Evelyn and Frank. Rosa from the hospital, who had called after her shift. My neighbor Malik, who shoveled the driveway without making me ask. My colleague Dana, who covered my patients until I returned part time. It was a small list. Every name on it belonged to someone who had witnessed me at my worst and stayed.
My parents sent no flowers. Genevieve posted photographs of her birthday dinner: a candlelit table, an elaborate cake, our father raising a glass. I had never followed her account closely, but someone sent me the pictures with an angry note and immediately apologized. I stared at my father's smile. I didn't recognize it as cruelty then. I recognized it as the face he used when a room agreed with him.
May you like
I muted their messages but did not block them. Some part of me kept waiting for an ordinary apology. Months later, I understood that waiting was a habit grief could exploit. It made every approaching car sound like someone coming to make things right. The first time my father finally did appear at my house, it was after the newspaper printed a dollar figure beside my name.
Before that day, I had filled a notebook with ordinary memories in case time made them harder to find. Penelope liked the sound of rain on the garage roof. Theo called Christopher's old coat the "bear coat" and hid inside it. The pages mattered more than anything the newspaper would ever print. They reminded me that the people in the caskets had lived full, particular lives, however brief those lives had been.
