*FREE WITH PAID BONUS CHAPTER*After being dumped by her boyfriend, Elodie Shepherd resigns herself to loving her older brother's best friend from afar, just like she always has, even though he only sees her as his best friend's immature kid sister.
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"We are here today to celebrate a life well lived. A son, brother, father, grandfather, and so much more."
The man propagating the funeral ceremony for my grandfather (was he an officiant, like for a wedding? Or did I call him a priest?) decided that he was going to glorify the man who'd spawned Jay, my spineless asshole of a father.
I figured I'd be angrier at having to attend this funeral, but in the end, it had been my decision to come.
I hadn't gone to the will reading. If he did leave me anything, I didn't want it, but this...this I needed to do.
I hadn't told V or Eli, who had most likely figured I'd just gone back to campus.
My location services were turned off on my phone since I'd given my location to V in case of emergencies. No one else knew that I was here, save for the photographers camped outside trying to get a glimpse of me through the stained glass windows of the wooden cedar church.
The plush stained pew seats my butt was firmly sunken into were an odd shade of red, like the color of spilled wine on white carpet that had been left to simmer for a few dozen years.
Fresh sunlight filtered through the slats of the stained glass painting the inside of the dim church in a kaleidoscope of shimmering rays that washed the funeral attendees in glazed pastels and honeyed hues, offsetting the garish and pale theme of the event in front of us.
My grandfather had chosen an open casket.
His withered grey skin had been covered in a varnish by the funeral home, hiding the truth perpetuated by death.
I once heard that funerals were for the living; the dead were already somewhere else.
This funeral was for my father.
Had I come to confront him on my own terms? Had I decided on my own that this was going to end—my way and without his say? Maybe.
Had I used my newfound condition as a catalyst to finally get my life in order, to finally decide to clean things up and put them how they should be? Definitely.
I was only eighteen, but girls younger than me had done it. So could I.
I'd make sure they had the life I never had; the life I should have had.
I'd give them the childhood I deserved, and be present for every second for it.
I'd tell Matthew, too. Soon.
But first, I had to finish this once and for all.
"Would anyone like to come up and say a few things?"
I stood before my father could.
A few gasps permeated the mold-infested air, and I could picture my father's ruddy face steaming red with anger at my decision to upstage him at his own publicity stunt.
