COVET

Chapter 1

October 14, 2002

Nineteen years old. That's it. No more. No more Thadius Daniel Tate. God, what a waste. He'll never grow old. How strange. Forever nineteen. That's my whole family laying there – dead. Well except for Ma. When did Thadius start calling our grandmother Ma? She did raise him, maybe he started right away. I wonder how she's doing. She seems ok, but not really. He was everything to her. I bet she'll go soon – nothing to hold on to now. Just like when Dad died so soon after Mom, except he had something to hold on to – us, his sons. But I guess we weren't enough. Maybe he hated Thadius. I mean it was his birth that killed Mom. Maybe Dad couldn't live with that, the hate.

Father MacKenzie interrupted Michael's thoughts as he began to sing Amazing Grace. Mourners flipped through their little gray programs with "Thadius Daniel Tate, October 13, 1982 – October 10, 2002" printed on the front and their voices trickled into unison. Michael knew the words to the song from years of childhood Mass attendance but his voice was like a rock stuck in his throat. He couldn't swallow it or spit it out. He looked around at the circle of people, each and every one dressed in rain gear in anticipation of the heavy skies. Individual clouds weren't even discernable. It was just one big canopy of dreary gray. There were so many people, most of whom he didn't recognize. Who were these people? Maybe they hadn't known Thadius. Maybe they were just gawking at the scene. The poor wretched soul who could no longer bear the burden of life. Thadius Daniel Tate, the quiet reclusive young man who lunged to his death from the family homestead's 4th floor widow's walk. Well it was more like a cupola but widow's walk seemed befitting. At least Vatican 2 didn't subscribe to the belief that suicide was an automatic sentence to eternal damnation. Ma would surely have suffered a heart attack if the Church still believed and preached that.

The singing stopped and Father MacKenzie said, "Let us pray..."

There was a brief rustle of weather treated nylon and cotton jackets as the group of mourners closed their pamphlets and bowed their heads. Michael stared on, refusing to pray for his brother. He was at the funeral for one reason – Ma.

Indian Summer in Massachusetts had come full force early September but now October submitted to the inevitable – sodden autumn, drenched in hurling damp leaves and gray pregnant clouds always threatening to release their pressure. The leap of death had made Thadius nineteen years old forever – just three days shy of turning twenty. But there would be no twenty. There would be no thirty, or forty or eighty. There would be no more smirks from the corner of Thadius' mouth when he teased Ma. There would be no more cribbage tournaments into the wee morning hours. There would be no more Michael begging his little brother to "grow up and be responsible." There would be no more...

"In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit..."

In the split second before the bowed heads rose, Michael noticed one other head disobeying the priest. Michael didn't recognize her and would have assumed her to be a morbid funeral groupie had it not been for her eyes. They were fixed on the casket. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he could have sworn that with those eyes, she was begging, pleading Thadius to rise. He recognized the look. He felt it on his own face. Michael was mentally demanding Thadius to rise from his death pose. But whatever her reason for wanting him to rise was nothing like Michael's reason, surely. Because he wanted his little brother to rise so he could beat the shit out of him.

Later as the crowd of people broke off into smaller groups and more umbrellas opened as the rain fell harder, Michael looked for the woman. Curiosity? Definitely, but it was more. There was a simple attractiveness to her, yet she struck Michael as beautiful with her short dark blond hair matting her round face from the damp air and her piercing eyes daring Thadius to defy God and Father MacKenzie, to not rest in peace but rather to answer her goddamn question of "why?" But that was Michael's question and he only hoped that some other person had hated Thadius at that moment too. Because she was gone. He didn't see her in the dispersing crowd. She didn't linger to pay her condolences. She didn't stay at the grave next to Michael where he stood for a long hour, watching the casket descend into the ground. She didn't hear the thud of earth as it collapsed onto the casket. Michael felt the cool, soft hand of his aging grandmother clasp his hard callused hand. She held onto to him for a moment and then she too was gone. And Michael didn't think about the pretty blond woman anymore. He didn't think about his grandmother anymore. He didn't think about the weather anymore. He didn't think anymore. He just tasted the anger is his mouth and watched his little brother disappear under the dirt that buried him.