Sin of the Saint

CHAPTER ONE: THE FUNERAL OF CHARITY GRACE

Somehow, Liv had managed to put on her black dress and pin a black rose into her brunette hair before joining her parents in their living room. They had pulled into the funeral just on time, with only a minute or two to spare. Liv made her way to the front row, where Charity's extended family sat, looking at the white coffin with gold trim at the head of the funeral home chapel. Though everyone wore black, white and yellow roses sat in small bouquets all around the chapel's stand—the biggest one of all resting on top of Charity's coffin.

Yellow had been Charity's favorite color, and it suited her, but each soul in the room thought it to be too happy a color for this day.

Liv retreated inside herself as the service began, pulling her knit cardigan tighter around herself. Though it was still summertime, she felt very cold, and couldn't seem to shake it. Charity and Liv had spent two years in separate schools when Charity's family moved across the train tracks, so Liv knew very few people attending her funeral—only her direct and extended families. There were rows and rows of Charity's friends whom she didn't recognize at all. So, she resolved to staring into her lap, knotting her fingers until her knuckles cracked.

Nancy, Liv's mother, put her hand over hers, giving her a stern look to stop her nervous behavior. Liv sighed—it wasn't like she could help it—and looked back up at Charity's sweet, kind-hearted, primadonna-like mother, who sobbed at the pulpit, speaking about Charity's role in their church's choir. How she'd miss her voice. How she'd miss Charity as her perfect soprano counterpart—nobody's singing voice had blended quite so well with her mother's as Charity's voice did. That was something everybody could agree on.

Liv's eyes glazed over again as her mind was taken to all the times that she and Charity had gone in the middle school's music rooms to practice their own performance pieces as members of their school's amateur choir. Solos were always offered to Charity first but Charity, being the nice girl she was, would always split the solo with another student in the choir who wanted to try as well—to Charity's dismay, Liv had always been too shy to sing by herself, and passed the opportunities to others.

But if Charity was any one word, it would be her name—Charity.

Charitable. Giving. Self-sacrificing.

"...Liv?"

If only Liv could have been more giving that day...that last day...

"Liv, honey," Nancy shouldered her daughter, "Mrs. Grace is talking to you."

Liv shook her head, getting sluggishly out of her own head, and looked up at the pulpit where Charity's mom stood in the silence, looking at Liv expectantly.

"I'm sorry, what?" Liv blinked a few times.

"Would you be willing to say a few words about our lovely daughter? You spent so much time with her...I'm sure she'd want it," she said.

Liv's heart began to race at the invitation to address this strange crowd, but she nodded and stood up, her hands knotting themselves tighter than she thought possible. She walked up to the pulpit, her head becoming lighter and fuzzier with each step. Stage fright was a struggle of hers for quite a while, and she didn't expect that talking about her best friend would fare well for her. But she knew Charity would want it, so she willed herself to move anyway.

"My name is Olivia Yves...I was Charity's best friend." She cleared her throat. "And...I was just lost in thought now, thinking about how Charity embodied her name. She constantly looked for opportunities for other people to succeed alongside her, and I thought that was one of her most admirable traits. It was never difficult for me to be her friend, because she made it so easy to love her." She glanced up at the audience at long last, and her stomach catapulted into her throat. She swallowed hard, her sweating fingers slipping through each other. "I wish she was here...and I'm sure we all wish that..."