Cornerstone 02 - Keystone

by Misty Provencher

  I poke at what’s still on my plate and Garrett asks, first with a finger tap on the table in my direction, then with a small cough meant to catch my gaze, and finally, with the gentle whisper of my name, to look at him. But I pretend that I don’t hear. I keep my eyes rooted to the table, too sad to talk, until Mrs. Reese walks into the dining room, with Iris trailing, bleary-eyed, behind her.

  There’s something suddenly healing about seeing Garrett’s little sister again. I haven’t seen Iris since we came here and I realize how much I miss her. I can’t wait to see the plume of her ponytail waving around on the top of her head or to hear her telling jokes through a mouth full of veggies. Iris fell in love with my mom the very first time they met and my mom had loved her back. It seems like one of Iris’s giggles might be able to heal a part of me, just because she loved my mom too.

  I lean out of my chair, as Iris emerges from behind Mrs. Reese, and I put on my biggest smile for her.

  But the second Iris sees me, something goes wrong.

  She stops dead and the tired droop dissolves. Instead, Iris’s mouth jerks open and her face scrunches up. She unleashes a terrified shriek. I startle in my chair as Mrs. Reese whips around to see what is wrong. The minute she kneels down, Iris slams right into her mom, burying her face against Mrs. Reese’s shoulder like she’s seen a monster.

  “You’re okay. I’m here, you’re okay,” Mrs. Reese chants, but every time she tries to pry Iris’s head away, Iris looks up, locks eyes with me, and shrieks again. It’s like being hit by a jackhammer. And a truck. And another jackhammer. I dart glances all around the room as Sean and the Addo and Mark and Brandon come from every direction. I search their faces to figure out why this is happening, if they know why Iris isn’t screaming at anyone else, but me.

  But they all look jackhammered too.

  Sean catches Iris’s chin in his hand and turns her gaze to him instead of me.

  “Munchkin,” he says. “It’s just Nalena. She was scared too.”

  “I w-w-w-want d-d-d-daddy!” Iris tears away from Sean and screams into her mom’s hair. “I want him to c-c-come back! R-r-right now!”

  “I know you do,” Mrs. Reese says. Her voice breaks and she lowers her lips on her daughter’s head. I feel my own eyes sting. The room fills up with Iris’s gut wrenching pleads and howls. Everyone tries to say something calming, but when Iris can’t catch her breath anymore, Mrs. Reese picks her up and carries her out of the dining room saying, “We’ll just go lie down, okay? We can eat later.”

  Once they’re gone, there’s no sound at all.

  “Time,” Nok says.

  “You’re right, of course,” Addo agrees. “Everybody has to take their time to grieve. No cheating.”

  “Did you see that?” I whisper to Garrett. “She screamed when she saw me.”

  He glances away.

  “She was there too,” Garrett says. He says it so quietly; I would’ve missed it if someone had rubbed a fork on a plate at the same time.

  “Where?”

  “She was in the house with you,” Addo says. “When your parents...passed.”

  “What are you talking about? There was nobody there but me and…”

  I stop talking because I can’t really remember what happened. I know I went into the house and Roger was there, holding my mom at gunpoint, and then...nothing. It’s like my mind walked into a blizzard and everything whites out. I know the facts, what ultimately happened—somehow I know it—but I don’t actually remember it.

  “She was in a closet upstairs,” Sean clarifies. “Your mom was watching her when everyone left to protect the Addo and when your mom heard someone at the door, she told Iris to hide in the linen closet upstairs.”

  I think of standing in Garrett’s old house, with it’s different levels. If you went upstairs, there was a bathroom at the very top and an open hallway with only a spindle railing, parallel to the dining room and kitchen below. The linen closet was right in the middle. In direct view of everything that had happened.

  I want to fall over.

  Pass out. Expire. Vanish.

  Something.

  But I just sit on the folding chair, hollow. It wasn’t enough that she lost her dad, but she had to watch what happened to my mother too. And here I am tonight, with a big, stupid smile on my face, thinking she was just going to run into my arms and hug me. Heal me. I never expected that I would mean death to her. That I might need to heal her.

  Garrett’s hand slips to my knee. While his touch usually sends a curly wave of bubbles through my stomach, all I feel now is his actual touch, rubbing tiny circles that insist, over and over again, that this is all going to be okay.

  “Time.” Nok’s voice is quiet again.

  Chapter 3

  ADDO DOESN’T LET US SIT and stew on what just happened.

  “Okay,” he says, pointing his sling toward the living room. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s get ready for the Memory, shall we, kids?”

  “How many are coming?” Sean asks.

  “Well,” Addo rubs his chin gingerly, grunting as he passes over the bruises. “It won’t be the cavalry, boys. Everyone wants to be here, but considering the circumstances, we really need them to stay out there as long as possible. They’ll be here afterward, for the Totus.” Addo pauses, giving me a wink. “It’s like a good, old fashioned town hall meeting.”

  “Of course,” Sean and Garrett say at the same time.

  “Will the burial be today too?” I ask. A lump logjams itself in my throat. I want to be there. I need to be there. Even if it means letting The Fury know where I’m at.

  “Uh…hmm.” The Addo opens and closes his mouth. He grimaces. “That’s not quite how we do things, kiddo.”

  His response hits me like a can of beans. I’m not going to be allowed to stand at my mother’s grave and say goodbye? It sounds like maybe something has already happened, without even talking to me about it. I don’t know what I expected, but I know that I wanted to have a say in it. I deserve to know which graveyard they’ve put her in, what her headstone will say, if the dress she’s laid to rest in will be her favorite color. A loose wave of panic rolls through me. My guts push against my bones, making it hard to breathe.

  “Where is my mom? And Garrett’s dad?” I ask. Garrett shifts beside me. I won’t say bodies. Garrett drops his eyes. He knows what I mean.

  “They’ve been given the ceremony of Terra Rota,” Addo says. “The Ianua believe in nourishing the Earth with their emptied bodies.”

  “What are you talking about?” I whisper, my stomach turning. “You can’t do that.”

  Addo doesn’t argue and he doesn’t explain. He looks away, trying to blink back his own tears. The beautiful clear sky of Garrett’s eyes has gone gray. Sean turns his head so I can’t see him as he rubs his eyes. I feel the divide that separates everyone in this room from the people we’ve lost. Sean and Garrett and the Addo are all standing on the same side as I am. There is no one to be angry with.

  “But I want her to have a gravestone,” I cry. “Somewhere that I can go and see her.”

  Garrett reaches out as I put my face into my hands and try to choke back what’s coming, but can’t. Suddenly, Nok’s hand is on my shoulder and Sean’s hand is on my arm. Addo joins near my elbow. I should be embarrassed about blubbering in front of them, but instead, the circle they form around me feels safe. Garrett’s arm encircles my waist, but his head is down and his eyes are closed. Without any of them looking at me, the grief rushes out, crushing the leaky wall I’ve been using to hold it back. My shoulders buckle and it feels like I will never be able to stop. Their circle stays locked around me until my bawling finally slows to hiccups and then I hold my breath to stop those too.

  “She’ll be everywhere you look, Nalena,” Addo gives my arm a gentle squeeze before he moves away. “So be sure to keep your head up instead of staring at the potholes.”

  And then, as if my hysteria was only a passing cloud, Addo says, “Ok, enough wi
th the sad. Let’s get the tables and chairs set up. This Totus is bound to be a doozy. And don’t forget, Garrett, stick by Sean like I mentioned, eh?”

  “Who’s sticking by you?” Garrett asks.

  “I’ve got your Mom to answer to,” Addo grins.

  As if on cue, Mrs. Reese silences everything just by walking into the living room. She goes to the little card table with a tired grin and Sean pulls out a chair for her. She kisses his cheek before dropping onto the seat.

  “Iris is out cold,” she says with a sigh.

  Her eyes are like runny egg whites and I am ashamed to even look at her. We did this to Iris. To Mrs. Reese’s family. I did it by talking to Garrett, my mom did it by showing up on the Reese’s doorstep, Roger did it by showing up with a gun…but it all started because I received the wrong sign and I couldn’t stop any of it. Without my family, Garrett would still have all of his. I can’t drag my gaze off the floor, but Garrett takes my hand and rubs his thumb over mine as if it belongs there.

  “We’re going to start setting up for The Memory,” Sean says and I glance up, only to land right in Mrs. Reese’s gaze. She smiles.

  “You’re going to need a dress, Nalena,” she says. “Nok brought something...I don’t know if it’ll fit, but anything would probably be better than those sweats, wouldn’t it?”

  I nod, my retinas stinging. When I close my eyes, I can almost believe she is my mother too.

  Everyone gets to work the minute Mrs. Reese is finished eating. Mark and Brandon seem to vaporize out of nowhere after Sean calls for them. I peek around the corner of the living room at a long corridor, lined with four doors, and a pair of swinging doors at the farthest end. Nok blasts through the swinging doors, pushing a wheeled platform that is piled high with teetering stacks of banquet tables and folding chairs.

  Mrs. Reese and I are herded into the back of the room, near the kitchen, as the Addo supervises and the Reese brothers unload the tables and chairs.

  “Leave room at the front,” Addo says, using the toe of his sandal to push a chair back to where he wants the rows to begin.

  The chairs shriek when they are opened and a few accidentally collapse. Mrs. Reese and I stand quietly against the wall, but watching the boys set up the rows of chairs makes asking for details about the Memory or the Totus completely unnecessary. This room is filling up for a funeral, no matter what it is called.

  Mrs. Reese lets out a heavy sigh and dabs at her eyes.

  “Okay,” she says, as if she’s getting ready to climb a mountain. “I’m going to go get that dress I told you about.”

  She leaves me and slips past Sean, who clears her path by lifting a stack of chairs overhead. The way Mrs. Reese’s shoulders hunch as she hurries away makes me sure that she’s not just leaving to retrieve a dress. She’s escaping to cry and I wish I could follow her. But I know we can’t chance Iris seeing me again. I’m on my own.

  I wait until Garrett’s back is turned to slip away down the opposite hall, past what has been my bedroom, to the bathroom. I sit on the toilet lid and cry. It takes a while to stop and even longer before Mrs. Reese’s knuckles tap softly on the door. I smash myself behind it to let her in.

  She’s been doing more than crying after all. Her eyes are still glassy, but she looks amazing.

  She’s wearing a gown, the color of sand, which spirals around her like a soft seashell. Her hair is gathered in a twist that makes it look like she’s going to a party instead of a funeral and she’s holding a dress box in her arms.

  “You look stunning,” I say. Her shoulders drop and her eyebrows form a sad, little steeple.

  “Oh.” Some tears surface even though she’s smiling. “Thank you, Nalena. Basil must be whispering in your ear. He always made a point to tell me, at least once a day, that I looked stunning.” She dabs her eyes. I smile back at her.

  “That’s beautiful,” I say. She sniffles and giggles at the same time.

  “You know, the one I remember most was when we were rushing out of the house to have Iris. It was three in the morning when I woke Basil and told him we had to go to the hospital. He knew the drill, but he was still so nervous that his baby girl was on the way that he dropped my bags going down the stairs and they all flew open at the bottom. It woke up all the boys and the house just erupted. I was still getting dressed and I could hear them all rushing around and throwing my things together, frantic to get me out of there.” She chuckles. “But Basil stood up, when I came down the stairs, and he had that look on his face. He looked at me like I was a sunrise, and he said, You look absolutely stunning, Miranda.”

  She laughs and brushes the tears across her cheeks. “You’d think that by the fifth baby, it’d become a joke or that there’d be no way I could believe he actually meant it anymore, but the way Basil would say it, it gave me goose bumps every time. I could never doubt him. I was so lucky to have him as a husband.”

  She sniffles, her eyes focused somewhere too far back in the past for me to see. After a moment, she blinks and smiles and holds out the dress box to me.

  “Nok did the best he could,” she says. Standing there in my florescent orange outerwear, a wet mitten lodges itself in my throat. I take the box from her and she slips back out the door.

  “I hope it’s perfect.,” she whispers before she disappears down the hall.

  I open the box on the counter top and my breath catches in my throat. I lift out the gown and it spills down to the floor, like a silent waterfall. The material is the same blue as Garrett’s eyes and it sparkles silver when the light catches it.

  It’s the kind of thing I’ve never owned. Elegant and expensive and amazing. I slip the material over my head and it flows down over me like air. It might be a simple gown with spaghetti straps, but nothing about is simple. I step back and take a look in the mirror.

  Oh my God.

  I’m beautiful.

  I turn and look at the open back. My skin is dark against the shimmering blue fabric. The back is a little lower than it should be, but I don’t care. It’s perfect. I am some other girl in this dress. Taller. Prettier.

  Happy.

  Almost.

  Mrs. Reese didn’t bring me any shoes, so I drift into the dining room soundlessly, even though the white tile freezes my bare feet. The banquet tables are lined up to make one huge table that stretches from the dining room wall to the middle of the living room. At the end of the table, the chairs are lined up in rows with a short aisle in the center. The card table we’d eaten at is sitting at the very front, beside the opening to the staircase.

  Mrs. Reese sits in the front row with Iris’s face buried against her. She leans back to see me when I walk in, her gaze floating over the dress. She continues to string her fingers through Iris’s hair, but her chin quivers through her smile to me. She winks instead of getting up or speaking to me, but it still doesn’t do any good. Iris looks up at me and howls.

  I freeze in place. Part of me wants to hug Iris and apologize for what she saw. Part of me wants to shake her until she understands that I saw it too.

  Mrs. Reese stands up to shepherd Iris from the room, but Nok steps forward. He puts out his hand to Iris.

  “Allow,” he says with a reassuring grin to Mrs. Reese and she nods, handing Iris over. Nok sits down with Iris beside him, their backs to me, and he leans over to whisper something in her ear that seems to calm her.

  Mark and Brandon skulk into the room behind Sean, all three of them in black suits. Mark swings his arms, fighting the pinch of the tight fabric while Brandon’s fingertips are nearly lost beneath his long sleeves. Sean is the only one who looks right and he puts on the brakes when he sees me, sending the other two boys crashing into his back. They grunt and try to push Sean out of their way, but when they see me, they stop shoving. Mark’s arms drop to his sides.

  “Noooice,” he says.

  “It’s just Nali in a dress,” Brandon says and with his sleeve-covered hand, he smacks the back of his brother’s head. Mark turns
on him and punches Brandon in the shoulder. Their squabbling is so normal, it makes everything feel a little less awful. Sean still breaks up the fight and hauls the boys into the row in front of me.

  “Have a seat, you two,” he orders. They plop down, grumbling.

  “You look really good, Nalena,” Sean says before he sits down to box the boys in.

  Addo comes in next. He looks like an uncomfortable clown, thrown out of his dressing room too soon. He’s in a blazing yellow suit coat that he’s thrown over a new, smudge-free, gray set of sweats. The elastic leg cuffs are yanked up like normal, his glaring white socks still covering the face of each knee. But he’s got on brand new pair of polished sandals.

  He nods, in recognition of my one raised eyebrow, as he takes his seat. In the back of my head, I hear him say, You look very pretty.

  Thank you, I think back to him. So do you.

  Well, you know, I’m not here to mourn. No sense in that. I’m here to celebrate some lives.

  It doesn’t feel anything like a celebration to me, so I just nod with a tolerant grin.

  You know what the real shame is here, kiddo? Addo goes on. It’s that someone relegated black to represent mourning. It’s a crime, really, to pigeonhole it in like that. Black shouldn’t be used for mourning; it should only be used for slimming…

  In the back of my head, Addo is still burbling about the benefits of a black wardrobe when Garrett steps into the living room, buttoning his wrist cuff. He is wearing a black suit and black shoes and his black hair hides his eyes. He is still messing with his sleeve when he stops at the edge of the folding chairs. He gives the cuff one last adjustment before looking up.

  I’m the one he sees first, standing at my chair, one bare foot layered on the other and peeking out from the bottom of my gown.

  His bottom lip dips open. That’s all it takes for him to make me beautiful. His eyes travel up from my feet, his brow lifting, until his gaze locks on mine. He whispers a word so softly I only see it on his lips. We sit down together and he leans toward me, like he is going to whisper the word so I can hear it this time, but instead, he whispers an entire sentence across my cheek.