Beautiful Graves(64)

“I’m getting on a plane, Ever. Wait right there. I’m coming to see you. Today.”

“Oh. You don’t need to do that . . .”

“I love you.” The words hit me with the force of a semi. He says them in a low growl. With heat. “You hear that, Everlynne? I love you.”

I cry hysterically all over again, this time in relief. He loves me. He still loves me. After everything that’s happened—he still wants to be there for me.

“Th-thank you.”

“Stay strong. I’m coming.”

The line goes dead.

For the first time since Joe called to tell me about Dom, I remember how to breathe.



The funeral is an open-casket event.

In true Dominic Graves form, and despite his head injury, his face has remained flawless and scarless.

Nora was in charge of the makeup. She asked beforehand if it would be weird for me. I told her that it wouldn’t, even though I had no idea how I was feeling about it.

This past week, I felt extremely disconnected from reality. Life seems to be happening in my periphery.

I don’t sleep, but I occasionally pass out in random spots in my apartment. Dad and Renn have been here for a week now. They’re staying at a nice hotel downtown and show up at my doorstep first thing in the morning with coffee. They brought Dunkies the first morning, but it reminded me of the Girlfriend Promise and I sobbed into the box, making a whole stink about it, like they were supposed to know.

Dad and Renn get along great with Nora and Colt. It’s all very cordial on the outside. We look like just another family. But we’re not, and all the things we don’t say to each other pile up between us in an invisible mountain of sorrow.

Renn looks so different now. So tall and strong. So lost and motherless. Dad looks different too. But not necessarily in a bad way. He looks like he’s lost a few pounds and like he actually gets his hair professionally cut, now that Mom is not there to shave it for him.

Dad and Renn arrived the day I called Dad, just like he promised. Even though the funeral is taking place a full week later, neither of them have complained about the time they’re missing from school and work.

I opt to not see Dom’s body in the casket. Ironic, considering I’m obsessed with graves. Maybe I’m a fraud. Maybe that’s why Dom and I got along so well. After all, he turned out to be a fraud too. Although, weirdly enough, I barely think about his betrayal and focus more on his loss.

As we sit and listen to the sermon from the front pew of a Dover church, I hold Dad’s hand for dear life. Renn shoves his shoulder against mine lovingly.

I don’t allow myself to ask Dad if he is mad at me, or what it was that he wanted to tell me all those months ago. I don’t broach the subject of how our relationship is going to look after this is all over. I also don’t dare ask Nora what Dom looked like when she worked on him. I find myself incapable of making conversation with anyone. Everything feels swollen and raw. Things that bothered me—Dom’s hectic schedule, Lynne and Babe and his awful—awful—taste in music—now seem so small and insignificant. I would pay in weeks and months and years from my own life just to be able to kiss and touch him again. To tell him that I love him. To explain that I really didn’t need the tampons.

I didn’t. Need. The. Tampons.

I marvel at the cruelness of the world. How it let Dom survive cancer but ended up taking his life prematurely anyway. And I wonder how many losses one person can experience before they give up on the idea of happiness. I don’t know where I land on the loss-meter. Happiness seems like a mythical thing right now.

After the ceremony, people peer inside the casket. I slip out of church and pass by Sarah and Gemma and Brad, who are standing by the door like one family unit. I try to muster the strength to feel jealous, but I’m so mentally exhausted I can’t even do that.

As I round the churchyard, I notice Joe by a duck-filled pond, leaning against a tree trunk, smoking. The sun dances around him like a halo, and my heart squeezes despite myself at how beautiful he is. He looks tired too. It suddenly dawns on me. Why he is smoking. It’s not to look cool or to live the tortured-writer way. It is because he feels guilty—has always felt guilty—that he is the healthy one. The cancer-less brother.

I approach him, wobbling a little on my fancy shoes.

“Can I bum one?” I ask when I get to him.

He doesn’t make a big stink about it and offers me his soft pack, even though he knows I don’t smoke. I pluck one cigarette out and clasp it between my lips. He lights it up for me and tucks the lighter back into his front pocket.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Is it over?” He nods toward the church behind me, squinting.

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t stay?”

“They’re looking at him now. Inside his casket. It seems really barbaric. Why would anyone want to do that?” I ask. “It doesn’t seem respectful. It seems . . . the opposite.”

“You have a bone to pick with Christianity now?” He looks slightly amused. I would’ve suspected he was not shattered by it if I didn’t know better. But I do know better, and this is Joe’s go-to behavior. He wears sarcasm like armor. The opposite of his sweet late brother.

“No,” I say. “I just don’t understand the idea of looking at a dead person.”