Little Secrets(79)
She closes the office door behind her and runs into Ginny in the hallway. She’s coming out of the ladies’ bathroom, and her lipstick looks fresh, her hair a bit shinier. She must have spritzed some perfume on, because Marin can smell her from a foot away.
“Hey.” Ginny’s expression sours at the sight of her. “Sal still in his office?”
“Yup, still in there.” Marin eases past her in the narrow hallway. They’re so close, their shoulders graze. “He’s all yours.”
“You’re hilarious,” the younger woman says, and Marin pauses to glance back. Ginny’s voice is like ice, her eyes like daggers. “Sal will never be anyone’s, thanks to you.”
Chapter 25
The funeral for Thomas Payne is held at St. Augustine Church, the same place Marin first met Frances, Simon, and Lila. The chapel is sizable and can easily seat up to four hundred congregants. On this rainy Tuesday morning, however, there are only thirty or so people occupying the first three rows.
It’s hard to know what to say to Frances. Their unofficial group leader greets Marin, Lila, and Simon as they file in together, the three of them having met up beforehand so they could brace for this day as a team. Frances is pale, but her eyes are clear. She’s wearing a loose-fitting black dress, a black shawl, and black clogs, and her long, graying hair is curly and wild. Marin notices she’s wearing lipstick for the first time since Marin’s known her, a bright rose shade that brings color to her cheeks. Frances hugs each of them for a full minute, allowing them to say the things they need to say, accepting their condolences with a smile that lets each of them know she’s glad they’re here.
Marin follows Simon and Lila into seats in the second row. It’s hard not to stare at the lacquered brown wooden casket at the altar, draped in white flowers and flanked on each side by enlarged framed photos of Thomas.
“Frances is handling this like a champ,” Lila whispers, chewing on her thumbnail. “I’d thought she’d be a mess.”
“No kidding.” Those were Marin’s thoughts exactly. She’d been expecting to see Frances shell-shocked and barely holding it together, but the woman seems almost the exact opposite of that.
The three of them stare at the closed casket. The framed photographs flanking the glossy wood show two very different versions of Thomas Payne. The picture on the left is one Marin’s already seen. It’s the photo Frances always shows people when she talks about her son, the same one she posts on Facebook every year on his birthday. In it, he’s fifteen, awkwardly teetering on the precipice of manhood, with good teeth and a smattering of pimples along his jawline. His red hair—the same shade his mother’s used to be—is hidden under a well-worn Mariners baseball cap, the brim curved perfectly to the contours of his face.
In the photo on the right, it’s Thomas as a man. This picture, Marin has never seen, and she has no idea where Frances got it or how recently it was taken. Thomas is fully grown, his face chiseled but hollow, his hair shaved almost to the skull. He’s leaning against the side of a brick building dressed in dirty jeans and a black T-shirt, painfully thin, skin weathered, a cigarette dangling from his dry lips. His eyes are haunted. He could easily pass for thirty-four instead of twenty-four, and while there’s some indication of the handsome man he might have been had he not spent the last nine years homeless and addicted to drugs, it’s a difficult photograph to look at. Perhaps that’s why Frances chose to display it. Marin has never met anyone more incapable of bullshit, and she can understand that Frances doesn’t want to pretend that her son died looking like the same teenage boy he was when he left.
“Can I sit with you guys?”
The voice shakes Marin out of her reverie. Jamie, the newest member from group, is standing at the end of the row. Marin almost doesn’t recognize her. She’s wearing a fitted black dress and three-inch heels, and her hair is blow-dried straight, a far cry from the stringy wet mess it was the first time they met. She didn’t contact Jamie about the funeral—honestly, she’d forgotten all about her—so either Frances called her, or Jamie saw something about it on the group’s Facebook page.
“Of course.” Marin swallows her surprise, turning to Lila and Thomas. “Jamie’s here. Scooch down.”
They all move over one seat, and Jamie wedges herself in between Marin and the armrest.
“How are you?” Marin asks.
“You know, I never know how to answer that.” Jamie speaks softly, looking past Marin to give Lila and Simon a little wave. “I feel like if I say ‘good,’ people will think, why are you good? You have a missing kid. If I say ‘terrible,’ it just makes everyone feel bad and awkward, wishing they’d never asked.”
“I like to answer, ‘I’m managing,’” Marin says, and offers a small smile. She knows exactly how the other woman feels. “It reminds them that I’m going through something hard, but doesn’t imply that I’m good, or bad.”
“‘I’m managing.’” Jamie sounds out the words. “I like that.” They sit in silence for a moment, and then she says, “I almost didn’t come.”
“Frances would have understood.”
“I had to see it for myself, though.” Jamie seems to be speaking more to herself than to Marin. “There are only three possible outcomes for our children: they stay missing forever, they’re found safe, or they’re found dead. I needed to see what one of the outcomes looked like. To … prepare myself.”