Better Left Buried (32 page)

“Just a few minutes.
I’m sure you’re eager to get home.” Nurse Sandy launched into a checklist of do’s and don’ts that Brea only half-listened to.

Her mother was taking enough notes for both of them.

“Are you getting all this?” Joan smiled, trying to include Brea when she wanted to be anywhere but in that conversation.

“Don’t get it wet,” Brea
said.

Simple enough.

Jaxon and her father had hit it off and stood together, laughing and chatting, in the waiting area across the hall. There was something on the television that sounded like sports. Not to belittle Jaxon’s charm, but her dad could bond with anyone over football.

Sandy scribbled out the dosing schedule for her medications—antibiotics and pain relievers—and handed her mother a list of what to watch for.

“Can I take one last look?”

Brea slid her coat, which was draped over her like a shawl, out of the way.

Sandy maneuvered her arm out of the sling and examined the cast and pins. “You’ll need to follow up with your surgeon within the week.” She handed Brea’s mother a business card.

“Free to go?” Brea
said, slowly raising the better of her two arms.

“If you don’t have any questions, free to go.”
Sandy cut the plastic bracelet for her.

“Jaxon.
Hey, Jaxon!” She turned to her mother once she caught his attention. “You don’t mind if he brings me home, do you?” He’d been such a constant presence the past few days that she was going to miss him come infomercial hour.

“No, that’s fine. Dad and I are going to go have a cup of coffee.”

Sandy grinned as she presented the last of the forms for her mother to sign. “Isn’t that sweet?” She glanced at Joan’s ring finger before she said it, having no way of knowing her parents weren’t still married.

Brea rolled her eyes and swung her legs slowly over the
side of the bed. Her body ached and the change in position brought new pains in her back and hips to the surface.

Jaxon pushed the wheelchair over to
meet her. He had caved, despite his initial solidarity, showering and shaving that morning and making her feel that much dirtier by comparison.

“Ready?” he said.

“I’m more than ready.” She stood, her legs weak beneath her, and eased into the burgundy wheelchair. “Do I really have to go out in this thing?”

“I’m afraid so. It’s hospital policy.”

Brea’s father joined her mother in collecting the flowers and balloons sent mostly by people her mother worked with.

Nurse Sandy left the room with the chart tucked under her arm.

Brea waited until she was out of earshot to ask the question.

“Any news on the arrangements?”

“Tomorrow morning. 9:00,” Joan said.

Brea
was thankful to get none of the expected pushback. “And Adam? Will he be out in time?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t think so.”

Brea knew the deadlines and limitations, but felt bad that the one person who maybe knew Harmony best wouldn’t be there. “Isn’t there any way to hold off a few days?”

Joan
shook her head. “Uncle Jim’s been lenient, but things have to move forward.”

Jaxon
gently set his hand on Brea’s shoulder. “Do you want to talk to Adam before we leave?”

Tears stung her eyes
as she remembered the previous night’s conversation. There was nothing she could do to alleviate his guilt or her own. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”

Each of them had blame to shoulder, even i
f neither of them was at fault.

The parking lot of O’Connor’s Funeral Home sat mostly empty, magnifying the presence of the police cruiser Brea was sure belonged to her Uncle Jim. Her parents parked next to him and Jaxon parked next to them.

“You want to wait and see if the rain lets up?” Jaxon wore a slim fit navy
blue suit and a green-gray tie that brought out the jade in his hazel eyes.

She shook her head.
“We could wait here all day. Let’s just go.”

Her mother had helped her bathe
, and dried and straightened her hair. She wore a strapless dress to keep from contending with the cast and a black sweater around her shoulders. She opened the door and her mother held an umbrella over her head, reminding Brea for the hundredth time not to get her cast wet.

“Mom, I’m fine.
We have this.”

“Leave the kids alone, Joan.”
Her father held out his hand for her mother to join him.

No matter how old
Brea was, he would always refer to her as a “kid”.

“Ready?” Jaxon opened his umbrella and closed Brea’s door. He was nervous, casting shifting glances and chewing his lower lip.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.
I just—I don’t do well with funerals.”

“Who does?”

The damp morning air smelled of worms and decaying leaves. The dark sky mirrored her even darker mood. The reality of Harmony’s death had found its place in her sadness, looming in the residual emptiness and waiting to be healed.

Brea watched her parents walk
ahead, extending their condolences to Charity as though she were a stranger.

In a way, she probably was.

Charity sat on the sprawling Victorian’s front steps, handcuffed and smoking a cigarette, letting her ashes fall to the collection of soggy butts that said she’d been there a while. Her hair was pulled back in a stringy ponytail and she was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and the hospital bracelet they’d put on her in rehab. The overhang kept everything but her feet dry. The blue dye of her canvas sneakers bled into her gray-white socks.

She lit a fresh cigarette off the remains of the last, smoked nearly to the filter, and
looked up with the delay of someone pharmaceutically numb.

“I’m sorry, Charity. I’m really, really sorry.” Already
Brea was crying. Jaxon wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close enough that they were both fully under the umbrella.

Charity crushed
out her cigarette, looked Brea straight in the eye, and said, “You should be.”

Jaxon was about to speak up on Brea’s behalf when she held up her hand to stop him. Whatever guilt she and Adam felt, Charity’s must have been a hundred times worse.

“I hope everything works out for you.” Brea climbed the stairs and paused at the white wicker chair where her uncle sat, keeping watch.

“How’re you feeling, kiddo?”

“Could be better.” Brea looked through the glass door at the empty foyer she knew from her grandfather’s funeral led to the viewing room. “Could be worse.”

Jaxon held the door for her and set the umbrella on its side to dry out.

Her parents sat in the back row of the viewing room, whispering back and forth. Her mother stood to meet her.

Jaxon turned into a statue.

“I can do this alone,” Brea said, in an attempt at convincing herself.

The air smelled of furniture oil, flowers, and a hint of something chemical she knew to be embalming fluid
. She stared ahead at Harmony, laid out in the silvery coffin that glimmered in the harsh white light.

The spacious room felt like it was closing in on her. Jack O’Connor, the undertaker’s eldest son
, took notice and offered her his arm.

Jaxon sat with her parents, holding
his head in his hands. He wasn’t kidding when he said he didn’t do well with death. His breathing became heavy and he looked like he might pass out.

Brea
took Jack’s arm and walked down the long aisle to the coffin where she stood because she was too sore to kneel. Jack moved the bench for her to be closer.

“Thank you,” she said and watched him leave to keep from having to look down
at the lifeless body of her best and only friend.

Her knees felt about to buckle.

“Brea?” A familiar girl’s voice called out to her.

She turned to see Pete and Becky standing at the back of the room.

Pete sat next to Jaxon. Becky walked down the aisle and wrapped her arm around Brea’s good arm, holding her hand in an act that said everything was going to be all right. There was life for her after all of this death.

“She looks kind of beautiful.”

Brea smiled, imagining Harmony looking down at what could easily be the most ironic moment in any of their lives.

“She looks kind of
wrong
,” Brea whispered to keep from being overheard.

Harmony’s ivory skin radiated against the black satin liner, but Beth, the undertaker’s wife, had done her makeup too conservatively, like a young girl’s. Harmony would have been mortified. The tattoo Lance gave her showed through the lace-trimmed sleeves of her black dress:
Summerland
.

I hope you get there.

After all Harmony had been through, she deserved the peace.

The rain let up midway through the interment. The ceremony was brief and nonsecular at Charity’s request. Jack O’Connor presided.

Pete and Becky bailed after the wake. Brea’s parents stayed despite the tension between them and Charity
, who watched the proceedings from the back of the police car, not because she had to, but because she wanted to.

The funeral home, which had undoubtedly made financial arrangements to cover the costs, had donated two small flower arrangements, one of which shifted around
in the back of Jaxon’s Jeep.

“You really want to go back there?” Jaxon raised his eyebrows.

“I do.” Brea nodded. “Someone has to care that this happened.”

She’d only been to one other young person’s funeral when a friend of her mother’s sixteen-year-old daughter died in a car crash. There was a line around the block at her funeral and so many people at the burial there wasn’t enough room for
all of the cars to park inside the cemetery.

Harmony’s services had been
underattended by anyone’s standards.

“I can’t believe how Charity was to you, like this wasn’t all her fault.”

Brea shrugged her one shoulder. “It wasn’t. Not entirely. Adam was right about one thing. Harmony was fixated on death and dying. I keep thinking that if I had called her, if I’d have gotten my family to tell me what happened sooner ….”

“If
you’re right, and she was hooked on the idea, nothing you could have done would have mattered. Charity should have been more concerned.
She
should have been the one to try and stop this.”

“I think Charity’s
just angry. She’s sober for the first time in a long time and dealing with something she’s probably been trying to forget all these years. She lost Harmony and has to live with the kind of mother she was. Honestly, from what I know about what happened in that house, why Charity killed Tom, I hope she doesn’t get punished too badly.” Charity remained solid on the fact that she acted alone. Uncle Jim had reassured everyone that there would be no mention of Brea’s father’s hand in the cover-up. Brea had thought long and hard on what happened, finding the concept of justice blurry. “I just don’t know how she can afford all of this. Charity needs more than a Public Defender.”

“My father’s made arrangements.”

“What kind of arrangements?”

“In exchange for expedited demolition and
a quick closing on the house, he’s offered her a blank check to cover her legal costs. She’ll have a good lawyer, Brea, and from the evidence that came out of that house, the battered wife defense is definitely on the table.”

“
And what is your father getting out of this?”

Jaxon shrugged.
“A green-lit development and your mother owing him about a million favors. My father loves being owed favors, plus he gets to look like the hero: ‘Local Developer Funds Abuse Victim’s Defense.’ He had everything boxed up and moved to storage. It’ll be waiting for Charity when this is all over, if she wants it.”

Yellow crime scene tape flapped in the breeze, hanging from the teeth of a bulldozer
loading pieces of the house at 6 Maple into a truck, waiting to carry it all away. The tires spun in the mud under the weight of the splintered boards, shattered windows, the remains of a front porch, and the swing, before breaking free. The driver waved to the few men on the ground, giving them the all-clear.

A
chainsaw-wielding man in a yellow rain slicker took no notice of them as he carved a sizeable oak into logs.

They had pulled up in
time to watch the last tree fall.

All that remained was a furrowed
yard and the basement whose secrets had washed away in the rain.