Paradise Falls (27 page)

At last they were able to park, and walk. Jacob held the umbrella, and looked around constantly. He had to be hot in his black suit, but he wasn’t even sweating.

Mullens’ was a big house, easily twice the size of the place Mrs. Carmody had carved in half and partly rented to Jennifer. It was purpose built as a funeral home, and stood in Paradise Falls for almost a century. Jennifer flinched when she saw Krystal’s mother and father standing near the doors, under the wide portico that shielded them and the hearse from the rain. Jennifer had to steel herself to approach them, moving just ahead of Jacob and Katie.

Seeing them hurt, like a physical blow. The mother was named Rebecca and she was normally a vivacious, outgoing woman who looked like a slightly older, more conservatively dressed version of her daughter. Today she looked a million years old, and her eyes were vacant and focus on nothing. The father, a short rotund man, spotted Jennifer first.

“Miss Katzenberg,” he said, taking her hands in his. “We’re glad you came. Krystal would be very happy that you’re here.”

Jennifer shook his hand and looked at the sidewalk, afraid if she looked him in the eye she’d break down. It was a struggle to even speak.

“I’d rather none of us had to be here,” she managed.

He nodded, and let her go, and turned to the next mourner. Jennifer hurried inside. Katie moved close to her side while Jacob put the umbrella in a stand by the door. Katie was tearing up, even though she barely knew the girl. She squeezed Jennifer’s hand, and the moved towards the other people standing in the hall. Jennifer glanced over into the big viewing hall, the largest room in the house.
 

The casket was closed.

That made it not so bad. Part of her mind refused to admit any of this was real. It was pantomime, a practice funeral. She could not accept that the lively, optimistic little girl that everyone loved and loved everyone in return was twenty feet away in a box and would be in the ground in a few hours, gone forever.

Then she saw them.

James Katzenberg had a halo of empty space around him, enforced by his security detail. If a mourner wanted to speak with him, they approached one at a time. The only people close to him were his brother Adam, Elliot, and Grayson Carlyle, still swaddled in bandages. He glowered at Jacob, but Jacob didn’t acknowledge him.

Ellison Carlyle walked up to Elliot in his dress uniform and they started talking.

Jennifer thought she would explode. She could feel pressure welling behind her eyes, her hands curled into fists and her temples throbbed. They knew. They
knew
, the both of them, and they were here anyway. James said something Jennifer couldn’t make out and Ellison nodded to his brother and moved off. Somebody walked up to James and opened a pad. A reporter.

Jacob squeezed her hand.

“Easy,” he said.

Jennifer looked away and forced down the anger, breathing deep.

With no actual viewing, it wasn’t going to be long. The crowd was moving to their seats. It would be standing room only soon. Rachel spotted her and motioned them over, and the three sat down with her and her husband. Rachel looked sadder than Jennifer had ever seen her, all in black and eyes downcast. Almost the entire faculty of both high schools had turned out, and some of the middle school teachers, and the principals. Howard Unger saw Jennifer and nodded. His brother Norman, a Lutheran minister, would be the first to speak.

Jennifer didn’t have much to say about that. She was technically a lapsed Catholic. Her father was a believer, but after he was gone she lost interest, and her mother was somewhere between a bored agnostic and a militant atheist depending on when the topic came up. Jennifer could still remember her mother’s open disdain at Katie’s confirmation.

Norman’s eulogy was eloquent, if impersonal, and he had a powerful voice that rolled like thunder under the ceiling. Jennifer dreaded the moment when he would say all he had to say. She had agreed to say something at the service when she talked to Krystal’s mother on the phone, and she wanted to do it, wanted to say something for her memory, but now that the moment came, she was consumed with dread. All those eyes on her, and the looming presence of the casket.

The sermon. Jennifer got up, slowly, and made her way to the podium, drawing the letter she’d written out of her pocket. She took her place and adjusted the microphone, wincing when she heard her own breathing through the public address system.

“Krystal’s mother asked me to speak,” she said, quietly. “Before we began the first term this year, I started working on a letter of recommendation. She hadn’t asked me yet, but I knew she was filling out applications and I was as sure she would ask me the favor as I am sure I’m standing here now. “

“Ever since she met me in my freshman class four years ago, Krystal was my shadow. She followed me everywhere, sought my advice on everything. Now as I stand here I only regret that my professional relationship with her stood between us. Krystal was as another younger sister to me, and I cherished every moment I spent with her, as student, confidant, and friend. If I may.”
 

She spread out the letter, smoothing it, and stopping to swipe the tears from the corner of her eyes. Her voice only wavered a little as she began to read.
 

“To whom it may concern. I write to you today to recommend to you my student, Krystal Summers. Her enduring passion for learning has always been a beacon to her fellow students here at Paradise Falls No. 2. She has been a leader, active in a half dozen club memberships and a valued member of the field hockey team, but she knew how to follow as well, the mark of a true leader.
 

“In all my years of teaching she is one of the finest students I have ever known, quick and perceptive and dedicated to her studies.
 
A true polymath, she is capable in every area of study and would never let anyone tell her that she couldn’t achieve her goals. Her perseverance and determination will carry her far in life, far beyond anything I could hope to teach her.
 

“I hope you will understand most of all that her academic and extracurricular qualifications pale beside her greatest quality- her utter kindness. No one I have ever known is quicker to help a person in need, to offer shelter or advice or just a shoulder to cry on. Whatever she chooses to do, wherever she chooses to go, it will be enhanced by her presence, for it is never in Krystal’s nature to detract, only to add, only to grow and make whole. It is my hope that one day she will turn her incredible spark to the field of teaching, and I humbly hope that one day when she does, she will look back and think kindly on me as an example, but I know that with all her gifts and talents and kindness, she would be better than I ever was or ever will be.
 

“Thank you for your kind attention, and let me once again advise you with the utmost confidence to accept her into your program. She will go far, and bring others with her.
 

“Yours, Jennifer Katzenberg.”
 

As she said her own name, it was barely intelligible. Trembling, she folded the letter and slid it under a wreath lying on the casket, and headed back to her seat. Her first few steps were steady, but in the end Jacob caught her and lowered her into the chair. Rachel pressed in next to her, nodding a greeting at Katie, who sat on Jacob’s other side.
 

“That was beautiful, Jenn,” Rachel whispered.
 

Jennifer nodded to her and squeezed her hand. Rachel settled back into her seat.
 

There was little more after that. Krystal’s mother was too crushed to speak, and what her father had to say was curt, wavering, the man’s face utterly broken with grief. Reverend Unger came back to conclude the ceremony. Jennifer tucked herself against Jacob until it was over. By then, she was almost glad to go outside, until she saw the pallbearers line up around the casket and sobbed, unable to hold it back any longer. Jacob put his arm around her and Jennifer buried her face in his shoulder. She almost had to lean on Katie to even stand up.

It was raining harder as they carried her outside. Jenn watched, astonished. It was so small, the casket, and only four men carried it- her father, two uncles and a brother-in-law. Jacob and Katie flanked her and Rachel walked with them back to Jacob’s Lincoln. Jennifer was shaking when he closed the door for her and began to sob when Jacob pulled into the procession, his wipers on high. Katie sat in the back seat, staring at Jennifer in the rear view mirror and making small motions, her shoulders jerking as she choked back sobs. It was not a long drive back to the church, only across town, but the size of the procession made it a ponderous affair. She didn’t see who was driving the police cruisers providing escort, as if there were any needed; most of the town was dark.
 

Finally they reached the church and the cemetery. Jacob held the umbrella as the throng crowded around the open grave and the finality of it hit her. The hole was filling with water, falling so heavily it sluiced down the sharply cut sides and carved little channels.
 

Once the reverend said his words, the casket began to descend. Jennifer watched it sinking until the crowd began to disperse. Jacob and Rachel and Katie walked with her, back down the road from the church.
 

There was a wake, of sorts, at the Summers house. Jennifer gave directions quietly, in a hoarse voice as Jacob made the trip, silently and smoothly guiding the big car towards their destination. It was in the new section of town, across the bridge. Jennifer glanced at the memorial as they passed, or the path that led up to it, anyway, and so did Katie. Jennifer slid across the bench seat and leaned on him. The anxiety from touching another person was drowned out by cold, thick grief.
 

The car was so heavy with grief by the time Jacob put it in park she threw the door open, preferring the rain. It rippled down Jacob’s umbrella, spilling over him as he followed her and Katie up to the house. Rachel had bowed out, asking Jennifer to make her apologies.
 

When they stepped inside, Krystal’s mother was greeting the guests, and Jennifer nearly broke to see her.
 
She was barely holding it together.

“Thank you,” she said, grasping Jennifer’s hands, looking up at her. “It was beautiful. Krystal would have loved it.”
 

She looked at Jacob. “You must be Mister Kane.”
 

He blinked. “I am. I’m afraid I didn’t know your daughter very well.”
 

“She knew you,” Cathy sighed. “She was so excited about the two of you. She was like an old gossip, convinced you two were going to get together. She’d have been happy to see you there. The both of you. It means a great deal to us that you came.”
 

Jennifer nodded, clenching every muscle in her upper body to hold back a sob. “Rachel wanted to come, but she…”
 

“I know,” said Cathy. “It’s alright. Tell her for me on Monday, will you?”
 

Jennifer nodded, and moved with her little party into the packed house. She could sense the tension in the air, the total awkwardness, immediately. Half the people were kids, the others adults. A man she didn’t know approached her. He held out his hand.
 

“Eddie Hauser.”
 

She took it. “Jennifer Katzenberg.”
 

He was a tall, lean man and now that she looked at him, he looked just like his son, but with a full head of sandy hair. He scrubbed his fingers through it after he let her hand sink to his side. There was a glass of punch in his other hand. He looked at her as if assembling his words, and she looked back with all the sympathy she could muster, no difficult task.
 

“I’d like to attend Cole’s service, if you wouldn’t mind,” she said.
 

“I don’t know if we’re having a service. We just moved here, Miss Katzenberg. We don’t have much. No insurance or anything like that. I didn’t figure on burying my son.”
 

“I know,” she said, looking down. “I’m sorry.”
 

He looked at her. He had worker’s hands and the brown suit he was wearing was probably the most expensive set of clothes he owned. He probably didn’t make a good living, even by Paradise Falls standards. Jennifer ached for the look in his eyes.
 

“How could this happen?” he said.
 

“I don’t know.”
 

“I hear that you saw my boy’s troubles,” he said. “Last Thursday, when that other boy was arrested. Hunter.”
 

“Yes,” said Jennifer. “Cole was very brave. He did the right thing.”
 

“Did he?” the man looked a thousand years old. “Then why ain’t he here now, with that girl?”
 

Jennifer felt her throat clenched and pawed at it.
 

He looked at her with sad, softened eyes. “Didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s just…”
 

“I know,” she said. “I know. I wasn’t much older than your son when I lost my father, and I lost my husband in the collapse.”
 

“Yeah, the bridge,” he said, scratching the back of his head. He downed his punch and grimaced. “Sad thing, that. All over the news, even down in Kentucky. News told us all about those Christmas presents floatin’ in the river.”
 

Jennifer choked back a sob, and covered her mouth.
 

“Shit, look what I done,” he said. “Listen, I heard something else, how you and that other teachers stood up for my boy. That mattered to him. Boy his age needs to see adults acting right, acting responsible, seeing things the right way. Makes me feel better that somebody in this world has some decency, not like these prick cops you got here.”
 

“What?” said Jennifer.
 

Jacob turned away from staring at nothing to listen.
 

“I called them every night. Me and the wife, we haven’t heard anything about them arresting this boy that done the deed. It ain’t fucking fair.” He looked at her and winced, and stared the floor. “Pardon my French, ma’am, it’s just that I ain’t fit to be in polite company these last few days.”