The Ex (5 page)

“No, we won’t,” Neil said firmly.

“So, we’re just going to keep it this weird family secret, then? The time Daddy almost ODed at Grandma’s funeral? That sounds like a really bad country song.” I looked to Michael. “You don’t have to march in there, right now, and wake her up and tell her all this. Neil’s going to get treatment, and he can tell Emma, then. He’s going to need support, and she’s going to need to know what’s up with her dad. Under no circumstances are the two of you to conspire to keep her in the dark because of your crazy, overprotective man-vibes.”

“I think Sophie’s solution sounds pretty sensible, don’t you?” Michael asked Neil.

“Yes, well, Sophie is often sensible,” he grumbled in reply. “Yes, fine. When we get back to New York, I’ll sit down with her and discuss it.”

“At least you can see that you have a problem,” Michael said with a look of empathy. “You hid it really well.”

“You hid it really well from me,” I added softly.

“I’m sorry we had to have this conversation.” Michael stuck his hand out, and when Neil took the bait, tall, lanky Michael went in for an inescapable hug. He clapped Neil on the back and said, “I have nothing but respect for you, Mr. Elwood.”

Neil cleared his throat. “Best you should go check on Emma.”

“Right.” Michael turned to me. “Sophie, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said breezily, and instantly felt like a weirdo. “It’s fine,” like my steak was slightly overcooked or something. When he’d gone, I looked up at Neil and sing-songed, “Awkward.”

Neil checked his watch and winced. “Now I’ve done it. I’m supposed to be at the funeral director’s in forty minutes. Can you call for the car while I wash up?”

“Yeah, no problem.” I paused. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“If you wouldn’t mind?” He asked as though he were asking whether or not I minded going to a particular restaurant. “I think it would be…easier if you were there.”

“Of course I’ll go. I just didn’t want to crowd you during all of this. I can stick to you like glue, if you want, and then, if you need to, you can tell me to take a hike.” I reached for the phone on the nightstand.

“Thank you, Sophie. I’d like that.” He smiled, despite the dark circles under his eyes. He held my gaze for a long time. “Stuck to me like glue. As if I could ever doubt that.”

There are times when I see another facet of Neil I hadn’t known before, and it overwhelms me. My chest feels like it’ll collapse under the weight of the sweet ache there. And, in those moments, I can’t say what I want to say because I feel too much.

So, this time, I said, “Go get cleaned up, dummy,” and smiled at him, and he smiled back, and we both knew how we felt.

* * * *

The purpose of the funeral home visit was two-fold. Neil and his siblings were all meeting the funeral director together to go over the plans their mother had left behind regarding her burial wishes, and Neil, Fiona, Runólf, and Geir would be able to see their mother one last time.

We stood beneath the awning over the funeral home doors. Neil adjusted his scarf around the collar of his black wool coat. He’d been fidgety since we’d left the house. I wondered if that had to do with the Valium and THC still muddling his head. More likely, it was a reaction to facing the unknown. Neil hated doing that.

“Are you ready?” I prompted him, not out of impatience, but cold. It was freezing, even though I’d opted for slacks instead of a skirt.

He nodded, his breath showing in the winter air. “I think so. Best to get this over with, I suppose.”

Inside, Neil’s brothers, Runólf and Geir, stood talking near a fireplace. Their wives sat with Fiona, consoling her.

“Neil,” Geir said with his characteristic gruffness somewhat subdued. Neil didn’t bother to take his coat off before enveloping his brother in a long hug.

“Have you seen her?” Neil asked them both when he stepped back.

Runólf nodded and gestured toward a set of double doors. “Shall I go with you?”

“No, no.” Neil waved his brother off, as though it were far too much to ask of him. Then, he turned to me. “Sophie, would you mind?”

I am not a fan of dead bodies. The thought that we were in a building with one, probably more than one, utterly creeped me out. But he was my fiancé, and I loved him, and he needed me.

The undertaker opened the doors for us, and we stepped into a neat, softly lit chapel. The casket was a shock; it was an honest to god coffin, nothing like the refrigerator shaped ones in the states. Neil’s mother lay in gentle repose, but she didn’t have the waxy pallor of an embalmed body. She looked…dead. Rose was dead. It was hard to believe it, even seeing her there.

A shuddering sound escaped Neil, and I took his hand. I laced our fingers together and squeezed, but I waited for him to speak.

He gave me a very brave, very grim, closed-lipped smile and squeezed back before he let go. He stepped up closer to the casket and reached out to lay his hand over his mother’s folded ones. He pulled back in surprise. With a soft, embarrassed laugh, he looked up at me and said, “She’s so cold.”

I struggled not to cry for him. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to lose a parent. Granted, I only had the one, but Neil had been through the loss of his father years earlier. It seemed unfair that people had to do this more than once.

Tears shone in Neil’s eyes, and a muscle in his jaw ticked. “After Emma’s wedding, I promised Mum that we would come visit soon. I wish we would have.”

“I’m so sorry, baby.” I put my arm around his waist, and he turned to me for a hug. There were times when I leaned on him— most of the time, actually—but every now and again, he needed me. I was grateful for each of those moments, because he didn’t display emotional vulnerability to many people.

“I would give anything to hear her call me little bird, just once more.” He wept into my hair.

I hugged him tightly, one arm around his waist, one across his shoulder blades. I hadn’t known Rose well, but I grieved for her, because Neil loved her. And because she was the woman who birthed and nurtured and raised Neil, shaping who he was today. I owed her my entire heart.

He raised his head and stepped back, sniffing through his tears. It somewhat ruined the look of composure he tried to affect. He reached into his coat for a handkerchief and held the square of red fabric bunched in his hands. “You know…” he began, his speech thick with tears, “I’d really rather go back to being numb.”

Since there was nothing I could fix, I put my arm through his and led him from the chapel.

C
HAPTER THREE

Rose Elwood’s funeral was dignified and respectful, which made sense because she’d planned the whole thing. After the private family viewing, Rose had been cremated, and her remains sealed in a tasteful bronze jar. A high mass at St. Paul’s Knightsbridge, packed to the brim with mourners, was followed by a dignified reception at Fiona’s townhouse in Kensington. Rose had spent her last days there, being cared for by her daughter.

The house was beautiful, and perhaps a little bigger than our townhouse. The doorways were topped by classical friezes of slender maidens in togas, the floors carpeted in area rugs that probably cost more than a mid-sized sedan. I looked into the parlor, where Fiona sat on a mauve satin chair, accepting the condolences of guests.

There was an unfairness to the situation that nagged at me. Fiona had cared for her mother in the years after her stroke, while her brothers had been off having their own lives. I knew Fiona had been married and divorced before I’d ever met Neil, and that she’d had some financial troubles following the dissolution of her marriage. Neil had purchased this house for her, but that didn’t really make up for the fact that he and his brothers hadn’t pulled their weight in caring for their mother. The year he’d spent battling leukemia I forgave, obviously. But what about his brothers, Runólf and Geir? They hadn’t even visited their brother when he’d been sick, and I knew they hadn’t been regularly seeing their mother.

It seemed extremely unfair to Fiona. She’d put her life aside, and why? Because she was the only girl?

To her credit, she was holding up well, despite how difficult it must have been to care for her mother for this whole time.

Everyone was holding up surprisingly well, though. I chalked it up to the fact that Neil and his siblings didn’t have time to emotionally break down; every moment was packed with family friends and distant relations. I stood beside him, calm and supportive, and shook hands when introduced to people. It was a bit draining, and I worried for Neil, since he was under about ten times more emotional stress than I was.

After a while, I could tell he needed a break. “Let’s go out for a smoke,” I said, nudging him.

“We don’t—” Then, he smiled gratefully. “All right.”

We stepped out the back doors and onto the terraced patio. The shrubs in the garden and large swaths of flowerbeds were covered with black plastic to weather the winter. The cold air hit us like knives, and our breath showed on the air.

“Still better than being inside, at least for the moment,” he said, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“The funeral was really nice, Neil. The flowers were lovely.” I had to compliment the flowers. He’d picked them out himself, which I thought was incredibly sweet. There had been plenty of roses, of course, but also gorgeous irises that complemented them. They were his mother’s favorite flower, he’d told me, and said that she lamented the fact she hadn’t been given that name, instead.

He nodded. “I think Mum would have been pleased with the way it turned out. And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” My mind veered off down a painful path. I remembered when Neil had told his funeral plans to Emma and me. I didn’t want to think of that any more now than I did then.

“What do you think happens when you die?” He scuffed the heel of his shoe across some ice on the pavement.

I shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.”

“I think that’s what I believe.” He looked up at the sky, his hands in his trouser pockets. “I wish I could imagine a time when I could see her again. But it seems unlikely.”

“That’s what I hate the most. Not that I’ll cease to exist, but that my loved ones will.” I shuddered at the thought of Neil someday dying. Unless I got horribly sick or suffered an accident, he wasn’t going to outlive me. Our twenty-four year age gap would probably leave me widowed in my fifties. Rose had warned me about that, about the loneliness she’d felt when Neil’s father had died young. A world without Neil, for me, wouldn’t be much of a world at all.

He cleared his throat, but no amount of coughing would erase the thick emotion from his voice. “People say ‘they’ll live on in your memory,’ but it isn’t the same. I don’t want my mother in my memory; I want her here, with me. And I wasted so much time.”

“Then, you just have to be thankful for the time you didn’t waste.” I wished I could siphon the hurt from him and take it for a few hours. Just to give him a break.

A click of heels on pavement alerted us to the presence of someone else. I turned to see Valerie approaching.

“Neil, I have to go, but I need to speak with you and Sophie before you return to New York. At your earliest convenience.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows shot up. “Valerie, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my mother has just died.”

“Believe me, if it could wait, it would.” Valerie looked to me, imploring.

Neil frowned. “Is this business related or—”

“Come by the house tonight,” I interrupted. Whatever it was she wanted to tell us, I owed it to Valerie to listen. She’d listened to me.

“Thank, you Sophie. I will. I’ll call first.”

“Thanks.” I watched her go inside then I turned back to Neil. “It sounded important.”

“Your idea of important and Valerie’s idea of important—”

“Don’t.” I held up a hand to stop him. “If you don’t want to talk to her, I will. But she really helped me out when you were trainspotting it up yesterday.”

“Fair enough,” he grumbled. I wasn’t sure if he genuinely didn’t want to see Valerie—he was still touchy on the subject following my admission of the fight she and I’d had before Emma’s wedding—or if he was trying to protect my feelings. It wasn’t time for that, though; Valerie seemed really upset over something.

When we went back inside, Neil found his brothers and a few assorted cousins I’d already met chatting beside the thoughtfully provided whiskey. I drifted off to find Emma and spotted her lingering near the crudités.

“How are you doing?” I asked, glancing down at her swollen ankles.

“I am avoiding my husband,” she said, casting a wary glance around the crowded sitting room. “There’s concern, and then there’s blatant overprotective worry. I feel like I’m in prison.”

“In prison, they don’t give a shit about your health, though,” I reminded her. “I watch
Orange Is The New Black.
I know things.”

She snorted. “Can Larry just die or fall into a hole or something?”

I laughed. “But, seriously, are you doing okay?”

“I’m fine. A bit sad, but really, it’s a relief. She wasn’t herself anymore.” Emma looked down at the glass in her hand. “In a way, it was a bit like she died when she had that stroke.”

“I’m so sorry.” My own grandfather had suffered a minor stroke that had paralyzed a part of his face; it hadn’t done anything to his mind, the way it had to Rose. It made me even more grateful that he’d been able to spend his days in some version of coherence.

“I can’t believe how unexpected this was.” Emma wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. “I’m sorry, these damned hormones.”

“Yeah,” I said sympathetically. “Or your grandmother just died, and you’re grieving.”

She laughed through her tears. “Shut up, Sophie, you’re not helping.”

We stayed until the last guests left then the family retired to the drawing room, where I listened to Neil and his siblings reminisce about their mother with affection and sadness. There were so many stories: the time Rose had slipped in manure at a polo match, and Prince Philip had made an off-color remark about it. Family trips to the seaside. Funny phrases Rose had used through their childhood. All the comedy and tragedy of a life well lived.

For as different as Neil’s family was from mine, they grieved in the same style, clinging to the good memories of their mother. These were the anecdotes they would revisit whenever their grief returned. Though memories could never replace a silly pet name or the feeling of a mother’s hand stroking their fevered brow, at least they had them to comfort themselves as they grieved. How many funeral dinners had my family spent exactly the same way? Death was the great equalizer in more ways than one.

Neil excused himself, and when he didn’t return after what seemed like a long time, I left to follow him. He wasn’t on the first floor, so I crept upstairs, hoping Fiona wouldn’t view my wandering her home as a gross invasion of her privacy.

At the top of the stairs on the second floor, I found an open door and soft light spilling out. I stepped inside. Neil sat on the edge of a bed made up with a lovely floral bedspread. An oxygen bottle stood in the corner, a delicate porcelain bell on the nightstand.

Neil’s posture was a picture of total defeat, his shoulders slumped, his back bowed. He looked up when I knocked on the half-opened door, and his eyes were red and tired.

“Hey, baby.” I went to his side and sat with him on his mother’s bed. I took his hand.

“I think we should go,” he said, and followed it with a deep breath that would put a stop to his crying. Neil was a master at holding back emotion. He viewed it with a sense of pride and duty to his country of origin. “It’s getting a bit late, and if Valerie is coming to speak with us—”

“She can talk to us tomorrow,” I assured him. “I’ll call her. Maybe we’ll do breakfast.”

He smiled gratefully. “Thank you. I know it’s difficult for you to get along with her—”

“Don’t worry about that, right now.” I rubbed his back. “Let’s go to the house and just relax. There’s a wonderful hot tub I’ve been missing.”

“We have one at home you never use,” he pointed out, and there he was again, my usual Neil. Maybe the funeral had given him more closure than he’d expected. Not that I wasn’t anticipating further breakdowns in the coming weeks. Grief always seemed hardest when you noticed life going on without the person you lost.

“I could use a drink,” he said finally, looking to me as though asking permission. “But I don’t want to worry you.”

“I think a few drinks are okay, as long as you’re not using them to swallow handfuls of pills.” I paused. “Unless that’s enabling?”

“It probably is,” he conceded. “But I’ll take it.”

We left before Emma and Michael, who wanted to stay a bit later with Fiona. I called the house and asked Matthew, the head of the household staff, to turn on the hot tub for us before he left for the night. When we got home, we wasted no time opening some wine and heading down to the pool.

The indoor pool, sauna, hot tub and fitness room were all in the basement. The white marble columns and floors had been added to the house in the first decade of the twentieth century, when the space had been repurposed as a gymnasium. The pool had been updated since then, and modern facilities added, but I always kind of expected Annie to burst in singing about how she was going to like it here.

Neil turned down the dimmer switch from the inset lighting and pulled his loose tie from beneath the collar of his white dress shirt.

“Do you think it’s safe to get naked?” I asked him as I raised my shirt over my head. “What if Emma and Michael come back?”

“I’ll lock the door,” he assured me. “Besides, they can’t really fault me for needing a diversion, can they?”

“True story,” I agreed. “Although, I’m not sure what kind of ‘diversion’ you have in mind other than a nice long soak.”

He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

I changed the subject. “Do you think Michael is going to ease up a little? He seems a bit…smothery.”

Neil didn’t look at me as he toed off his shoes and set them carefully aside, far from the water. “Better than cold and detached.”

Neil had massive guilt—and a part of me felt he probably should—over the way he’d treated Valerie during her pregnancy with Emma. He’d traveled non-stop to avoid the reality of becoming a father. He’d cheated on her with a woman from his father’s office. While I loved the man, I didn’t mind him feeling guilty about that forever, no matter how much I disliked Valerie.

“That’s true. But I think she’s getting tired of it.” I shed the rest of my clothes and put my toes in the water. Oh, that was heavenly. We had a hot tub at home, but I never really got a chance to use it; there were too many other distractions competing for my time.

Our London house held a lot of memories for me, but only a few of them were pleasant. We’d stayed here during Neil’s chemotherapy and the transplant that had almost killed him. It would never be my favorite place on Earth. I’d spent too many nights in our bed alone, sobbing at the unfairness and uncertainty of life. At least I could appreciate the hot tub.

I sank into the water and watched as Neil unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it from his shoulders. His thin white undershirt came off next, and I took a moment to shamelessly appreciate his shoulders and back. Something about men’s backs—Neil’s, in particular—just did it for me.

Neil slid off his trousers and boxers and joined me in the water.

I regarded him with a cocked head as he settled against the curve of the tub. “You know, we’re naked around each other so often, sometimes I take it for granted. Then, I look at you, and I’m like, ‘Whoa, fifty is really his year.’”