I didn’t want to hear any of the people who stood to talk.
“Esther, no…”
Ignoring Li-Mei, I discreetly reached up to my ear and put my earbuds in. I didn’t want to be here but there was no avoiding it. I looked up at his photo, my only contribution to this funeral. It was one of him laughing at me. One of three hundred or so people here knew that. It just looked like he was genuinely laughing at something.
I can’t.
Biting back the sob I put my head down and tucked my hands under my legs. I could feel a few hands on my back rubbing and patting me. But I didn’t want that…I wanted…I wanted them to move. To get out of my way so I could run.
I didn’t want to be here.
That casket was empty.
His body was there but he was gone so what was the point?
MALACHI
“Why?” I grumbled as I looked up at the wood paneling of my bedroom ceiling.
It had been two weeks. Two weeks since his...since he had passed and she’d left… yet…
“7:37 a.m.” I was awake at 7:37…now 7:38 a.m. according to the cellphone I no longer needed, since one of the two people in my contacts was no longer here to call me and the other had no reason to. Two weeks and yet I now woke up before 8 a.m. no matter how late I went to bed or how badly I wanted to sleep in.
“It’s all her fault…” I muttered putting my arm over my eyes. I tried not to think of her but what could I do when I awoke and knew the only reason I was up at such a godforsaken hour was because of her?
Not just her but Alfred…if he didn’t…if he hadn’t passed, none of this would have happened, so I was blaming him too.
Alfred.
Esther.
Myself.
I was blaming the world for anything and everything today.
“If I’m like this, she’s probably much worse.” I needed to get myself together. Rising from the bed I stretched out and walked into the closet to change.
However, how she was feeling wasn’t my business now.
ESTHER
“Please have a seat, Ms. Noëlle.”
“Thank you,” I whispered softly as I took a seat on the white chair that sat behind the glass conference table. Putting my bag on the ground beside my feet, I took a deep breath. “Let’s get this over with, Mr. Morell.”
I didn’t want to be in his office any longer than needed. I wasn’t a huge fan of lawyers—they were like grim reapers: they only came around when something was about to die, or dying, or already dead, whether it was you personally or your bank account.
“We’re still waiting for one more person,” he said as he looked through the glass doors and into the rest of the office. “Ah…here she comes.”
Part of me knew it was her. It could only be her.
I gritted my teeth together as she strode into the room and ignored the lawyer who held the door for her. She was dressed in white with her red coat hanging off her sounders. Her black hair was styled into a pixie cut, and the string of pearls around her neck were the same pearls I’d seen in old photographs of her and my grandmother. I couldn’t see her eyes because of the big bug-eyed sunglasses she wore, but as she walked towards us she moved as though she was striding down a runaway instead of coming to deal with the will of her own father…the same father whose funeral she didn’t even have the courtesy to attend. I tried not to glare at her as Mr. Morell stood to shake her hand, but she ignored him and set her purse on the chair before she sat down.
“You could at the very least—”
“I still have the apartment on West 18th and my usual allowance, correct?” she asked, cutting me off and looking only at him.
“West 18th?” I yelled. “You live less than ten minutes away from me?”