Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Already dressed in the suit—a black-on-black ensemble from the dress shirt underneath the tailored-to-his-frame blazer to his tie and vest—minus the jacket he wanted to keep pressed and clean until he had to put it on, Lucas watched his nonsensical ramblings change on the paper. He started as though talking to himself, hunched over the round glass-topped kitchen table the penthouse apartment had come furnished with when he bought it, but finished at the bottom of his fourth page like he was writing a message to Jacob.
It didn’t have to make sense.
It did help.
Benson said it’s not my guilt to carry, but I told him that’s not gonna change how I feel when I wake up again tomorrow and you’re still not here, Lucas had written, the mention of his therapist reminding him yet again why he had sat down to do this in the first place. I didn’t ask for you to be okay, Jake, just for you to be here, you know? Maybe that’s why I still feel like it’s my fault.
A skipped line beneath those words, Lucas had added—Celebration of life? The question mark felt appropriate because that’s just how he felt regarding the memorial meant to do what it said; celebrate a life. He hated the irony that came with it when the only reason they were having the celebration to begin with stemmed from a life no longer here to be lived.
He couldn’t come up with a respectable way to end his thoughts coming out on the paper, so he slapped his initials at the bottom of the page and closed the leatherbound notebook with a snap as the front and back came together. The magnetic strap that connected to the front closed itself, and he left the notebook where it sat on the table as he cleared his plate. Lucas didn’t want to linger on his thoughts that he’d gotten out—that defeated the purpose of allowing himself to stream them, and filter all the nonsense out, onto a page where hopefully, for a time, they could stay.
He could always come back to the unfinished bit later.
Journaling worked to get Lucas through the last hour or so before he had to leave to make the trip to Quispamsis—the thirty-minute drive just outside of the city—where the memorial would be held had likely turned into a forty-five minute or more journey with the storm.
At least, the heated, underground garage of the high rise kept the Bronco warm and ready for Lucas when he jumped into the driver’s seat. He kept trying to find those silver linings everywhere to keep him on track and doing what he needed to do.
The memorial, that was.
Because a piece of Lucas internally screamed at the idea of it all being real. It would be—as soon as he entered the funeral home’s gallery where his brother’s urn, one he’d selected in a ready-made, easy to understand package provided for viewing online by the crematorium, would be waiting on a podium. There the truth would be surrounded by flower arrangements and picture collages made up by the animal rescue where Jacob had volunteered.
Even knowing what he would be walking into, because the funeral home director kept him informed and managed to be more respectful of Lucas’ time than most other people in his life, didn’t make it easier.
Nor did it make the drive longer.
It didn’t stop the pain blooming like a bruise deep in his chest, either.
Lucas had not been prepared to arrive ten minutes earlier to find the parking lot for the white funeral home trimmed with black nearly full of vehicles. What shocked him more came in a face he recognized—Kimmie Tate, from accounting, walked arm in arm with Lucas’ assistant. Nola and Kimmie waved with soft smiles as he slowed to let them pass by the front of the Bronco, where a gathering of people who made a sea of black on the front steps waited to trickle inside the double doors a few at a time.
There, people could brush off their boots, remove their winter clothing and hang everything on waiting racks, and be greeted by any family of the deceased along with the funeral director. Lucas had asked that they not wait on him.
What if he needed time?
People shouldn’t have to wait to pay their respects to Jacob.
Something about the number of vehicles, and people, eased the anxiety building in Lucas’ chest. If he were honest about the worst of his thoughts, the most painful ones that stemmed from all the awful shit he heard said about his brother over the years, especially from his parents, then Lucas would have to say he’d wondered if anyone would come at all. The fact that so many did confirmed what he already knew.
His parents didn’t matter. Not a word they said meant anything at all to the life Jacob had lived. He wasn’t the total sum of the drugs he had used, or the fact that his addiction had ultimately killed him—words their own father had spat like insults at Jacob for years. Instead, his baby brother’s life had been made up of many pieces. Multi-faceted. A culmination of each person he ever met and every experience he’d ever had.