either, way back then.
Meanwhile Martine had collapsed, sobbing. David’s mother led her from the scene. David’s boyfriend was being ushered off in tears. David’s father headed after his wife, flustered and infuriated. Jason looked stricken, and the twins hurried crying to the limos.
The priest looked this way and that, bewildered. The funeral, completely disrupted, ended. Some of the mourners talked among themselves, their heads bent together, and others dispersed, placing their roses atop the casket before they left. The funeral director dismantled David’s photograph and easel, and his assistant ushered mourners to their cars.
An elderly mourner turned to Allie, her hand at her chest. “Goodness, what a scene! I couldn’t hear much, but Bill’s not himself. How could he be? I assume we’ll still go back to the house in Brandywine Hunt, don’t you? For the reception?”
“I guess,” Allie said, trying to recover.
“Good, I’ll see you there.”
“I wasn’t . . .” Allie started to say, then stopped. She hadn’t known David was gay, and it had obviously caused drama in his family. She wondered if it had something to do with his suicide. “Yes, I’ll see you there.”
Allie felt a hand on her arm and looked over, startled to see that it was Julian.
“Wanna catch up, instead?” he asked with a tight smile. “I know a place we can talk privately. Sasha’s coming, too.”
“Yes,” Allie answered without hesitation. It was a conversation she had waited twenty years for.
CHAPTER 49
Barb Gallagher
Barb stood alone at Kyle’s grave, near the top of the hill at Gardens of Peace cemetery. She still couldn’t believe he was really gone, even now. She could remember the stretch marks on his back, from growing by leaps and bounds. It was hard to believe he wasn’t growing anymore. He stopped growing twenty years and three days ago, exactly.
It seems like yesterday, Barb thought, though she knew that was a cliché. She felt like he’d grown up in the blink of an eye, too, another cliché. She decided that clichés ring true for a reason. She knew because she’d lived them. Kyle would be fifteen forever, in her mind. She was fifty-five. She’d put on a nice outfit from Chico’s, because she dressed up whenever she went to visit his grave. She wanted to look nice for him. It was the least she could do, since she had failed him, in the end.
Suddenly Barb heard shouting behind her, at a distance. She turned around and saw a commotion at a funeral in the new section of the cemetery, closer to Scattergood Road. A fight had broken out among the mourners. Some men were shoving each other, and others were trying to break up the fuss. It was too far away for Barb to hear or see much, and it wasn’t her business.
She turned away. She came here often enough to witness more than a few family fights at funerals. Last month, the police had to be called to the columbarium to break up a scuffle, and two mourners had been taken in handcuffs to police cruisers. It happened more than people realized, and Barb understood why. She would have thrown a fit if her ex-husband had been allowed to attend Kyle’s funeral. He hadn’t been, since the prison officials wouldn’t give him bereavement leave. He was rotting behind bars, which was fine with her.
Barb bent her head and linked her hands in front of her. She scanned Kyle’s grave now that she had finished tending it, and it looked nice and neat. His memorial plaque was bronze, recessed in the green brushy grass. It read KYLE GALLAGHER, BELOVED SON, which Barb thought he would have liked. It was simple but did what needed doing, like Kyle himself. He did what needed doing, like packing boxes, unloading groceries, cutting the grass. Even on the basketball court back in Columbus, he’d done what needed doing. A three-pointer in the clutch, a foul shot, even a dunk. He’d had more than one buzzer-beater in his high school career. That was her Kyle.
He was always in the back of her mind. She would see Kyle as a baby, grinning to show his first tooth, his gums wet with drool. Or Kyle as a little boy, shooting a foul shot in a jersey that hung to his knobby knees. Or Kyle as a teenager, wrestling on the kitchen floor with their old yellow Lab, Buddy. The poor dog had died a year after Kyle, and Barb told herself it wasn’t from a broken heart.