The Best Friend (Broden Legal #3) - Adam Mitzner Page 0,8
despite the fact that Carolyn had used the term “lapsed” whenever describing her Catholicism, and Nicky hadn’t set foot inside a Greek Orthodox Church in more than twenty years.
The McDermotts were a large clan. They occupied the entire first row on the left side of the sanctuary. I immediately recognized Carolyn’s parents from the wedding. Carolyn’s father had reminded me of the butler in the movie Trading Places, and her mother must have commented at least three times about the beauty of the flowers. Like everyone else who had come to mourn after having attended the wedding, the McDermotts looked like pale imitations of the vibrant, joyous people they had been only last month.
Carolyn’s siblings—her two brothers and one sister—sat beside their parents. Their significant others, along with aunts, uncles, and cousins, sat in the rows behind the immediate family.
Nicky sat in a pew across the aisle from the McDermotts. Beside him were his parents. The seating required that only immediate family occupy the first row, which was why Anne and I sat directly behind the Zamoras.
I had last seen the Zamoras at Nicky and Carolyn’s wedding. They’d been as happy as I could ever remember them being. They danced the Kalamatiano, the traditional Greek wedding dance, with gusto, and then Nicky’s father did the Hasapiko (which I always thought of as the Zorba the Greek dance) like a man half his age. But in the five weeks since then, they seemed to have aged a lifetime. For the first time, they appeared old and fragile.
Carolyn’s older brother, John, gave the eulogy for the McDermott family. He spoke for about ten minutes, telling the mourners that his sister had sung in the church choir as a young girl, been a standout soccer midfielder in high school, been a member of the debate team in college, and graded on to the law review. He talked about her time at Martin Quinn, and how their entire family believed that only greater things lay ahead for their Carolyn.
What John didn’t say, however, was word-one about Carolyn’s marriage to Nicky. Perhaps the omission was because he was yielding that part of Carolyn’s life to her husband, but it seemed more likely that the family held Nicky responsible for Carolyn’s death. It wasn’t hard to see it that way through the McDermotts’ eyes. During the twenty-seven years that they had been charged with safeguarding Carolyn’s well-being, she had thrived, racking up one accomplishment after another. Nicky had assumed that role for only a few months, and yet Carolyn had drowned in the bathtub on his watch.
Nicky had always been a natural at public speaking, but he was in no condition to address anyone regarding his wife. The few times Anne and I had tried to engage him to discuss what he was feeling, he’d had difficulty putting together a coherent thought. I told him that it would be understandable if he declined to speak at the funeral, but he said he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t.
When it came time for him to speak, he looked like the same old Nicky: handsome, confident, totally in control. I could barely align the person delivering the eulogy with the shell of a man who had been living with Anne and me for the past four days. He spoke for nearly twenty minutes, without notes, and without faltering. It was a speech that struck all the right notes of melancholy and charm, joy and tragedy.
After the mass, as the mourners made their way to the cemetery, Anne and I sidled up to Nicky. The snow had stopped falling, at least for now.
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
“It’s harder than I thought it would be, and I thought it was going to be fucking impossible.”
At the gravesite, we stood beside Nicky like pillars keeping him upright, each of us holding one of his hands. After the priest had recited the appropriate psalms, two men in overalls lowered the casket into the grave. I honestly thought that Nicky was going to collapse, but instead he leaned more heavily on us until the service finally concluded.
Nicky, Anne, and I walked back to his car together. As we approached the parking lot, I saw two familiar faces. At first, I thought I knew them because they were partners at Martin Quinn; then I assumed I recognized them from court. Instead, they were the two police detectives from Nicky’s house on the day Carolyn died.