I didn’t pay for a lavish one, so it was just as well that a lot of unexpected mourners didn’t show up. The people at the funeral home were sympathetic, but they must have cases like him all the time. John had dozens, maybe hundreds, of acquaintances. Hell, he was a social mage, and a pretty talented one. He’d thrived on being around people.
But none of them came to his hospital room or sent flowers. When they saw me at the store or dropping by his apartment to pick things up for him, they’d stopped me to ask how he was. Each time, I would explain that they had found the cancer too late for the medical mages to help, and each time, they would click their tongues and offer sympathy.
Then they would tell me to give him their best and walk away. Not a single one ever asked for a room number, or anything deeper than what amounted to condolences on the impending loss of my father.
I wasn’t sure if it said something about my father, or something about humanity.
I must have gotten taller in the nearly twelve years between high school graduation and the funeral, because the cuffs on my suit jacket kept riding up and the pants were laughably high-water. Maybe I should have been pleased that I hadn’t gained weight and they zipped up at all, but the pulling in the crotch seriously sucked. Trying to get comfortable in a badly cushioned pleather chair would have been hard enough in clothes that fit.
The black draperies everywhere made the room feel smaller, as did the way they had packed as many chairs into the room as possible. Maybe it was shameful, but I was grateful that the room was empty.
Well, empty except for me and my father.
I had him cremated, though, so he didn’t count. I’d like to say I couldn’t stand to look at his face again, but the truth was simpler and crueler: it was apathy, not anger. It was cheaper and easier to have done with it, so I could just take the box of his ashes with me when I left.
“I’ve spent eighteen years of my life with you, Dad, and I don’t know what to say.” Maybe it was silly to talk to a box of ashes on a pedestal, but hell, it was the best conversation I was likely to ever have with my father. Gods knew we didn’t like each other very much when he was alive.
He left everything to me only by default, because there wasn’t anyone else. No one ever loved my father in my lifetime. His parents died when he was still in college, and he hadn’t had any siblings, aunts, uncles, or cousins. He was a blip for my mother, a short-term mistake before my birth that she hadn’t formalized into marriage. He hadn’t even dated, to my knowledge.
“Apparently, half the city knew who you were. The shop’s never been busier than since you died. People saw your name in the obituaries, and they drop by to ask about what happened. They remember you running the shop, or talking to them, or being so very clever at that party they were at one time. But no one actually knew you.” I glanced over my shoulder. The door was still closed. “You were kind of a miserable asshole.”
For the first time in my relationship with my father, he didn’t have a mean, pithy response. Sure, he couldn’t respond, but damn if it didn’t feel like an opportunity. “I kind of hate you. I left college to help you run the shop, and you never thanked me. Would it have been so hard? Just a few words. Totally painless. Hey, thanks, Sage. Good to see you. You’re not a burden at all.”
Because that was the heart of our relationship. My mother was killed when I was twelve, and the state gave me to him. Foisted me off, he used to call it. He put me to work in the shop a few days later, while I was still trying to scrape my mother’s blood out from under my fingernails.
Every time I thought of those days, I relived that sensation. Sick and lost and alone, a gaping hole in my life in place of someone who loved me. Instead, I’d had Dad, someone who barely tolerated my presence. I had tried to make myself small and quiet and unobtrusive, but it hadn’t worked.