In the days since Christmas Eve, Lia had talked a lot about her sister. Alex had also heard a few things in the past from fellow Pagano men who’d guarded Elisa; she’d had a rep as an easy, boring job, because she never went anywhere without her family but school. So Alex knew she’d struggled with anxiety and had been a bit of a loner, but still, he’d expected her to have some friends, or at least people of her own age who were sad she’d been killed.
There were some, but they stood or sat at the back, and Alex got the sense they were there more to gawk than to mourn.
It was strange, to think of Nick Pagano’s children, so privileged and beautiful, as anything less than perfect, with the whole world rolled out before them like a red carpet. Now that Alex knew them, he saw they were just as fucked up as any other kid he’d ever known. Each one weird in their own way, struggling with their own shit.
Lia had her anxieties, too, and she didn’t feel like she mattered as much as other people. Sometimes it boggled his mind, how little she valued of herself, when she’d become the center of his life. He didn’t think a second went by, awake or asleep, he wasn’t thinking of her in some way.
But he saw her all the time trying to stay out of people’s way, as if her very presence in the world was a burden. Maybe that was the real reason she’d been dieting so much—she was trying to take up less space.
That wacky rabbit diet had stopped, he’d noticed. She was eating normally now. Healthily. A day or so after Christmas Eve, she’d simply begun to eat like a human again, without fanfare. They hadn’t talked about it, because Alex had enough brain cells to know bringing it up would not be a positive conversation in any way. But he had noticed. He’d also noticed a subtle softening at her hipbones and shoulders, and he was glad.
A Catholic funeral was a Mass like any other, including communion. The only real difference, besides the gleaming, blush-pink casket standing at the head of the pews, was that the homily was more than the usual lesson. It was that, too, but there was also a focus on the deceased, and a time for their loved ones to speak.
Alex knew Nick had planned to speak, but when the time came and Father Merkel turned his attention to Nick, Lia’s mother clamped her arms around his arm and held him in place.
Alex heard her whisper, “Don’t leave me,” and Nick settled back and shook his head at the priest. He drew his arm around his wife and pulled her in tight. She curled into that hold and squeezed her eyes shut.
There was an awkward moment while the change of plans was communicated and Father Merkel tried to backtrack from his introduction and regroup. Suddenly, Lia let go of Alex’s hand and stood up.
She was shaking, he could see it, but she turned toward the end of the pew, and Alex stood and helped her out, holding her hand as she scooted past the legs of the Gorettis and Trey and his family. She genuflected and went up to the lectern, and he stayed standing beside the pew.
“Hi,” she said, her voice shaking like her legs had. “I’m Lia Pagano. Elisa is my sister.” An awkward little nervous titter blew into the mic. “I guess most of you know that. I didn’t plan to speak today. I didn’t think I’d be able to. But … I want to talk about my sister. She was pretty great. I didn’t think she was so awesome when she was hogging the bathroom, but she really was.”
For the next ten minutes, Lia wove a story about what it was like to grow up with an older sister so close in age, to be like twins but not quite. She told of when they were little and they’d sit on either side of their papa for bedtime stories, and the time they’d glittered their dog’s nose and put a tutu on him. She told of how they’d put on plays in the back yard and their mamma would sit patiently as their only audience. She told of competitiveness and quarrels and filled those stories with as much love as she did the stories of playing together on the beach or sharing