father’s funeral reception. It wasn’t just inappropriate, it bordered on pathological.
In a different context, I could have felt very sorry for Tina Buckley.
But not today.
She’d married that dude, after all—and no matter if it was a mistake, she chose to stay with him. Yes, I should have been more compassionate. But what can I say? I was grieving, too—and she’d done nothing all day but make it worse.
When her eyes came back to mine, I jutted my chin in Kent Buckley’s direction, and then I said, “You think he’s going to let you look after your mom? He didn’t even let you out of the house when Max was alive.”
Too much.
Too soon.
Tina went rigid. I saw her angry eyes turn to ice. And if I’d thought her voice had ever sounded vicious before, I now realized I hadn’t known the meaning of the word. All that rage about her husband she was suppressing? She found a place to release it.
“Get out,” she said, like a snake. “Get out of here.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond.
She stepped closer and her voice was all hiss. “Get out—or I will absolutely fucking lose it right now.”
Now the ice in Tina’s eyes had turned to fire. Crazy fire. Did I doubt that she would lose it? Did I think she was bluffing?
I did not.
I looked over at Babette—lovely, wise Babette, who was using every micron of strength she had left to hold it together. In the past decade, I knew, she’d lost her parents, a son, and now her husband. Did I want Tina Buckley to make things worse? Did I want to reduce the funeral of Max Kempner—the final punctuation mark on his long and extraordinary life—to a single image of his daughter screaming like a banshee in the courtyard?
No. On all counts.
And so I left.
And that’s the story of how I got kicked out of the funeral of my beloved landlord, best-ever boss, and closest thing I’d had in years to a father.
two
Just over a week after the service, Kent Buckley called an all-faculty meeting to “detail our school-wide plan for moving forward.”
I guess I should mention that, in addition to being Tina’s husband, he was also the chairman of the board of directors at the school. Honestly, I’d almost forgotten, myself—until he called us all in for a meeting by announcing that he was going to name Max’s replacement.
Max’s replacement?
Um. That would be Babette.
When the king dies, power transfers to the queen, right?
I didn’t see why the meeting was necessary.
We gathered in the cafeteria at the appointed time. Babette, normally a front-row lady, took the very last seat in the back row, and sat slumped in a chair, her eyes looking dull, like it was all she could do just to be there.
Alice came up front and plopped into the seat I’d been saving for Babette. She was wearing a shirt that said, I’VE GOT 99 PROBLEMS. JEALOUS?
We waited for the meeting to start in an eerie, deflated, heartbroken silence.
Kent Buckley wound up striding in fifteen minutes late, still talking on that damned Bluetooth, and even though he said, “Gotta go—gotta go—I’m taking the stage,” and hung up as he turned to stand in front of us, he left the Bluetooth in place on his ear.
I swear: he left it there the whole time.
Then he began. “We’ve all had a shock. Max’s sudden passing was a tragedy. This community is grieving,” Kent Buckley said, sounding like he’d just looked all those words up in a thesaurus. He’d contorted his face into such a bad facsimile of sympathy, I couldn’t look at him.
He paused dramatically, so we could all feel moved.
“But,” he said then, “life has to go on.”
I looked around to meet eyes with Babette, but her eyes were trained on Kent Buckley.
“We have an opportunity here to make the most of this…”
I could see him mentally searching for a synonym for “tragedy.”
“Tragedy,” he finished.
Oh, well.
“But we’re going to need someone to take us into our next phase. We need someone to step into Max’s shoes and lead us forward. And I’m proud to report that I have found that person.”
Why all this buildup for Babette? Kent Buckley didn’t even like her.
“He’s been quite the rising star the past two years in Baltimore.”
Wait—what? He? Baltimore? I turned to look at Babette. She snapped her eyes to mine, face totally stoic, and gave me a tiny, barely there head shake, like Don’t freak out.