A Beautiful Funeral
Page 11

Dad cleared his throat, and the tiles began turning again. He paused just long enough to wipe a tear from beneath his glasses. “Well, I’m glad. You deserve it. You’re a great son.”
I patted his shoulder, and then we picked our bones from the boneyard and set them on their sides, facing away from each other. I had a shit hand.
“Really, Dad? Really?”
“Oh, quit your whining and play,” he said. He tried to sound stern, but his small grin betrayed him. “Wanna play, Olive?”
Olive shook her head. “No thank you, Papa,” she said, returning her attention to her phone.
“She’s probably playing dominoes on that thing,” Dad teased.
“Poker,” Olive snapped back.
Dad smiled.
I turned to look up at our last family portrait, taken just before Mom found out she was sick. Travis was barely three. “Do you still miss her? I mean … like before?”
“Every day,” he said without hesitation.
“Remember when she used to do the tickle monster?” I asked.
The corners of Dad’s mouth turned up, and then his body began to shake with uncontrollable chuckles. “It was ridiculous. She wasn’t sure if she was an alien or a gorilla.”
“She was both,” I said.
“Chasing all five of you around the house, hunched over like a primate and making her hands into alien suction cups.”
“Then she’d catch us and eat our armpits.”
“Now, that’s love. You boys smelled like rotting carcasses on a good day.”
I laughed out loud. “It was the one time we could jump on the furniture and not get our asses beat.”
Dad scoffed. “She didn’t have to spank you. The look was enough.”
“Oh,” I said, remembering. “The look.” I shivered.
“Yeah. She made it look easy, but she had to put a healthy amount of fear into you first. She knew you were all going to be bigger than her one day.”
“Am I?” I asked. “Bigger than she was?”
“She was a bitty thing. Abby’s size. Maybe not even that tall.”
“Where did Travis’s gigantism come from, then? You and Uncle Jack are bloated chipmunks.”
Dad howled. His belly bobbled, making the table jiggle. My dominoes fell over, and I spat out a laugh, too, unable to hold it in. Olive covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking. Just as I began setting the dominoes back onto their edges, a car pulled into the drive. The gravel in the driveway crunched under a set of tires, and the engine shut off. A minute later, someone knocked on the door.
“I’ll get it,” Olive said, pushing her chair back.
“Oops,” I said, standing. “Cami’s back. Better help her with the groceries.”
“Atta boy,” Dad said with a nod and a wink.
I walked into the hall and froze. Olive was holding open the door, staring at me with a pale, worried expression. Behind her on the porch were two men in suits and soggy trench coats.
“Dad?” I called to the dining room.
“Actually,” one of the men said. “Are you Trenton Maddox?”
I swallowed. “Yeah?” Before either of them could speak, all the blood rushed from my face. I stumbled back. “Dad?” I called, this time frantic.
Dad put his hand on my shoulder. “What’s this?”
“Mr. Maddox,” one of the men said, nodding. “I’m Agent Blevins.”
“Agent?” I asked.
He continued. “We came with some unfortunate news.”
I lost my balance, falling with my back flat against the paneled wall. I slid down slowly. Olive went down with me, grabbing both my hands and bracing us for an alternate, painful reality. She held tight, anchoring me to the present, the moment in time just before everything would fall apart. I’d known in the pit of my stomach not to let Camille drive in the rain. I’d been feeling off for several days, knowing something bad was looming. “Don’t fucking say it,” I groaned.
Dad slowly kneeled at my side, placing his hand on my knee. “Now, hold on. Let’s hear what they have to say.” He looked up. “Is she okay?”
The agents didn’t answer, so I looked up, too. They had the same expression as Olive. My head fell forward. An explosion boiled inside me.
A sack fell and glass broke. “Oh, my God!”
“Cami!” Olive cried, releasing my hands.
I stared at her in disbelief, scrambling to my knees just before throwing my arms around her waist. Dad breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Is he okay?” Camille asked. She pulled away from me to look me over. “What happened?”
Olive stood and held on to Dad.
“I thought you … they …” I trailed off, still unable to complete a coherent sentence.
“You thought I what?” Camille asked, grabbing each side of my face. She looked at Dad and Olive.
“He thought they were here to inform us you’d …” Dad peered at the agents. “What in the Sam Hill are you here for, then? What’s the unfortunate news?”
The agents glanced at each other, finally understanding my reaction. “We’re so sorry, sir. We’ve come to inform you about your brother. Agent Lindy requested the news be brought straight to you.”
“Agent Lindy?” I asked. “You mean Liis? What about my brother?”
Dad’s eyebrows pulled in. “Trenton … call the twins home. Do it now.”
CHAPTER FIVE
TRAVIS
ABBY WAS STANDING AT A WINDOW near the front door of our French Provincial home, peeking out from behind the gray sheer curtains she’d picked five years before to replace the old ones she’d picked three years before that. So much more than just the curtains had changed in the last eleven years. Weddings, births, deaths, milestones, and truths.
We’d rejoiced in the birth of our twins and mourned Toto’s death. He was the twins’ personal bodyguard, following them everywhere and sleeping on the rug between first, their cribs and then, their toddler beds. The hair around his eyes began to gray, and then it was becoming harder for him to keep up. His was the second funeral I’d ever attended. We buried him in our backyard, the Bradford pear his headstone.
Just a few months before, on our eleventh anniversary, Abby had confessed to knowing I worked for the FBI. Swollen with our third child, she’d handed me a manila envelope full of dates, times, and other pertinent information between her father, Mick, and Benny, the mafia boss I’d just shot in the face for threatening my family.
Abby’s SUV usually sat parked in front of my silver Dodge truck, but it was notably missing, and my wife wasn’t happy about it. We’d traded in the Camry years ago for the black Toyota 4Runner Abby drove to her teaching job. She’d always been good at numbers, and she’d begun teaching the math lab for sixth grade almost right after graduation.
College seemed like a week ago. Instead of dorms and apartments, we had a mortgage against a two-story, four-bedroom home and two car payments. The Harley had been sold to a good home before the twins arrived. Life had happened when I wasn’t looking, and suddenly, we were adults making decisions instead of living with someone else’s.
Abby put a hand on her round middle, rocking back and forth to relieve some of the aching in her pelvis. “It’s going to rain.”
“Looks like it.”