The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

28: Déjà vu

Farsi translations at the end of the chapter.

Planning a funeral was awful for Will. He fretted about putting so much pressure on me and Jules, but there was no way that he'd have been able to do it alone. I'd tried to save him from as much funeral decision-making as possible, but I worried constantly that the emotional battering of the funeral itself would drag him even lower.

He'd been dangerously silent and evasive in the days leading up to the funeral, only leaving his room at six a.m. when I'd drag him on a run with me. But he seemed better the night before the funeral. Jules, Clive and Gloria came over with dinner, and fifty copies of the funeral program, which looked absolutely perfect. Gloria and I had spent two days making the food; none of it was the gastronomic experience that Will would have cooked, but it was tasty and freezable, and I suspected that we were gonna be eating it for days.

Mozhgan had never bought flowers for the house, but had loved the wildflowers in the State Park, so Jules had filled jars, teacups, teapots and bowls bursting with Californian spring wildflowers, and was planning to line the crematorium hall with them for the funeral, and then bring them back to the house for the wake. It was all simple and beautiful, just like Santa Elena's coastline, and just like Mozhgan.

A little smile broke across Will's face when he joined us at dinner, and he sat leafing through the funeral program, transfixed. The guests were gonna be staring at it for the best part of an hour, so Jules had been determined to make it special, filling it with photos of Mozhgan, little sketches and miniature watercolor paintings she'd made, stanzas of Persian poems that she'd liked. Jules had printed photos of Mozhgan onto big sheets of paper to stick all over the living room, and when Will saw them his exhaustion and shyness and heartbreak mingled, and he hid his face in my shoulder, but he didn't cry. A little progress.

Julián arrived with boxes of wine glasses and a suit for me to borrow. The last time I'd worn a suit I'd been aboard La Rosa, a well-dressed captive at a grand piano, playing as terribly as I could in my own personal revolt against my captors, which hadn't been nearly terrible enough for anyone to even fucking notice. The memory made me suddenly glad that the next day I'd be sitting in my borrowed suit at a little upright piano in a crematorium in Arenosa, playing the best I ever had, for Mozhgan.

Will had asked Gloria to deliver the eulogy, and the effort of trying to sum up her magnificent best friend in five minutes had proven to be crazy stressful for her. By nine p.m. Gloria had settled on a final draft, Clive fluttering around her telling her that it was brilliant. We spent the evening listening to Clive and Gloria's stories about Mozhgan's antics when she moved to Santa Elena, their joint summer vacation trips, and how Santa Elena Bay had been idyllic and untouched for so many years.

We were clearing furniture to the sides of the living room and sunroom ready for the wake, when my phone rang. Fucking Charlotte Graz. I'd intended to slip onto the porch to pick up the call without attracting any attention, but I couldn't help looking across at Will guiltily. He guessed who it was straight away, and barreled toward me, Gloria and Clive watching us with worry. Perhaps they'd all figured out who was on the phone, who had approved my visa, who Sabrina's Mom was.

"Relax, Will. I'm gonna tell her to fuck off." I pulled him through the sunroom to the back porch, determined to make the next few days as quiet, and as Charlotte-free, as possible for him. "Hey, Charlotte," I sighed.

"Hi, Zeph. I'm sorry...I was wondering...if you'd asked if..."

I let her mumble on a little before I stepped in. "Sorry, Charlotte. It's just gonna be close family and friends."

"Of course...insensitive of me...perhaps...in a few days...just to say hi." She breathed heavily into the phone, her voice cracking.

I felt for her. But her selfishness stung me too. What was her pain compared to Will's? Why insist on invading Will's tunnel of grief when he was nowhere near emerging out the other side? And deeper than that, I was stung by the unfairness of it all. Why had Charlotte been given the wealthy family, the good life, the chance at a bigshot career? Will had been neglected and hidden away for decades, and now Charlotte just expected them to unite when it was convenient for her.