Blood On Her Hands

Chapter 3

Oops.

Glass shattered against the wooden floorboards of Adonis's childhood home. The tinier shards shot out from before my feet, scattering underneath the clothed tables with food trays still placed across them. The arrangement of white flowers that had been in the vase laid in a puddle of water, looking sad and abandoned. I raced to pick them up. I hoped there was an easily locatable broom and dustpan somewhere nearby. It would be best to have the mess sorted out before Adonis's mother or brother noticed. I was supposed to be making the funeral easier for them, not harder.

The service had gone by in a blur of coming to the realization that Adonis was truly gone. He wouldn't ring my doorbell next Friday for family game night. There would be no more double dates with him, Nancy, and Darren. I would never speak to him again or hug him again or be in the same room with him again. He was gone. It hurt knowing that I hadn't even begun to feel what it would be like to miss him. It had only been a week since the wedding. What would I feel when another week had passed? A month? How could time make grieving easier if it only punctuated how long I had gone without him?

Not many people attended the funeral. Adonis lived a quiet life and was part of a small family. His mother and brother were all he really had - not that he was very close to either of them. His mother hadn't been very good at raising them and she was honest about that. She was an absentee single mother and left her two boys to fend for themselves. One would have thought that would have brought them together but for whatever reason the two siblings maintained a relationship that was more of an aquatiancship than a familial one. It wasn't until Adonis supported his brother in getting sober  that they seemed like friends. Even then, I got the sense that Adonis helped more out of obligation than kinship. "He's blood," Adonis would say. "You have to take care of your family no matter what."

I placed the soggy flowers on the table and turned to make a beeline for the kitchen. I was stopped when I crashed into a wall of flesh.

I let out a yelp and clenched my fists in the air. Darren placed his hands up in an "I surrender" position, his gaze darting from me to the broken glass.

"Please don't punch me. You'll mess up my good looks."

I released my shoulders from their ultra-tense place at my ears. Normally, Darren's clowning around would be enough to make me relax but I was too fixated on the post-funeral mess I just made. The others were still out in the backyard putting away the foldable chairs set out for the post service lunch. Luckily the door had been shut by a stray gust of wind or else all of them would have come rushing in to see what a help I was being.

"Help me find a broom, would you?"

Darren obeyed, disappearing behind the kitchen archway for a moment and then returning with said cleaning object. I reached for it but he shook his head.

"Let me take care of it."

I knew it would be futile to argue so I started bringing the food trays from the living room into the kitchen like I was supposed to be doing. The kitchen was distractingly outdated. It was like walking into the 70's with the dark brown cabinets against peeling orange wallpaper. As per the warning Adonis's mother gave me, I was gentle with the door on the glass cabinet. One quick motion and it would fall off its rusted, bent up hinges. I hadn't said anything but nearly all the other cabinets were the same. When Adonis's brother, Fernando, asked me to heat up some of the casserole in the oven I had to fiddle with the knobs for a few minutes to get it working. The house was in rough condition and suddenly I understood why Nancy had volunteered to help pay for the funeral charges.

With all the food stored, I helped Darren find the little bits of glass that were hidden in crevices like the snag under the bohemian rug and underneath the recliner.