Forest of the Setting Sun

Chapter 1

Connie stood next to her cousin Marshall on his family's second-story balcony. He had removed himself from the gathering on the first floor so that he could smoke in peace, but she had followed after him. He didn't seem to mind her presence as he stood there exhaling plumes of smoke that disappeared into the air above them. She didn't know what to say -or if she wanted to say anything for that matter. She was tired of all the talking that people seemed to do after a death. The stupid, insignificant, "How are you?"s and the "Doing well?"s.

Honestly, theirs was a family of strangers. Connie couldn't force herself to think that her second cousin Lana's inquiries about her schooling really mattered when she didn't even bother to send a congratulatory card for Connie's graduation last year. She knew Marshall was worse off than her. This whole get together was to honor the memory of his brother.

Marshall and Richie, weren't ever really close in all the time that Connie had known them, but she knew that the fact that his little brother had gone before him was eating him up inside. It was no ones fault. Everyone knew that, and yet no one really did.

He had locked up his brakes on a sheet of black ice and everything went to shit. The car was so mangled they had to cut his door open. It all took too much time. The time to find the wreck. The time to get him out. The time it took for it all to end after they pulled the plug. He suffered. . .something, an aneurism maybe a stroke, Connie could never remember. But she did remember when they had told her that there was no brain activity and the family had decided to pull the plug.

"He wouldn't want to live like this." "It's better and we'll see him again" All of them had the textbook responses, and frankly she didn't blame anyone. She would have made the same decision. She just wished her family hadn't felt the need to continually open her door and say "Hey Con, howya doin? You ok?" It wasn't as if they were close. She only saw Richie and Marshall once -maybe twice- a year, and when she did see them she was always their kid cousin, so it wasn't like they hung out.

"Want a smoke?"

His voice almost made her jump out of her skin, breaking up her reverie. She looked to Marshall then and realized that he was looking at her instead of the sliding glass door that led back toward the throng of relatives. He spun the joint around his fingers.

"Nah. I'm not about that." She turned back to look out over their yard that led to the woods beyond.

He laughed; it was a quiet fragile sound. "You never really were. Not quite sure why I offered."

Inhale. Exhale. Puff. Puff. Puff. She could almost imagine the rings that were flying over the house. "The need to reassure others is probably finally asserting itself. I seem to bring it out." He laughed then, a real barking laugh that would surely wake the neighbors, or at least alert the others in the house to their presence. "You always had an odd way of comforting others." She continued. In her own way she was trying to comfort him by making him laugh.

And he did laugh, but it ended sooner than she would have liked, and with a heavy sigh tacked on at the end of it too. "God, Richie would have loved this." He was quiet for a beat. Maybe he wanted her to ask why, maybe he didn't. Either way he continued on, "To see everybody throwing such a fit over him. But man did he up and dust it. I should kill 'im. Hell I will kill 'im, leaving me here to deal with them all. . .but that probably makes him love it even more, watching me play nice with everyone."

The idea of Marshall playing nice with anyone at all made her laugh.

"You laughing at me kiddo?" He was sitting on the corner of the railing with his arms crossed over his chest indignantly. It was almost comical how young he looked. Like they were nine and fifteen again, stuck together at a family reunion.