Due to the late hour, Theo decided to spend the night in Matt's room. Makennah was reluctantly reminded that she was sharing a room with Gran and therefore couldn't make a ruckus or settle down once she got home. The basement couch sounded less and less comfortable by the minute.
Theo and Makennah engaged in small talk on the way home but Matt avoided conversation like the plague. His knuckles turned white from fiercely gripping the steering wheel. His stone cold features warded off any questions.
Makennah felt bad for him but silently rejoiced at the success of their mission. The boys initially questioned her tactic and considered the smoke bombs unnecessary. She claimed it was better than breaking and entering entirely and catching them in his bedroom doing the dirty. First of all, Matt definitely didn't want to see that. Certainly neither did she. Second, they could plausibly deny that anything happened as long as they didn't actually see them enter the home.
Most of all, it was just kind of fun. Good clean fun that resulted in the achievement of their goal.
It was a good night.
It felt good to lay to rest the Cassandra ordeal. The weight on her shoulders lifted from carrying around the stress of her cheating and the knowledge of her affair.
Her good mood was destroyed as soon as they all stepped in the house.
For the first time in forever, Will waited up for them. He sat on the couch with his iPad, reading a book. When he looked up, he glared at them through his glasses. Without saying a word, he returned to his book.
Makennah glanced at Matt, silently asking for help.
"Where have you been?" Will inquired, sipping from his tea cup as he continued to read uninterrupted.
Matt covered for them. "Movies."
"Dressed in all black? That a new fashion trend?" Will asked.
Makennah turned to Matt, expecting him to come up with something.
Will continued. "You smell like smoke."
"I had a bonfire at my place before we decided to go to the movies since it was pretty cold out," Theo lied, driving them deeper into the no-go zone.
Mentally, she smacked him on the arm for that stupid answer and for lying to Will who almost always caught every single lie. He was a lawyer after all.
"Really? A bonfire and movies? What an exciting night." Will's voice held no intonation or inflection. "What movie did you see?"
The more they lied, the more they lied. Each lie led to another lie and another lie especially because Will was suddenly very curious about their evening.
So Makennah did what she knew she had to do.
"I know about the papers," she blurted out. "The legal guardianship papers."
Theo sucked in a deep breath. Matt looked at her like what the heck are you doing? And Will snapped his head up, focusing all of his attention on Makennah. Tossing the iPad aside, Will stood to his feet and rounded the couch.
"What? How?" He barked.
Sighing heavily, she looked Will in the eyes. "Someone left them on the kitchen counter. I saw them the other night."
"Matt, did you tell her?!" Will yelled at his son.
"What?! No, Dad, I swear!!" Matt promised, holding up his hands in surrender.
"He didn't tell me!" Makennah stuck up for him.
Will pointed two fingers at the boys and snapped his wrist towards the stairs. "Leave us," he commanded in a deep tone.
Without any further questions, the boys ditched Makennah with Will and mounted the stairs to Matt's bedroom. She cast a longing look in their direction. Oh how lucky they were to be able to disappear. But Makennah dug this grave to protect them. She could lie in the bed she made.
"Makennah, I...we...." Will searched for the right words and scratched his hand through the scruffy beard on his cheeks. He hadn't shaved in days. Presumably no time What with keeping up with the house and taking care of Carolynn whom she still hadn't seen for days.
"We don't have to talk about it," she offered, attempting to save him from this conversation.
Will looked down at her and his stern features softened. She noticed the way he looked at her as if she might break or maybe run away. "You shouldn't have found out that way. I'm sorry. I've only requested the paperwork for us to talk about it with you. We haven't filed or done anything permanent."
Makennah tucked her arms around her body to keep her heart from falling out of her chest. Each breath filled her lungs and chest with more and more pressure, threatening to shatter her ribs and spill out her emotions on the ground. "It's okay."
Awkwardly, Will shuffled his weight from one foot to the other. "We love you, Makennah. You're a special part of our family now and we couldn't stand the thought of losing you. We don't want to take you away from your mom or pretend like she doesn't exist. We just want to offer you the best stable environment with us. We want to be there to support you. We want to see you succeed. We want to be able to send you to college if you desire to go. We want to see you grow up, mature, and grow more independent. We are so proud of you...." Will swallowed roughly, getting a little choked up. His own display of emotions, however faint, caused a stirring inside her chest. Tears welled up in her throat like a huge lump. "You are special to us. That's all."
His words touched the depths of her soul that hadn't seen the light of day in years. She shut down those feelings and emotions, believing that the world could never be so kind to her to give her a new family that actually loved her. A family was never in her deck of cards. Girls like Makennah didn't deserve those things.
"We don't have to discuss it anymore until you're ready and maybe until Carolynn can be present. Just think about it," he offered.
She nodded. "Okay."
"Any questions?" He asked, turning back into his old self.
"No," she answered.
Will crossed his arms over his chest. "Don't think I don't know what you did just here. You deflected. Ever think of being a lawyer?"
She smirked, trying to cover the emotions that swam just beneath the surface. "No, sir. I've always existed on the other side of the law."
Will laughed and ran his hand through his hair. "Do I even want to know where you three were?"
"We didn't leave any evidence or proof."
"Proof of...?" He inquired with a raised eyebrow.
"Trespassing. Breaking and entering."
Will removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're positive?"
Her smirk widened into a grin. "Oh trust me. We won't hear a peep out of them."
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The next morning, Makennah woke up with a crick in her neck. She rolled off the couch and stretched out on the ground with her fuzzy blanket still wrapped around her. At the top of the stairs, sounds of someone rumbling through the kitchen floated down to find her on the floor. Unfortunately, she didn't smell any breakfast foods cooking away.
She dreaded this moment, this day, this occasion. Funerals commonly occurred in her neighborhood amongst her people. Shootings, overdoses, suicides, car crashes involving alcohol or drugs, amongst other things.
Growing up, she always had this one black dress that she kept to wear to funerals and calling hours. Sometimes her mother forced her to go to make face for the both of them because her mother was either too hungover or too high to go herself. She wore that ratty faded black dress for years until it was entirely unpresentable. She never went to any funerals after that.
Lucky for her, Gran had already vacated her room and she was sitting at the kitchenette table, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. She wore an old-fashioned black dress with black stockings and low heels. Her deafness provided a quick escape for Makennah up to her room to prepare for the calling hours.
As much as Makennah wanted to hide away in Matt's room with Theo and her older brother, the day demanded that she present herself as an educated, professional, and classy member of the Sinclair family - both for the many faces she would meet that she might need to impress and for the fact that she had some sleuthing to partake in for the sake of Carolynn's wonderful lasting memories of her father.
In the shower, she recalled the conversation she held with Elizabeth about her husband's misfortunes.
Not for the first time, Makennah cursed the dead.
This wasn't her problem. And yet it was.
As if the day couldn't start off worse than waking up on the couch in the cold basement, she ripped a huge hole in her stockings which seemed a little bit like the end of the world at the moment.
She'd have to run to the store. For some odd reason, Will insisted she wear stockings. It was his only request when he gave her a little money to buy a new black dress for this occasion.
"Will!" She called, hopping down the stairs in bare feet.
Makennah covered her loud mouth with her hand when she found Will leaning against the kitchen counter still dressed in his pajamas and cradling his head in his hands.
"Are you okay?" She blurted out, without much class or consideration. She just wasn't used to finding Will down and out so often.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's been a long week."
Makennah sighed and mentally prepared herself for the marathon ahead of her. "How can I help?" She asked, assuming there was a mindless task she could finish for him in order to make his day run more smoothly. She was used to this, this role. She could do this and do it well. She knew how to take care of people no matter what it took.
"You can't."
His dreary tone almost thwarted her efforts. Instead of trying to entertain a directionless conversation, Makennah walked over to the cupboard by the sink, withdrew a coffee cup, and poured steaming coffee into the mug. She added a dash of cream like he enjoyed sometimes when he chose coffee over tea. She saw him complete this task mindlessly every now and then. It occurred to her how crazy it was that she inherently knew simple facts about the people she considered family now.
She extended the cup out to Will. "Something stronger than tea this morning."
Lifting his head and making eye contact for the first time, Will reached out and accepted the hot cup with steaming caffeine. "Thanks."
With an extended olive branch between them now in the form of coffee, Makenna tried again. "How can I help?"
Sipping from the cup, Will contemplated his words. "Gran tried to smoke in the house again."
"I assume you caught her since I didn't hear the alarm."
He shrugged. "I sent her outside even though it's freezing. I really don't care anymore."
Makennah snickered and stopped short when Will glared at her. "Sorry. She still out there?"
"Yeah, I'm leaving her out there for awhile," Will admitted with a smirk. "I can't get Carolynn out of bed."
The real truth. Makennah nodded slowly. "She refusing?"
He nodded. "She doesn't want to go. Says it will be too hard. I've tried to physically remove her from the bed but she can't....she won't. She's been doing this all week. I let her wallow and be by herself in hopes that she would get it all out of her system before today."
"Let me try." She'd been down this road. For the first time, Makennah thought she might be able to succeed at something that Will or Carolynn couldn't do. "I'll get her up."
"Makennah..."
"Drink your coffee," she insisted, taking on a commanding tone. He didn't argue.
And when she walked over to the fridge, pulled up a kitchen stool, and perched on the top to read into the tall cabinet above the fridge to locate the liquor in the house, Will didn't say anything. He minded his business except for one raised eyebrow. She had been in the cabinet before and knew they kept a few miniature tequila bottles hidden away. Holding four of the mini bottles in her hand, she dismounted the stool, returned it to its rightful place, and quietly crept into Will and Carolynn's master suite which she had never been in before.
In the dark, she located a small curled up body underneath the covers. In the silence, she heard stifled crying, quiet sobbing. Her heart broke instantly for the hurt that smothered Carolynn so much so that she couldn't get out of bed.
Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Makennah found her way to the side of the bed and knelt down on the floor. She dropped the tequila bottles at her feet.
"Carolynn," she said quietly, alerting Carolynn to her presence.
The covers peeled back slowly revealing a puffy eyed, hallowed cheeks Carolynn with tears streaming down her face. "I can't do it," she sobbed quietly.
Makennah just looked at her and thought about how one woman could be so beautiful even in the midst of her misery. "You can."
"I can't," she said again.
"You can. You're stronger than this."
"Did Will send you in here?" She asked angrily, drying her tears on the back of her shirt's long sleeve.
She shook her head. "No, I came myself." The tears overtook Carolynn and she couldn't respond. "Why do you think you can't do it?" She asked.
Carolynn sniffled and stared up at the ceiling. "I never thought I would outlive my father. He wasn't that old. I can't imagine a world without him in it."
"But the earth keeps spinning on its axis. The sun keeps shining. We keep living. He died, yes. But we're still here. The world as you knew it before is different. The man you knew isn't here anymore. But there's pieces of him everywhere. You exist because of him. You are a piece of him that will keep living on this earth."
Her statement didn't seem to faze Carolynn whatsoever. "I just can't go. I can't go stand in front of all of those people beside my dead father and listen to all of their condolences and hear about how much they loved him. I can't stand up there and hold it together. I can't pretend to be okay."
Makennah decided to turn the conversation around so that Carolynn couldn't focus on herself anymore. "Have you been to many funerals?"
Confused, she turned on her side to look at Makennah. Tears spilled over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks onto her pillow. "Not too many, why?"
"I have." She took a deep breath. "I've been to a lot. I went to my first funeral when I was only eight years old. My mom's best friend died. She took too many drugs laced with other things that can kill you. I found her...on the bathroom floor. I was only seven years old when she moved in with my mom and me. She taught me how to take care of my mom when she would get too high or too drunk or whatever. I knew she wasn't okay as soon as I saw her. I opened her mouth and checked her throat. I listened to her breathing. I found her heartbeat....all how she taught me. But she still died. I called the police and they took her away but she still died." If she focused long enough, Makennah could still feel her cold skin underneath her fingertips and see her lifeless eyes staring into space. "She fell into a coma. Died of an infection three days later. I went to the funeral by myself. I walked to the funeral home at the age of eight because my mom was nowhere to be found. She was high somewhere...hiding...she knew the police were looking for her and that CPS was going to take me away. That's the first time I went into the system."
Carolynn opened her mouth to say something but Makennah interrupted her. "I'm not finished. My grandma found out that I was put in the system and took me out, claimed custody. I lived with her for two years before she died. That was my fourth funeral. My grandma wasn't nice. I barely liked her. Couldn't stand to be around her. But I thought that the world must seriously hate me to take my grandma away from me because that meant I had to go back in the system with a new foster family. At the time, I hadn't heard from my mom in months. I didn't even know if she was alive. I'd ask my grandma and she would laugh it off. Sometimes she even told me that my mom deserved to die." She probably suffered more psychological trauma from those few words than anything else in her life. "A very distant relative picked me up and let me stay with them for a few days. In the middle of calling hours, my mom showed up...maybe higher than I'd ever seen her before. She was wailing and crying, making a huge scene." Makennah dipped her head so that her hair fell over her face. Despite the years that separated her from that instance, the embarrassment still plagued her. "I was so embarrassed...no one knew what to do. They'd never seen anything like that before. I think I was eleven or so...I picked my mom up off the floor after she collapsed in tears. I wrapped her in a stranger's jacket because her dress flipped up and she was...indecent." She shook her head and still recalled the stench from her mother that filled the room. "I couldn't cry. I wasn't allowed to because I had to take care of my mom and get her cleaned up. I had to assure an entire room of people that it was okay...I had the situation under control...they didn't have to worry anymore. You bet your bottom dollar that not one of them stepped in to help me. They were clueless," she sneered.
Makennah picked up the tequila bottles from the ground. "I didn't have opportunities to cry over the dead. I wasn't so lucky. I attended so many funerals in the next six years of my life that I can't even count them all. People I knew, people I didn't know, people I loved, people I knew would die, drug addicts, alcoholics, kids."
Carolynn's tears dried up. And she listened.
"After the calling hours for my grandma, I didn't think my mom would try to go to the funeral. But she did. We woke up early in the morning. I made pancakes and for a few hours we didn't worry about CPS or drugs or overdue bills. When it was time to leave, my mom stopped at the door and she started to cry. She said 'I can't do it.' I went to the cupboard and found the only thing that comforted my mom. Alcohol." Makennah held out a mini tequila bottle to Carolynn and she accepted it. "I told her sometimes we need a little courage. But we can do anything we set our mind to. And we took the tequila shots even though I was only eleven years old. And we went to that funeral. It became a little tradition I did with my friends and people I knew before funerals. So Carolynn..." Makennah crapped open the two lids and put the open tequila bottle in her hand. "Sometimes we need a little courage. But we can do anything we set our mind to."
Carolynn balanced the mini bottle in her hand and slowly sat up in bed. She swung her feet over the side and perched on the edge, shoulders stooped, eyes red and unfocused.
"If I can clean up my mom, fight off CPS for a few days, and drag my little eleven year old self across a city for a funeral, then you can get up and you can shower and you can go to calling hours and keep it together for a few hours. I believe in you." Holding up her glass, Makennah and Carolynn clinked their glasses in a cheer and took the double shots of tequila.
Carolynn grimaced and reached for the two other bottles. "Okay. One more." She opened the tequila bottles and offered one to Makennah. "Cheers, kid."
They took the second shot and sat there while the tequila brewed in their tummies.
"Let's not tell Will about this," she whispered.
She nodded. "Come on. Time for a shower. You smell."
Carolynn smiled and rose to her feet. She cradled Makennah's cheek in her soft motherly hand. "When this is all over, remind me to move the liquor stash."
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I know this is a very long chapter but it didn't feel right to split these sections up. I wanted it to flow from one scene to the next without pause to the show the progression of Makennah making a game plan and preparing herself to take on the day for a funeral.
Thanks for reading.
xoxo
W. Carolina