thinking about her life without the Whitmans? That just about broke her heart.
Because the truth was, when she thought about bringing her future babies to Christmas dinner and Easter egg hunts, it was Grant and Audrey she imagined in the background. She frowned. Her children, if she ever had any, wouldn’t call Grant and Audrey Poppa and Gram. Her children wouldn’t even be related to the rest of the Whitman crew. It seemed cruel. One more thing Tim’s death had inflicted on her.
She entered Cape Girardeau’s city limits and tapped the brakes. She had to get out of this pit of dark thoughts before she walked into the office. Pulling into a parking space on the street in front of Wilkes, she tried to peer through the plate-glass windows to see whether Aaron was at his desk or not. But the glass only reflected the row of stores across the street. And her own reflection. She’d been told she wore her feelings on her sleeve, and she did not need Aaron reading her mind the minute she walked through the door.
She grabbed her purse from the passenger seat, locked the car, and stepped up the curb to the entry door.
Before she could reach for the handle, the door swung open, and Aaron strode out and took her by the arm. “Come with me.”
“What?” She resisted his grasp. “What’s going on?”
“I have ten minutes to get a hundred chairs moved into the basement of some church out on Lexington.”
“What? What’s the big rush?”
“A funeral.”
She stared at him like he’d lost his last marble. “Aaron, I can’t just drop everything and go to a funeral. Are you crazy?”
“Don’t worry, I already told Sallie I needed you to go with me.”
“And who’s going to finish the hair expo stuff? That’s due tomorrow, you know.”
“I’ll help you with it when we get back.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “As long as I don’t have to actually go to the hair expo.”
“Hey, if I help you move a hundred chairs, you’ll let a blind first-year student give you a Mohawk if I say so.”
“Fine. Just come on. We need to take a truck.”
He took her arm and practically dragged her to the company pickup in the back parking lot. Once she was buckled in the passenger seat, she turned to look at him. “Since when did Wilkes add funerals to our events list anyway?”
“Apparently since this stiff’s family decided to plan a family reunion around their grandfather’s death. Sallie said the daughter who hired us said something about they had to clean out dear ol’ Grandpa’s house to get it on the market, and suddenly second cousins once removed were coming out of the woodwork wanting to get in on the haul. They lived in one of those huge old houses out by the college.” Aaron gestured in the direction of the Southeast Missouri State campus.
“That’s crazy,” she said. “So Grandpa’s funeral is suddenly going to be standing room only? When is the funeral?”
He looked at his watch. “Four o’clock.”
“Today?” She practically screeched.
“See why I’m in such a hurry.” He pushed the speed limit for the six blocks to the warehouse where Sallie stored event rentals.
On the city’s old, uneven brick streets in the downtown area, Bree was jostled and jolted in her seat. “Take it easy, would you, Lightning McQueen?” She clutched the door handle for dear life.
Looking proud of the cartoon name he’d earned, Aaron parked as close to the warehouse as he could get. They jumped out of the vehicle in unison.
Forming a two-man “bucket brigade” with Aaron in the bed of the truck and Bree on the ground, they started stacking folding chairs into the truck in tight rows.
Within minutes, sweat was rolling down Bree’s forehead into her eyes. Not to mention her feet were killing her. “I would have at least changed my shoes if I’d known this was what you were dragging me off to do.”
“Sorry.” He shrugged and tried to look sheepish, but she wasn’t buying it.
“How many chairs will this truck hold? You don’t think we can get them all in one trip, do you?”
“If we stack ’em right, we can.” He took two more chairs from her and lifted them into the bed of the pickup. “Tell you what, when we get to the church, I’ll let you set up chairs in the nice cool basement and I’ll bring them in from the truck.”
“You’d do that for me?” she teased.
“As long as I don’t have to do the hair expo.”
“Wait a minute. You promised—” A drop of sweat dripped off the end of her nose and made a spot on her shirt. “Fine. Deal.”
They finished loading the truck and located the church. She asked someone in the office where they were supposed to set up, then helped Aaron with the first dozen chairs before taking him up on his offer to do set-up in the air-conditioned basement. She easily kept up with him and even took a break to go splash cool water on her face and try to do something with her hair.
“Hey, looks good in here,” he said as he brought the final load of chairs in. He helped her finish straightening chairs, then they went to stand at the back of the room, admiring their tidy rows of white folding chairs all facing a big-screen TV where the service in the sanctuary would be broadcast to any who didn’t arrive early enough to get a seat upstairs. “You ever wonder if they’ll have to have an overflow for your funeral? I’m thinking I don’t even want a funeral. I mean, what’s the big deal? Just go have a party in my honor or something.”
“It is kind of a big deal, actually.” She didn’t really want to talk about it, but she couldn’t help but remember Tim’s funeral. She’d forgotten they had to set up chairs in the smaller chapel at his funeral, too. Of course, the family hadn’t been in that room, but she wondered now what it was like, watching a funeral on a TV screen. Had the camera captured her family and Tim’s in their grief? There was a video of his funeral somewhere, but she’d never had the courage to watch it, not wanting to relive an hour that had been excruciating the first time around. But now she wondered: were there others who had seen their grief via that video?
“Seriously? Not me. Just scatter my ashes over the—” He took in a short breath, then clamped his mouth shut. After a long moment, he spoke quietly. “I’m an idiot. Bree, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of . . . that subject.”
She waved him off. “It’s okay. No big deal.” She’d practiced saying such words for four and a half years now. Almost five. And sometimes she wondered if she’d ever be able to say them and mean them. But it was a big deal. Even after all this time, every reference to death, funerals, tragedy felt loaded. Even when she knew they weren’t intended to be that way.
“I’m truly sorry,” he said, hanging his head.
“Forget about it, Aaron. It’s fine.” She gestured and blinked back an unexpected heat behind her eyes. “Really.”
“I wish I could take that
