Cutler 04 - Midnight Whispers

cheeks. Just before the coffins were to be lowered, I stepped forward to kiss each one.
    "Good-bye, Daddy," I whispered. "Thank you for loving me more than my real father could ever dream of loving me. In my heart you will always be my real father." I paused and had to swallow hard before I could continue.
    "Good-bye, Mommy. You're gone, but you will never be far away from me."
    I gazed up at Uncle Philip who had come up beside me. He was staring down at Mommy's coffin and the tears were streaming freely down his face and dripping off his chin. He touched the coffin softly and closed his eyes and then stepped back with me. The coffins were lowered.
    I heard the sobbing. I wanted to comfort Jefferson, but I couldn't stop my own tears. Gavin embraced me. Granddaddy Longchamp had his head bowed and Edwina stood beside him, her arm around his waist. Fern wasn't laughing anymore, but she wasn't crying either. She looked tired and uncomfortable and her boyfriend looked confused, probably wondering what he was doing here. Bronson had managed to get Grandmother Laura back into her wheelchair and down to the grave-site. I could see he was explaining things to her and she was shaking her head, the realization of what had happened maybe just settling in.
    "Come, everyone," Aunt Bet said, ushering Richard and Melanie ahead of her. "Let's go home."
    Home? I thought. How can it ever be home without Mommy and Daddy there? It's just a shell of itself, a memory, a house full of shadows and old echoes, a place where we hang our clothes and lay down our heads, a place where we will eat a thousand meals more quietly than we had ever eaten them, for gone would be Daddy's laughter after he had just teased Mommy, gone was her singing and her warm smile, gone was her kiss and soft embrace to help keep the goblins and ghosts of our bad dreams from lingering behind.
    The sky grew darker, the world was angry, and rightly so, I thought. We stumbled away from the gravesites, past the other deceased family, past the large monument for Grandmother Cutler. I was certain Mommy wouldn't have to face her again, for she could never be in Heaven.
    "Remember, children," Aunt Bet said when we got back into the limousine. "Wipe your feet before you go into the house."
    I looked up at her sharply and wondered if the nightmares had really only just begun.

 
    5
COMPROMISING
     
    WITH UNCLE PHILIP SO DISTRAUGHT, AUNT BET HAD taken over the management of the reception at our house after the funeral. Just about everyone at the hotel was eager to do anything Aunt Bet wanted. Mr. Nussbaum and Leon cooked and baked what she thought was appropriate. They worked in the house under her supervision. She asked Buster Morris and other grounds people to bring over tables and benches and set them up on the front lawn. We knew there would be mobs of people coming to pay their last respects and console the family. Neither Jefferson nor I were in any mood to greet people, even people who sincerely wanted to show their love and sympathy; but I knew it was something we had to do, and anyway, Aunt Bet made sure to assign us our roles and position in the house.
    "You and Jefferson will sit there, dear," she said, pointing to the sofa in the living room. "Melanie and Richard will sit beside you, of course, and bring people to meet you."
    "I don't want to meet people," Jefferson said, a little plaintively.
    "Of course you don't, dear," Aunt Bet said, smiling, "but you have to do it for your mother and father."
    "Why?"
    "He's always driving people crazy with questions," Richard commented, twisting up the corner of his mouth. His lips were as thin as rubber bands and sometimes, when he did that so severely, I thought they would snap.
    "He has every right to ask questions, Richard," I said sharply.
    "Of course, he does," Aunt Bet said in an annoying sing-song voice. She reached out to stroke Jefferson's hair, but he tried to move his head out of her reach. "You ask anything you want, dear."
    Jefferson tightened his mouth and made his eyes small and hateful, but Aunt Bet just patted his head again and left us. Before we could argue about anything else, the people began arriving. Even Jefferson was impressed and overwhelmed. It seemed everyone who lived anywhere near Cutler's Cove appeared, and even some of our most faithful hotel guests had made the journey once they heard of the tragedy.
    Aunt Bet flitted around like a canary, the boundaries of her cage being the living room and