Chapter 2

After a sleepless night of walking laps around the living room and kitchen—and checking on my mom in my parents’ bed and my dad in the office—I shower and change into fresh clothes before the sun is even up. I open the front door, watching the sky above our suburban neighborhood bleed from black to yellow to, eventually, a bright, sunny blue. A new day. A new life.

I hate it. I want my old life. I’d take hurricanes and tornadoes every day if it meant I could have Raymond back.

Listening for any movement from my parents, I force myself to eat half a piece of toast, though it may as well be dirt in my mouth.

Finally, my father stalks into the kitchen, acknowledging me for the first time since yesterday morning. His brown eyes, the ones my brother and I share, are red-rimmed, but he’s dressed for work.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“I’ve got a lot to do, a lot to handle with death, paperwork that needs to be completed,” he says matter-of-factly, like he’s talking about one of his business transactions and not Raymond. “Why did the police come here last night?”

The question is harsh, more of an accusation.

I shrug.

“Why would this address be listed, with your mother as his emergency contact and not Shayna?”

I scratch at a divot in the kitchen table. I know why Shayna wasn’t my brother’s emergency contact. But I don’t think I should tell. Even now, after his death.

Ray had divorce papers drawn up. He and Shayna had been separated for the last couple of months, and he’d been sleeping in the basement. He’d even been in a relationship with another woman. And I had to keep it a secret until he found the right time to tell everyone.

My father raises his eyebrows, waiting for an answer, but I won’t tell him the truth. I have no particular reason to be my brother’s secret-keeper anymore. It just feels wrong to say anything.

“I don’t know,” I lie.

Dad breathes out deeply and runs his hand over his neck. “I’m going to the bank and then to run some errands.”

“Seriously?” I clench my fists. “Do you have to?”

“Yes, Cassandra. I’m Raymond’s father. I need to take care of some things.”

Like my relationship with my mother, my relationship with my father is strained, but not in the same way. My mom hoped I’d be different, more outgoing, wear more pastel, be more ladylike. She pushed me, while my father avoided me. He had his son, his firstborn, so I was of no use to him, I supposed. We’re oil and water, and he doesn’t know what to do with me and my Jesus was a Socialist T-shirt.

He pockets his keys and is out the door before I can even ask him to stay, and once again, I’m alone. I check my phone. My social media is lit up with notifications.

It’s not even eight o’clock in the morning, the workday hasn’t begun, but the local newspaper has run an article on the death of the beloved middle school teacher and high school baseball coach, Raymond St. George.

I have trouble breathing. The cement is back. This time, it fills up my rib cage, sticking to my bones and muscles. I fear I’ll snap in half with every breath as I thumb through the posts. Word has traveled fast.

I don’t know how time continuums work, but I think I’ve slipped into one. I’ve stopped moving, but the world hasn’t stopped spinning, and I’ve somehow fallen backward. I relive last night over and over with every word I read in the article, with every picture and status posted about my brother, RIPs and lyrics from his favorite Bruce Springsteen songs. People I haven’t heard from in years are tagging me in their heartfelt condolences, as if they know me, as if they know my brother.

Knew.

Knewmy brother.

They don’t. I’m the only one who knew his stupid grin covered his insecurities about not being the best at everything, that he was absolutely terrified of spiders, and his Mr. Perfect thing was all an act.

I hate every one of them on my social media.

My head aches, and I lay my temple down on the table. It cools my forehead. I close my eyes; maybe it’s all a dream. I hope to fall asleep and wake up to a day Ray is still alive.

But then my phone vibrates with reality, Shayna’s name on the screen. I can count on my hands the number of times we’ve spoken on the phone, and I consider not answering because I don’t want to talk about what I know we will.

Instead, I cradle my head in my hand and answer with a shaky, “Hello?”

“I’ve been up all night,” she says in place of a greeting.

“Me too.”

“The police officer said they went to your house last night too.” Her voice shakes on the last syllable.

“Mm-hmm.”

“I can’t believe RJ is gone.”

Her use of the nickname makes me cringe. It’s so impersonal, especially at a moment like this. His family—me, Mom, and Dad—calls him Ray or Raymond. His friends, and his legions of fans, call him RJ. He much preferred that name, too cool for a name like Raymond.

“When he didn’t come home last night, I figured he was off with that girl he’s been sleeping with.”

This catches my attention. “You know about her?”

“Of course I know.” She sniffs. “I’m not stupid, and your brother isn’t as slick as he thinks he is.”

I slouch in my chair, afraid to say anything, and we lapse into silence.

So many questions with no answers.

“What am I going to tell the girls?” Shayna asks after a while.

The girls, Lara and Lucy, my twin four-year-old nieces, two miniature versions of Shayna with big blond curls and my brother’s brown eyes. My brown eyes. I’ve never been close to them, but thinking about their futures without their dad makes my heart sink. They don’t deserve this. Neither does Shayna.

“What am I going to tell everyone? What are they going to think?” Shayna asks, falling apart. We have nothing in common, save one thing: Raymond. I don’t know how to comfort her. We’re not friends, but speaking with her is different now. Like we’re both in some kind of club…even though I’d really rather not have this kind of sisterhood with her. “The last time we spoke, it was a fight,” she confesses quietly. “I don’t even remember what it was about.”

“I’m sure he didn’t care,” I say after a long pause.

She huffs. “You don’t know what this is like for me.”

She’s right. I have no idea what she’s going through, and I bite the inside of my lip to the point of pain to allow myself that much, at least. In the face of so much loss experienced by my parents and Shayna, I can’t compare mine to theirs. He was my brother and friend, who gave me nothing other than a couple of black-and-blue marks and more laughs than I can remember. There is nothing left unsaid or incomplete between us. I can’t be upset about the life I won’t have with him anymore, not like they can. I have no claim to him like mother or wife. I’m only his sister.

“What do we do for the funeral?” I ask. “Did you guys, um, have plans or something? Some people from a funeral home are coming over today. Can you be here?”

“God, Cass.” Those two words are not unfamiliar to me and are usually accompanied by an eye roll. She snorts in that superior way—even now, in the middle of this mess—as if I’m not saying the right things.

I know I’m not.

“We didn’t have plans…for that. And I can’t,” she says with a sniffle. “I can’t be there. I have no one to watch the girls, and I have to explain this to them somehow. I’m already overwhelmed.” That last sentence is barely audible. “I won’t be any help to you today, but you can handle it, right?”

“Uh. Yeah. Right.” I rub at my breastbone, but the tightness doesn’t go away. “Well, I guess I’ll let you go.”

She squeaks out a few words I don’t understand as she cries.

“I’ll talk to you later, Shayna,” I say and quickly hang up, realizing how wholly unequipped I am to deal with all of this.

By the time I leave the kitchen, two of my mom’s friends are back, already making themselves busy. They tell me they’re here to help. Aunt Joanie is upstairs helping my mom shower and change, while the friends go about cooking and doing laundry. It’s helpful to have them here, I guess. Otherwise, I’d be dealing with my comatose mother alone. But no matter who comes in through the door, no matter how many Tupperware meals are shoved into the freezer, they can’t make this better or normal. This isn’t supposed to be.

None of this is as it should be.

At about nine o’clock in the morning, after I’ve aimlessly flipped through every television channel in my parents’ cable subscription, two men show up at the door. They’re both in suits and, from their physical similarities, obviously related. I don’t recognize the older man, but I recognize the younger one.

He’s a boy I used to love when I was a girl who had nothing but dreams in her head and hearts in her eyes.

That girl is dead like her brother. But this boy… He’s very much alive.

Like Ray, Vince was three years older than me. His hair was always adorably shaggy and often stuck out from under a baseball cap. He usually hung out at our house on Fridays and played video games with Ray while I made up reasons to be around them.

Standing in front of me now, he still has the same dark hair with a cowlick and gently assessing eyes.

“Hi, I’m Robert Mancini from Mancini Funeral Home,” the gray-haired man says, his wire-rimmed glasses perched on a big nose. “This is my son, Vincent.”

He leans into me. “Hey, Cass. I’m not sure if you remember me.”

I blink. Vince is older and slighter broader than I remember, but, “Yeah, yeah, of course I do.”

He nods, his lips turned down. My brother and Vince were best friends for years. They played baseball together through high school, and with his hunched shoulders, Vince seems to be taking the loss pretty hard too.

“I’m so sorry to hear about your brother,” Mr. Mancini tells me. “My sister-in-law is friends with your mother, and she asked me to meet with you. I couldn’t believe it when she called me.”

“Thanks for coming over,” I say and lead them to the dining room we never use with expensive cream-colored chairs and a dark wooden table. As I sit across from them, my throat tightens. “I’m not sure about what to do with…”

Mr. Mancini smiles sadly and squeezes my hands that are folded together on top of the table. “Don’t worry. We’ll walk you through this. Are your parents here?”

“My dad’s out, and my mom is…upstairs.”

“It’s okay,” he says, understanding we won’t be seeing either of them anytime soon, and opens a folder with a notebook in it to begin whatever it is we’re going to do.

I want to stop him, shout, and rip the folder away. I don’t want to deal with this, with any of this, with or without my parents. But if I have to be here, my parents should be here too. Why do I have to do it alone?

The cement in my chest hardens from resentment, and my skin is tight enough to explode into a million pieces with my next breath.

Vince moves around to my side of the table and takes a seat next to me. “Hey,” he murmurs close to my ear, his shoulder brushing mine. “I know how close you were. We’re here to help you any way we can.”

I swallow down the lump in my throat and look Vince in the eyes. They’re a light hazel, a stark contrast to his tall build and prominent nose. “Thanks.”

Mr. Mancini spreads out papers on the table with different colors and fonts. “It’s hard to plan anyone’s funeral, but I can imagine this is especially difficult for you and your family. If at any time you want a break, let me know.”

I lay my hands flat on the table. May as well stick a knife through them. It would be less painful.

“We’ll start with the program,” Mr. Mancini says, and he leads me through an hour-long process of deciding how to bury my thirty-year-old brother. We discuss songs, pictures, poems, prayers, and eulogies. Whenever there’s a question I can’t answer, Vince offers advice and nudges me along. At one point, he tells me there is no right answer and I should do what I think is best because that’s what Ray would do if the roles were reversed.

This makes me laugh. If the roles were reversed, I’m not sure Ray would be sitting here. He was always useless when it came to planning anything, worse than me. He once tried to plan a surprise party for Shayna and never made up an excuse for her to come home from her shopping trip, so by the time she arrived, the pizza was cold and all the guests had left. I ate the birthday cake in silence while they argued over who ruined the party.

“Now,” Mr. Mancini starts, opening his planner, “do you have a time when you can come in to finalize everything?”

I pick at my thumbnail and begin to answer once again “I don’t know,” but my dad walks in the front door. He stops when he sees the Mancinis sitting with me.

“Can I help you?” he asks with a furrowed brow.

Mr. Mancini stands and introduces himself, including, “Our sons played baseball together in high school.”

“Right, yes, sorry,” Dad says, although he still seems clueless as to who they are. My parents weren’t exactly the type to know our friends or our friends’ parents.

When Mr. Mancini begins to summarize everything we talked about, my dad holds his hand up. “I’m sure you’ve got it under control. Let me know what the bottom line is.”

I roll my eyes. The bottom line is I need help planning how to bury your son, I don’t say.

“I was about to ask when you can come in to finalize the last couple decisions about the casket and such.”

My dad scrubs at his chin. “My week is pretty full, I’m sure you understand. I’ll leave it to my wife and daughter.”

“Dad, I think?—”

He shakes his head and brushes by me on the way to the kitchen, leaving me slack-jawed. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes as my skin flushes hot.

“I’m going to leave my card here. You call me when you’re ready, after you’ve talked to your mom. We’ll figure the rest out later.”

I silently agree to Mr. Mancini’s calm and tender-voiced instructions, my hands still covering my face. A few seconds pass before I stand up from the table, opening my eyes. Mr. Mancini is gone, but Vince is still here, next to me.

“Okay?” he asks, his hands in his coat pockets. When I shrug, his head bobs up and down. “Yeah, it sucks. Every time, it sucks, but this one hurts a bit more. He was my good buddy.”

I can’t begin to process my own grief, and witnessing someone else’s, like Vince’s watery eyes, showers me with guilt. Like I’m doing a bad job of having a dead brother.

He walks with me to the front door, saying, “I know this is hard, but I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

It’s meant to be kind, but his offer bubbles up a pathetic whine in me. I can’t do any of this. I don’t want to do any of this. I’m sad, angry, and a tragic mess. “I just want everything to go back the way it was.”

“I understand that,” he says, as a car rumbles outside. I glance out of the window, where Mr. Mancini is in an old Chevy, one of those cars that is more boat than automobile. Vince bumps his elbow into mine. “My card’s on the table too. I wrote my cell number on it.”

He gives my arm a squeeze before he opens the door, and a long-ago memory infiltrates my mind. One of him squeezing my arm in the same way, but as we stood outside of the auditorium during the homecoming dance. He was on the court, and I had my heart broken by a boy I can barely remember anymore. Vince told me I looked pretty in my dress and to keep my chin up. Then he walked off with Britney Benson.

It was the last dance I ever attended at school.

Now, I follow him outside. “No hearse?”

“Huh?” He turns, and I gesture with my chin toward his father’s car.

“Don’t you undertakers all drive hearses?”

The corner of his mouth hooks up in a familiar way that makes me thaw for the first time in what feels like years. “I really prefer funeral director, and we only take the hearse out for special occasions.”

“Like first dates and birthdays?”

“Exactly.”

I smile, setting aside the fact that he basically held my hand as I discussed my brother’s obituary. Vince is almost exactly as I remember him—and nothing like I’d expect a guy who hangs out with dead people to be. Then he waves and hops in the big boat of a car that isn’t a hearse, and I head back inside to the house haunted by my brother.