My late partner’s mother demanded our house keys by his coffin and called me “a rented womb.” I was seven months pregnant when she told the mourners I had no right to stay. Then his aunt reached for my engagement ring, before a voice from the aisle stopped the burial and made his mother turn.
I needed that house because his clothes were still there, and because our son would never meet him.
She wanted the keys before I could finish saying goodbye.
“Don’t pretend you can’t hear me, Brandi.”
Marcia held her palm between us, below the locket Lev had given me.
I kept my fingers around it until its edge pressed into my thumb.
The last thing he’d fastened for me was that chain.
Now his mother wanted me to hand over the place where he’d done it.
Six days earlier, someone had knocked to tell me his car had been hit at a junction.
I’d asked which hospital.
The officer had taken off his hat, and I’d asked again because he hadn’t answered the question.
At the funeral in Worcester, people still came toward me with their arms open.
Then they saw Marcia beside me and kept their hands to themselves.
“Please,” I said. “Let me stand here.”
“You’ve stood here enough.”
Lev’s aunt Krista moved closer on my other side, so I couldn’t turn without touching somebody who wanted me gone.
I could see his cuff inside the coffin.
It had a loose thread.
I’d meant to fix it before he wore that shirt again, and I couldn’t stop looking at it.
Marcia followed my stare and moved into the space between us.
Her son had owned an insurance brokerage, but she’d always introduced him by what it was worth.
He’d answered those introductions by asking whether anybody wanted another drink.
At home, he’d crouched beside me and put his mouth near my stomach.
“Enzo, your mother says I explain things badly.”
Then he’d explained something badly until I laughed.
I couldn’t get that man to fit inside the coffin in front of me.
And I couldn’t make his mother let me look at him.
We’d meant to marry in spring, before the doctor told me how careful the pregnancy would have to be.
Lev had canceled the ceremony while I was still apologizing for the deposits.
“Stop worrying about chairs,” he’d said. “We’ll do it when you’re ready.”
I’d asked whether his mother would be angry.
“She can call me.”
Now she couldn’t.
Marcia tapped my closed hand with the edge of a blue document wallet.
“Open it.”
For a second I thought she meant the wallet, and reached toward it.
She pulled it back.
“Your HAND. The keys.”
“They’re in my bag.”
“Then you can manage that much.”
Krista glanced toward the mourners as though I was holding everybody up.
I’d heard that impatient breath when I struggled to get comfortable during dinner.
She’d made it when I answered questions about my work, too.
“Still booking appointments at the dentist?” she’d said once, before Lev could pull out my chair.
I’d told her yes, because somebody had to answer her.
Marcia had asked whether I intended to keep working once the baby arrived.
Before I could speak, Krista had said, “Why would she?”
With Lev there, I’d been able to leave those dinners beside him.
Now Krista blocked the way back to my seat.
Marcia opened the wallet.
She lifted a page toward the people behind me, her thumb covering the corner.
“This was checked,” she said. “The pregnancy she’s been using to get everything she wanted.”
My stomach pulled hard.
I pressed my palm beneath it and waited for the tightness to ease.
“He’s not the father.”
Somebody behind me stopped coughing halfway through.
I reached for the page.
Marcia raised it higher.
“Let me see that.”
“You know what’s on it.”
“No. I don’t.”
A man Lev had worked with leaned into the aisle, then sat back when I looked toward him.
I’d eaten dinner with him in our house.
“Who did the test?” I said.
Marcia shook the paper once.
“You don’t get to question me today.”
“Whose sample did you use?”
“Enough.”
She turned toward the mourners again before I could ask anything else.
My hand stayed out between us.
She spoke over it.
“She wasn’t his WIFE. Please remember that before you start feeling sorry for her.”
I wanted somebody to ask for the page.
Anybody.
Instead, Krista caught my wrist.
“Give me that.”
I tried pulling my arm against my chest, but she’d already gripped the sapphire ring.
“Lev gave it to me.”
“And he’s gone,” she said. “You don’t need to keep pretending.”
The ring caught at my knuckle.
She twisted it while I tried to uncurl the fingers she’d squeezed together.
“You’re hurting me.”
“Then stop making this difficult.”
It came free.
My finger still bent around the place where it had been.
Krista lifted the ring beside her cheek and looked past me at her sister.
Marcia nodded.
I couldn’t reach for it without letting go of my stomach.
“Please give it back,” I said.
Krista closed her fist.
“After what you’ve done?”
The baby moved against my palm, and I bent forward a little.
Nobody brought my chair closer.
Marcia laid the pages across the coffin, beside the chrysanthemums, and flattened a curled edge.
“Your things can be collected TONIGHT.”
“I live there.”
“You stayed there.”
“My maternity clothes are there. His things are there.”
“His things will remain.”
I looked toward the officiant, Sherman, but Marcia had already turned to him.
“We’re dealing with a private matter.”
She’d held the papers up to the church.
Now she wanted him to look away.
He lowered the book in his hands without closing it.
“The house,” she said to me, “the business, the money. None of it belongs to you.”
“You can’t decide that here.”
“I already have.”
Krista slipped the ring into her jacket pocket.
My mouth kept forming the beginning of another please.
I pressed my lips together instead.
Before his last drive, Lev had reminded me where his attorney’s number was saved.
“If anything happens, speak to Ahmad before you agree to anything.”
I’d told him to stop talking that way.
He’d kissed my forehead and made me repeat the name.
I’d called after the officer left, but Ahmad wasn’t anywhere I could see now.
Marcia raised her fingers toward the security staff by the entrance.
“She’s done. Take her out.”
A guard started toward me.
I backed against the pew and caught its end with my free hand.
Then the entrance door struck its stop.
Ahmad was coming down the aisle, with a funeral assistant pushing a monitor behind him.
“Stay where you are, Brandi.”
The guard stopped beside the pew.
Ahmad put a zipped equipment bag down and faced Sherman.
“Lev left instructions for a recording to be played here. Before you take him out.”
Marcia drew herself upright.
“Then let’s hear my SON.”
She smoothed her jacket while the assistant turned the monitor toward us.
Lev appeared, seated and alive, with his mouth just beginning to move.
Marcia listened to his opening sentence.
Her hand missed the coffin’s edge, and her knees folded.
The back pew
“Mother, this is the promise you asked to make.”
That was what Lev said.
The assistant stopped the recording when Marcia went down. Krista caught her under one arm, and the guard helped her onto the front pew.
I moved my bag out of their way. Even then. A woman could apparently try to put me on the street and still get me to tidy up around her.
Marcia sat with her eyes closed.
“Do you need an ambulance?” Ahmad said.
“No.”
“Marcia?”
“I said no. Give me a minute.”
On the monitor, Lev’s mouth stayed open around the start of another word. I wanted the assistant to let him finish it. I also wanted somebody to turn the thing off before I started speaking back.
Marcia opened her eyes and pointed past me.
“Brandi can sit at the back while we deal with this.”
The guard looked where she pointed.
I pulled my bag against my hip.
“No,” Ahmad said. “She can sit here.”
He moved aside to make room on the opposite pew. I lowered myself onto it, although sitting meant losing sight of Lev’s cuff.
Marcia leaned toward Krista.
“Get those pages.”
Krista took the papers off the coffin and slid them into the blue wallet.
Ahmad held out his hand.
“I’d like to see what you were showing everyone.”
“We’ll discuss it afterward,” Marcia said.
“She said there was a test,” I said.
My mouth felt full of lint. I couldn’t get enough spit to make the words come cleanly.
Ahmad kept his hand out.
Marcia pressed the wallet against her knees. Her eyes went to the monitor, then to Sherman.
“That recording needs to be checked before it goes any further.”
“You just asked to hear it,” I said.
She pulled her jacket straight.
“I didn’t know he meant that one.”
His empty place
The recording showed the chair in our bedroom.
Lev always sat there to put on his socks. He could run a business, explain a claim, and persuade a furious customer to stop shouting. Matching two socks defeated him most mornings.
One of mine was under that chair when he recorded himself. A purple heel stuck out beside his shoe on the screen.
I kept looking at it. Proof that he’d been in our room, not somewhere I couldn’t reach.
Three weeks earlier, he’d asked me to leave him alone with his phone for a little while.
“Wedding speech?” I’d said.
“Some of it.”
“We haven’t picked another date.”
“I know.”
His father had died without leaving a recording of his voice. Lev kept an old phone for years because he thought there might be a message on it.
“Will you actually listen if I leave you something?” he’d said.
I’d told him yes, then made him promise not to use his customer-service voice.
Back in that church, I put my palm against the locket.
There were other things in that room we’d done because of the baby. Papers Ahmad brought. Places Lev marked for me to sign. Marcia arriving afterward with her own pen because borrowing one apparently lowered property values.
I hadn’t been present for everything recorded that afternoon. Lev wanted parts kept for later. I was supposed to hear them when they mattered.
I’d assumed later meant a wedding.
Marcia got up from the pew.
“I need water.”
Krista moved to help her, but Marcia kept hold of the wallet.
The assistant offered to bring a glass. She nodded without thanking him.
Ahmad crouched beside my seat.
“When we spoke, you said she’d agreed to let you have your goodbye.”
“She did.”
I could still hear her on the phone the night before. Of course you should come early, Brandi. We’ll have time before everyone arrives.
I’d believed her so completely I’d worried about being late.
“Did you bring what Lev left with you?” I said.
“Yes.”
Marcia turned before he could say anything else.
“This is his funeral, Ahmad. Whatever you’re carrying can wait until we’ve buried him.”
The guard remained beside the pew, uncertain where to put his hands. Marcia took him by the sleeve.
“I asked you to help me keep order.”
He looked toward Sherman.
I wanted Sherman to say my name. He’d practiced it with me before the mourners came in. Brandi, not Brenda. He’d written it in his book.
He shut that book.
“We should settle where everyone is sitting,” he said.
Marcia put her hand on the space beside her.
“This row is for family.”
The page she wouldn’t hand over
I stayed on the pew opposite her.
Ahmad sat at its end. He didn’t open his bag. That made me angry for a moment, unfairly and completely. He was the attorney with the papers. I wanted the papers to do something.
Marcia drank the water and set the glass on the floor.
“There’s no need to prolong this. Brandi can leave quietly, and we can arrange a suitable time for her belongings.”
“No one’s taking her out,” Ahmad said.
“Then she can sit away from me.”
“You put this in front of everyone,” I said. “Show everyone what it says.”
The man from Lev’s brokerage stood halfway up.
“Marcia, perhaps we should take this into another room.”
She reached toward him.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank him,” I said. “I’m not going into another room.”
He sat down again. He’d managed to be useful for less time than it took to button his jacket.
I held my hand toward the wallet.
“You said somebody checked. Who?”
“I’ve had advice.”
“From whom?”
“People who understand these things.”
Ahmad leaned forward.
“You’re saying you have a laboratory result?”
“I’m saying there are serious concerns.”
“You said Lev wasn’t the father,” I said.
Marcia pushed the wallet beneath her arm.
“You want me to repeat that in front of him?”
Her hand went toward the coffin.
I nearly apologized. The word got as far as my teeth.
Then Enzo moved, and I pressed my hand against him instead.
“Let me read the page.”
“You’re upsetting yourself.”
“Give it to Ahmad, then.”
She looked at him.
“You’re meant to represent my son’s interests.”
“I am.”
“Not hers.”
He didn’t move from beside me.
Marcia pulled out the top sheet and held it toward him, but kept her fingers on it when he reached.
“You can look. You can’t keep it.”
He let go.
“Set it down where Brandi can see it.”
She slid it back inside.
Krista stood close enough that the pocket holding my ring was level with my face. I could have reached into it. For one ugly second, I pictured doing exactly that.
Instead I said, “Give me my ring.”
“After this is sorted.”
“It doesn’t need sorting. It’s mine.”
“You’re not wearing it home.”
The guard looked at her pocket.
Marcia put herself between us.
“The ring was expensive. You’ll have to forgive us for protecting his things.”
I remembered Lev at the jeweler’s, embarrassed because he’d forgotten my size. He’d tied a piece of string around my finger at home afterward and called it a highly technical solution.
Marcia hadn’t been there. Neither had Krista.
“You don’t know anything about that ring,” I said.
“I know who bought it.”
“So do I.”
Sherman came down from beside the coffin.
“Could we lower our voices?”
Marcia nodded immediately, as though she’d been waiting all morning for somebody to introduce manners.
“That’s all I’m asking.”
I stood up too fast and had to hold the pew.
Ahmad rose beside me.
“Sit down, Brandi.”
“I need to say goodbye.”
Sherman looked toward the coffin. Then toward Marcia.
She shook her head once.
He looked back at me.
“Perhaps after the service.”
Krista’s pocket
There wouldn’t be an after with the coffin open.
The assistant had told me that when I’d arrived. I could have a few minutes before the service; afterward they would close it for the journey to the cemetery.
I reminded Sherman.
He rubbed the edge of his book.
“We’ve fallen behind.”
I wanted to ask which appointment Lev needed to get to. Some part of me was still polite enough not to.
“I haven’t touched his hand.”
Marcia made a sound in her throat.
“We all have things we wish we’d done.”
Krista looked down.
I turned toward her because she was the only person standing close who’d been in our house with Lev and me. She’d seen him kiss my stomach. She’d helped carry the little chest of drawers upstairs.
She’d complained about the stairs all the way up, but she’d carried it.
“Tell her,” I said.
Krista moved her hand over the pocket.
“Tell her what?”
“That you know us.”
“Brandi, don’t.”
“You were there after he gave me the ring. We showed you.”
Her eyes went toward Marcia.
The mourners had stopped pretending to examine their books. Faces turned from one sister to the other.
Krista smoothed the front of her jacket.
“You handed it to me for safekeeping.”
I stared at her.
She touched my arm, right where she’d held me before.
“You were distressed. I offered to look after it.”
“You pulled it off.”
“That’s not what happened.”
My finger throbbed. I held it up, then dropped my hand because I couldn’t bear the idea of presenting myself for inspection.
Krista looked toward Sherman.
“She’s getting confused.”
That was the moment I stopped expecting her to help.
Until then, I’d kept a small space open for her. The younger sister who went along with Marcia because going against her was exhausting. The aunt who might say enough once she saw my face.
She pushed the ring deeper into her pocket.
I sat down without meaning to.
Ahmad bent toward me.
“Do you want a break?”
“No.”
“We can step outside.”
“No.”
If I went through those doors, Marcia would have the room again. She could tell everybody I’d admitted something in the aisle. Krista would nod. The man from the brokerage would find another part of his jacket to button.
I couldn’t leave Lev with them yet.
Marcia put a hand on Krista’s back.
“She’s done enough for today.”
I tried to lift my bag onto my lap. The strap caught beneath my shoe.
Such a little thing. I couldn’t free it. I tugged twice, and then I started crying over a bag strap in front of people who’d just heard that I was a liar.
Ahmad freed it and handed it to me.
I buried my face against the top.
Marcia went to Sherman.
“Close it now.”
He hesitated.
“She asked for a moment.”
“She’s had several. Look at her. This is making her worse.”
I raised my head.
“Don’t.”
The assistant remained at the foot of the coffin. Sherman put his hand on the lid.
I stood, but my knees wouldn’t straighten quickly enough.
“Please. Just his hand.”
Marcia stepped beside the coffin.
“He’s my child.”
Sherman lowered the lid.
The last piece of Lev I could see was that loose thread.
Then the lid met the edge.
The aisle between us
For a few seconds I couldn’t hear what anybody said.
My eyes stayed on the closed coffin. I had six days of things to tell him and a whole life after that.
Ahmad put a hand beneath my elbow.
I pulled away. He hadn’t closed it. I knew that. I still couldn’t bear anyone touching me.
Sherman stood with his book against his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Open it.”
Marcia turned.
“No.”
I looked past her at the assistant.
“Can you open it?”
“Yes,” he said.
Marcia stepped toward him.
“We aren’t doing this again.”
The assistant stopped.
There it was, the whole room arranged around whether Marcia would be displeased. I was carrying Lev’s son, and I couldn’t get a grown man to lift a lid without his mother’s permission.
Ahmad moved into the aisle.
“Brandi asked you.”
Sherman raised his hand.
“We need to pause.”
“We’ve paused quite enough,” Marcia said. “My son deserves a service.”
I wanted to scream at her. I wanted the sound to knock that book out of Sherman’s hands.
Instead I sat down because Enzo needed me to.
Marcia came to the end of my pew.
She crouched with difficulty, one hand on the wood. To anyone behind her, it might have looked kind.
“Listen carefully,” she said. “You can still make this easier.”
I kept my bag between us.
“Give Krista the keys. We’ll bring your things wherever you’re staying. You don’t need another scene outside the house this evening.”
“I’m staying at home.”
“Don’t force me to be cruel.”
I almost laughed. She’d begun with rented womb and apparently considered that the welcome basket.
She took a key from her jacket and held it where only our row could see.
Her spare. Lev gave it to her when we went away together and needed somebody to water the plants. She’d never returned it.
“I can go in before you get there,” she said. “Or we can do this properly.”
Ahmad came back to the pew.
“Put that away, Marcia.”
She straightened.
“Brandi and I were speaking privately.”
“You’ve threatened to enter her home.”
“My son’s home.”
He crouched beside me again.
“The recording can wait if you want it to. You don’t owe this room anything.”
Lev remained on the screen, caught in the middle of a word. My sock under his chair. His hand on his knee.
I wanted to hear him alone, in bed, wearing his sweatshirt. I didn’t want to spend the first sound of his voice since his death fighting his mother.
Marcia turned toward the assistant.
“Disconnect it. We’re continuing.”
He looked at me.
I’d spent the morning waiting for someone to stop her.
“Leave it on,” I said.
The promise on the screen
I stood behind the pew so I could hold its back.
“Play it.”
Marcia reached toward the monitor, but the assistant moved the stand out of her path.
Lev finished his word.
“Don’t look at me. Look at the phone.”
A chair scraped in the recording.
Marcia appeared beside him.
She wore the same jacket she’d worn when she came to our house with her own pen. I remembered being sent downstairs to put my feet up. She’d said she wanted to contribute something to his recording.
On the screen she laughed.
“I don’t know where I’m supposed to look.”
“Right there,” Lev said.
He pointed toward us.
Marcia stood so close to the monitor that part of her face disappeared behind its edge.
“Stop this,” she said.
Nobody touched the controls.
Her recorded voice came through the speakers.
“Brandi, I wanted to say this before you marry, whenever that turns out to be. You’re family already.”
Lev glanced toward her.
She went on.
“And after signing everything today, I hope you understand that nobody’s asking you to wait for a wedding to feel secure.”
I let go of the pew with one hand.
Ahmad was beside me.
“She knew?” I said.
“She witnessed Lev’s will.”
On the screen, Marcia put her hand over Lev’s.
“The house is for you and the baby. I’ve told Lev he doesn’t need to worry about that.”
The woman beside the coffin shook her head.
“That was before.”
I turned toward her.
“Before what?”
“Before these concerns.”
I held out my hand for the blue wallet.
For the first time that morning, she didn’t raise it above my reach. She backed toward Krista instead.
The assistant stopped the recording at my signal.
I’d thought Lev was about to speak for me. He’d left his mother speaking for herself.
“Give me the page,” I said.
Marcia shook her head.
I turned to Krista.
“You said I handed you my ring. Did you see a test too?”
Krista’s mouth opened.
“Don’t involve her,” Marcia said.
“Did you?”
“No,” Krista said.
Marcia turned on her.
Krista stepped back.
“I saw that page. That’s all.”
I reached again, and this time Marcia let me take it.
The heading said Family concerns.
Below it were dates Marcia thought didn’t fit, followed by her own account of something Lev supposedly said.
No laboratory. No result.
The only name at the bottom was hers.
Marcia’s own words
I held the page where Sherman could read it.
“This is what you let her close his coffin over.”
He took it with both hands.
Marcia moved toward him.
“You can’t expect a mother to ignore questions.”
Sherman read to the bottom.
“You told us there’d been a test.”
“I said it had been checked.”
“You said he wasn’t the father,” I said.
“I had reasons to be concerned. She was pregnant, the wedding was postponed, and my son was under enormous pressure. None of you know what he was dealing with.”
Ahmad stood beside the monitor.
“I met with him alone before he signed anything.”
“You’re being paid to say that.”
“No.”
“She was there all the time. He couldn’t breathe without her knowing where he was.”
I wanted to tell her about mornings Lev brought the wrong socks downstairs and afternoons I stayed late answering calls at work. Ordinary hours that belonged to us, now being dragged through her mouth.
I kept hold of the pew instead.
“Where’s the test?”
Marcia looked toward the mourners.
“I was trying to protect my son.”
“Where is it?”
“There isn’t a laboratory test.”
The man from the brokerage got to his feet.
He stayed up this time.
“Then you need to tell everyone that.”
She stared at him.
“You knew Lev.”
“Yes.”
“You knew what he built.”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t stand there and tell me I should let somebody walk away with it because she says she’s carrying his child.”
He stepped into the aisle.
“I ate dinner with them. I should’ve stood up sooner.”
Marcia’s face changed when he took my side. He was one of the people she introduced Lev to by the value of his business. She’d expected him to understand the arithmetic.
Krista sat down.
The ring made a small shape beneath the cloth of her pocket.
I held out my hand.
She looked at Marcia.
“Don’t,” Marcia said. “We need to establish where that belongs.”
“She told you,” Ahmad said.
Krista pulled out the ring.
She held it between her fingers, looking for somewhere to put it that wasn’t my waiting palm.
“Here,” I said.
She dropped it into my hand.
“I was trying to keep it safe.”
“You told them I gave it to you.”
She looked toward the floor.
I waited.
Her sister began talking again, fast now.
“This has become ridiculous. I’m being treated like a criminal at my own son’s funeral. I lost him. Does anybody here understand that? I don’t have another son coming home to me.”
Her voice broke.
I cried too. I hated that part. I knew all it meant that Lev wasn’t coming home, and for one second I wanted to put my arms around her.
Then her hand reached toward my bag.
“Give me the keys, Brandi. We can discuss the rest tomorrow.”
I moved the bag behind me.
Ahmad faced her.
“You have no authority to remove her. Lev left the house to Brandi. You’re named nowhere in his will as the person handling his property.”
“She wasn’t his wife.”
“His will names her.”
“What about the company?”
“That isn’t yours to dispose of either.”
Marcia swung toward me.
“You’re going to do this to me?”
I couldn’t think of a sentence short enough to survive her interrupting it.
So I held out my hand again.
“Your key.”
She put her hand inside her jacket, then stopped.
“I need to collect his things.”
“No.”
“His photographs. His clothes.”
“We can talk about photographs another day.”
“I bought some of those clothes.”
I kept my palm open.
Sherman stood beside us with the page still in his hand.
“Marcia, give her the key.”
She looked at him as though a piece of furniture had spoken.
He didn’t move.
The key landed beside my ring.
Two things back in my hand. Neither given kindly. I closed my fingers around them anyway.
Krista stood.
“Marcia, we should sit down.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Then stop asking me to do it for you.”
They stared at each other.
I looked at Krista.
“You still need to say it.”
She rubbed her pocket with her thumb.
“I took your ring,” she said.
“Louder.”
“I took it. You didn’t give it to me.”
The man from the brokerage moved away from Marcia’s pew and sat behind mine.
Two people followed him. Marcia turned to watch them cross the aisle.
She’d put me on trial in front of her audience. Now she could hear the benches creak as they moved.
I faced her.
“Tell them about Enzo.”
“I don’t know anything about that child.”
“That’s what you need to tell them.”
Her mouth worked before any sound came out.
Then she faced the room.
“I don’t have proof that Lev wasn’t the father.”
“Or a test,” Sherman said.
“Or a test.”
I sat down. My legs were finished for the moment.
Marcia turned back toward me.
“Are you satisfied?”
I put my ring into my bag.
“Open his coffin.”
The cuff
The assistant came forward.
This time Sherman helped him, and nobody looked at Marcia first.
I stood too close while they worked. Ahmad touched the back of the pew beside me, offering something to hold without taking my arm.
When the lid opened, Lev’s cuff was where I’d left it.
I went to him.
Behind me, Marcia began to speak.
Sherman stopped her.
“Brandi is having her goodbye.”
The room stayed quiet.
I put my fingers against Lev’s hand. I’d been frightened of how it would feel. Six days of being frightened, and now there was his hand beneath mine.
“Your mother still hasn’t watered the plants properly,” I said.
It was a terrible thing to say. It was what came out.
I bent over his hand and cried until I couldn’t get another sentence together.
Ahmad brought the chair closer. The one nobody brought when the baby moved and I had to bend over. He placed it where I could sit beside Lev instead of behind somebody else’s shoulder.
I sat.
There was the thread.
I tucked it beneath his cuff with my fingernail. No sewing kit, no chance to do it properly. I folded it out of sight the way I would’ve done if he’d been late for work.
“I’ve got it,” I said.
I meant the keys. The ring. Enzo. I couldn’t manage the separate words.
His mother stayed behind me.
For once she had to wait until I was finished.
When I stood, I touched the locket against my chest and then his hand.
Sherman moved aside.
“Take whatever time you need.”
I’d needed those words before the lid closed. I still took the time.
Afterward, the assistant asked me whether I wanted the recording to continue.
“Not all of it,” I said.
Ahmad came forward.
“There’s a part he marked for the service.”
“Just that part.”
Lev appeared again.
His mother returned to the front pew, but I sat opposite her, nearest his coffin. Krista sat beside her with both hands in her lap.
On the screen, Lev scratched his nose and frowned at himself.
“I’m going to sound like I’m selling you something,” he said. “Brandi told me not to.”
A laugh came from behind me.
Mine arrived a second later, wet and ridiculous.
He spoke about the people he’d miss. He called me his family. He used Enzo’s name as though he expected a response from somewhere below the camera.
Marcia bent forward.
Nobody stopped the recording for her.
At the end, Lev leaned toward the phone and missed the button. We got three extra seconds of his chin.
I laughed again.
That part was mine too.
When the service ended, Sherman asked me to walk behind the coffin.
Marcia rose at the same time.
She reached toward my elbow.
“We should go together.”
I took my bag from the pew.
“You can walk behind me.”
The key in our door
That evening, Ahmad drove me home.
He waited on the path while I put my key in the lock. I wanted to do that much myself.
The door stuck as it always did when the weather changed. Lev meant to fix it. I pushed with my hip, then remembered I had a passenger and used my shoulder instead.
Ahmad carried my bag inside.
“Do you want me to stay until someone comes?”
“I want a few minutes here.”
He put the bag by the bedroom chair, right over the place where the sock had been in the recording.
Before he left, he sat on the edge of it and explained the papers in words I could follow. The house was left to me. He would deal with what needed doing. I didn’t need Marcia’s permission to sleep in my own bed.
I made him say that last part twice.
Then I asked him for the recording.
He showed me where he’d sent it on my phone.
“All of it?” I said.
“All of it.”
I didn’t open it yet.
After he left, I took Marcia’s spare key off the little ring she kept it on. I put the key in the drawer beside mine.
I wasn’t going to pretend returning one copy guaranteed she hadn’t made another. Ahmad had agreed to help me arrange a new lock. Tonight, the bolt stayed across and nobody was coming through unless I opened the door.
My engagement ring wouldn’t pass my knuckle.
I tried once, then stopped. I’d spent enough of that day having somebody force it.
I unfastened the locket’s chain and slid the ring onto it.
Lev would’ve told me it looked complicated. Then he would’ve tried to straighten it and made it worse.
I put on his sweatshirt.
His clothes stayed where they were. I didn’t make a bag for his mother. I didn’t start deciding which things were too painful to keep.
I sat on the bed, with his pillow beneath my elbow, and opened the recording.
There was another part for me.
Lev glanced toward the bedroom door before he spoke.
“Brandi, if you’ve skipped ahead to find out whether I said anything embarrassing, the answer is yes.”
I pressed the phone against my chest.
Then I played it again from the beginning.
He said he loved me. He told me not to let the baby grow up thinking his father knew how everything worked.
“Your mother can tell you about the shelves,” he said.
I laughed hard enough to need a tissue.
Those shelves were still leaning in the spare room. He’d blamed the wall.
Enzo moved beneath the sweatshirt.
I lowered the phone toward him, the way Lev used to lower his head.
“That’s Daddy,” I said, and pressed play.
If this one stayed with you, send it to someone who knows how much an ordinary key can mean.
Family conflicts over homes, money, and who gets to make the rules can cut deep – read the Thanksgiving dinner that came with a $92,000 price tag and the school presentation that exposed a daughter’s secret. For another story about relatives demanding more than they’re owed, see the father who kept his savings while demanding his child’s.
