Dad's Funeral

The cigarette was clenched confidently between two shaking fingers, and placed then between the black painted lips of the smoker who drew a lungful, blew, and watched as the expelled smoke tumbled away into the air above her head. The smoker was Abigail, and Abigail had quit smoking three months before, only to start again sometime after her Dad died. Today was Dad’s funeral; she had already smoked her way through a pack, and was now three deep into pack two.

She hadn’t slept much the night before, mainly as all the family being in Dad’s house had left her to sleep on the hard canvas sofa, and so spent a lot of the night out in the garden watching the stars from the patio. She wished on a shooting star, but her wish hadn’t yet come true; in hindsight, it may have just been a satellite. She laughed at the idea that her wish, that she hadn’t yet told a soul, could happen; but Dad had always taught her to stay away from wishes. As a child, she wanted to throw coins in wells and cross her fingers for good luck, but he had shut her down at every attempt. To him, a rabbit’s foot and a four-leaf clover were just silly trinkets, passing fancies that fools bet all hope on when all else was lost.

As Abigail finished one cigarette and lit the next with the still smouldering butt, she heard the unmistakable coughing of feet crunched up the gravel walkway that connected the road at the bottom of the hill to the church. Eventually, the sound turned and stopped directly next to her, at which time she looked over and saw the profile of her sister, Mary.

“So…” Abigail began, but did not finish.

“So?” Mary questioned after a few seconds.

“Well...” Abbigail continued, not finishing once again.

“Well?” Mary started growing tired of her sister’s monosyllabic dribble.

“The big day.” Abigail laughed awkwardly.

Mary spat the chewing gum she had been holding in her mouth down onto the floor before them, then she turned wordlessly and stole the cigarette from her sister’s hand.

“Yep,” she took her first drag, “the old man’s dead.”

Abigail was almost lost for words, both at the flagrant theft of her cigarette and the seeming dismissal with which Mary had referred to the death of her father. She thought Mary liked Dad, or at least that Dad had treated Mary with a lot more care, love, and attention than he had ever shown her. She wasn’t sore about it, at least that was the face she put to the world, but it was noticeable at times that it hurt to remember she was just the afterthought in most cases.

She knew there was a reason that Dad preferred Mary, and it all had to do with the one little detail that had been nagging away at Abigail her entire life: she was adopted. She was never told outright, but she knew that of the three children Dad raised, one of them wasn’t his biologically speaking; she had come to terms with the fact it was her, even though it was easily the hardest thing she had to accept.

She accepted when her brother wanted to move away and marry a woman that all of them couldn’t stand; she accepted when Mary did better at her at college and got more presents as a result; she even accepted the voice that told her to live her truth and come out easier than she accepted being adopted. She never dared raise the issue with either of her parents, the two people she ever talked to about it were her younger brother and her therapist. There were three people she told if you count the nightclub bouncer she told after being kicked out of a club for trying to mutiny the DJ booth on a night out in 2003; actually, counting that may mean adding on the fifty people in the line to get in who also heard her yelling about it as she picked herself up from the pavement and screamed at the bouncer.

“When’s Mark getting here?” Abigail asked, still slightly taken aback by what had been said.

“Well, he insisted on driving.” Mary scoffed disdainfully. “He said spending a night in the village would be ‘unfair on the kids’, whatever that means. So now, he has to get from Gloucestershire to here before ten so we can kick this thing off and get him underground.” It seemed the more she spoke about Dad the more dismissive she became, a truth that Abigail was becoming keenly aware of. “He said he would text along the journey, but I’ve not heard anything since last night when he asked if the buffet would be nut free because his bloody wife is suddenly allergic to nuts.” She shook her head and curled her lip in disgust.

“Well, is the buffet nut free?” Abigail asked.

“How should I know?” She shrugged.

“Well, I sort of assumed you would at least know that about your sister-in-law and plan ahead.” Mocked Abigail.

“You know so much about her then, what’s her name?” Mary raised her eyebrow and stared deep into Abigail’s, now rather timid, brown eyes. “Hold on.”

Abigail’s desire to change the topic was fulfilled by a text message that pinged loudly from Mary’s phone; she hadn’t wished for that on the shooting star, but it certainly would do. The tirade of curses and swearing that Mary engaged in during the moments following the reading of the aforementioned text would have gone down in the history books had anyone other than Abigail been there; it was certainly the foulest, most blaspheme riddled, borderline terrifying thing ever said, more yelled, in the shadow of a church.

“He’s in Weston-Super-Mare.” She finally hissed. “He says one of the kids was sick in the back of the car and now the other is refusing to get back inside; so, he’s still two hours away and one of those terrible creatures he calls his kids is holding him back even more.” If looks could kill, the one she was giving Mark’s contact name would have struck him down like a bowling pin.

Silence, gut wrenchingly awful silence, occupied everything for far too long. Neither sister wanted to speak, neither sister really had anything to say, until Abigail decided to lighten the tension the only way she knew how.

“Should we just bury him now and get on with it?” She joked.

The giggling that erupted between the pair was as beautiful as the previous few minutes had been terrible, both of them leaning back against the stone wall behind them and laughing like there was no issue in the world.

As she laughed, Abigial looked over at her sister. She was almost the spitting image of Dad. She had his rigid, attached earlobes and his eyes so brown they could be mistaken for black in the right lighting. She even, in Abigail’s opinion, had dad’s laugh. She had always been keenly aware of not looking much like Dad, especially next to her siblings, but didn’t question it until the night she had snuck downstairs and heard those words muffled through the kitchen door: ‘She’s not mine… I raised her, but she is not mine’.

“Who else is coming?” Abigail asked, trying to block that memory out of her head as she always tended to do.

“Well, the Hendersons said they’ll be here when it starts, and I know for sure Hugh is coming.” Said Mary, desperately wishing she had written down the guest list.

“Oh good, Uncle Hugh wouldn’t want to miss this.” Abigail agreed.

“Uncle? You still call him that?” Mary let out one, stiff ‘ha’. “They weren’t actually related, you know?”

Abigail’s jaw dropped slightly. “Wait… they weren’t?”

She felt a wave of embarrassment. Had her insistence on being part of that family unit pushed her into stupidly believing that a man with no relation to her father could have been her uncle all because of a stupid nickname? Had her need to be loved by the man who brought her into his house as an infant clouded her ability to recognise real family when she saw it? Was she overthinking what was, in reality, just a mildly embarrassing misunderstanding? The answer to all of those was simply: possibly.

“No, Mum just always called him that…” Mary thought for a second. “For some reason.”

Abigail loudly cracked her knuckles and, once again, changed the topic.

“You think you’re ready for this?” She asked.

Mary looked at her with a suspicious glance from the corner of her eye. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know; this is the first funeral we’ve ever been a part of, don’t you worry anything could go wrong?” Her brain flashed with images of them burying the wrong coffin, or even dropping it on the way to the hole. “I also just worry about the inheritance.” Abigail sighed. “That’ll be a whole deal.” She added uncomfortably.

“Why?” Asked Mary, finishing her cigarette and tossing the butt dismissively to the ground where it landed a few inches away from the slowly solidifying wad of gum.

“Well, you know…” She stumbled over her words a little. “The whole, me being adopted thing; I’m just worried he might have written any non-biological kids out of the will, and I really, really need the money.” She laughed awkwardly.

That had been the first time she had even said the word ‘adopted’ to Mary; even in other contexts beside the adoption, those syllables would become gum in the backs of her teeth and jam up whatever she was saying until she just skipped over it.

“You stupid bat.” Mary rolled her eyes and, with a deathly sharp movement of her toe, crunched the cigarette butt into the gravel. “You’re not the adopted one.” She hesitated, her eyes changing from mild annoyance to what could almost be mistaken for shame. “I am.”

“But…” She paused, looking her sister’s face up and down from forehead to chin. “You have his ears.” She exclaimed.

“I have his…” Mary shot her a look so full of confusion it was as though she had tried to read quantum mechanics to a toddler. “You do know both parents have to have attached earlobes for it to pass on? Did you ever stop to look at your brother’s ears?” She gestured towards her own ears.

“But…” She scrambled for more, but Mary stole her thunder.

“My parents were Mum’s Uni friends, your parents adopted me after mine died and decided to never speak of it in front of us.” She placed a surprisingly comforting hand on her sister’s shoulder.

“I heard him say that I wasn’t his.” She said, hearing that echoing memory getting quieter as the truth drowned it out.

“And apparently you misread every sign; he always hated calling me his to people, so he used to get drunk and rant to Mum about it. Come here.” She said, stretching her arms out wide and embracing her sister. “Right, the service isn’t for another hour; but maybe if we head inside people might start showing up.” She patted Abigai’s shoulder a few times.

As they turned, footsteps crunched up the gravel. “Sorry, I’m not late, am I?” Asked the suave voice of the well-dressed man treading up the path.

“Hugh, no you’re perfectly on time.” Mary smiled, then she leant in against her sister. “You really think a hunk like that could be related to your dog of a father.” She whispered, chuckling to herself then walking over and hugging Hugh firmly.

Abigial hadn’t slept the night before and spent a lot of the night out in the garden watching the stars from the patio. While out there, she had wished harder than ever on one shooting star that flashed across the sky just before she fell asleep in her chair. She had made her wish out loud, maybe hoping that the star would hear her, but mostly just to get it off her chest.

“I wish I could have been a better sister.” She had yawned.

Maybe, sometimes, wishes do come true, and maybe some shooting stars really are shooting stars; even if some of them are just satellites.