Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100750 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100750 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Now, she and her family were being asked to attend a memorial and to meet with the driver, who wanted to express her sincere remorse for the accident. Not accepting fault for not keeping her car properly maintained. Deep in her mind, she knew it had been an accident. It was, however, avoidable, and she couldn’t help but think the person should be held accountable. Nadia hadn’t even buried her husband yet, and the city wanted to unite and show the citizens how the people of Boston were strong and would recover. How Rafe’s legacy would unite a community. How the organizers would learn from the tragedy and move on.
Nadia would not recover. There was nothing for her to rebuild. Her husband was gone. The life they’d planned out for themselves, blown to bits. Shattered.
She didn’t want to be there, but her parents had insisted. This tribute was supposed to be cathartic. It would help her begin her healing process. She thought it was a waste of time. The last thing she wanted to do was see where her husband had died. Yet there they were, sitting in black folding chairs, under a tent, listening to the mayor talk about the city Rafe had loved so much. Aside from family, she didn’t know anyone sitting behind her. Maybe they were the other people, the ones who had been hurt when the car broke through the crowd.
Lynnea whined and tugged on Nadia’s arm. She picked her youngest up and held her. In a week, Lynnea had gone from a sassy spitfire who tested her mother’s every nerve to a child who didn’t want to speak to anyone, who whined more than she had as a toddler, who was a shell of herself. And then there was Gemma—their formerly loving, vivacious daughter who’d wanted to dance and sing and always had a smile on her face but now spit venom, hit her sister, and insisted on slamming her door repeatedly while screaming at the top of her lungs.
As a family, they needed counseling. Nadia knew this. They would not survive without it. Her family had told her the girls were mourning in their own way, which Nadia understood to an extent, but they needed help coming to terms with what had happened to them. All she had to do was pick up the phone. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Maybe next week or next month.
The women in her family had planned Rafe’s funeral. Nadia had expected resistance from Cleo when she told her mother-in-law she intended to have Rafe cremated, but Cleo said it was the right thing to do. The wake, however, would be open casket. Nadia wanted to give Rafe’s friends, coworkers, and extended family a chance to say goodbye, despite the pain she felt.
Nadia arrived an hour early to the funeral home, alone. Her father drove her, walked her in, and then left her there. It was where she wanted to be, with her husband, one last time. Just them. She sat in a chair and stared at the dark wooden casket. The company that made it had donated it to Nadia for Rafe. This was one of the many things gifted to them since Rafe’s death. Aside from food and flowers, they’d received gifts of memberships to gymnastics, dance, and theater classes for the girls, clothes for the three of them, a year’s supply of this or that. The list grew daily. She was grateful but wanted to know what would happen at the end of the year, when the free memberships ran out—who would pay for those gifts then? Her dual-income home now had a single income, and she wasn’t even sure she could afford to live on her income alone in the home she and her husband had purchased to raise their family in.
She sighed, wiped away her tears, and rose. Each painful step led her to her husband. She’d dressed him in his favorite black suit, the one he wore for special occasions, and the tie the girls had bought him the previous Christmas. As soon as he’d opened it, he’d proudly said it was his favorite and wore it to work twice a week. Her sister had brought Rafe’s cologne to the funeral home the day prior, and as Nadia leaned closer, she inhaled. He smelled like the man she was in love with, and not death. Rafe wore his wedding ring, but tomorrow, it would be given to her in a pouch, along with his watch. She would keep these things and pass them on to their children or grandchildren.
Her fingers ran along the smooth, polished wood, and then the satin lining. The casket was beautiful, if one could be beautiful. Quantifying death and beauty wasn’t something Nadia could do very well.