No Rep by Lani Lynn Vale

CHAPTER 25

Pinning book ideas should give you some kind of developmental credit.

-Taos to Fran

TAOS

There was nobody at the service.

Nobody, that was, unless you counted the two quiet women, and the babbling little baby at my side.

Sure, Chief Wilkerson, Madden and even Schultz, had offered to come, but I hadn’t wanted them there. I’d wanted to do this alone, yet two females hadn’t allowed me to have what I wanted.

They were being nice. I knew.

But I didn’t want false platitudes on a day like today. A day that felt dark and deep and didn’t really feel like there would be an end in sight.

I just wanted my girl.

And my girl had a sister that had insisted on coming, too.

So, though it was a sad affair, the giggles of Vlad filled the air despite the darkness.

It actually felt more right than anything.

“Would you like to say a few words?”

I looked up at the man that was helping officiate the service.

Though my grandmother went to church, she never went to the same one two weekends in a row.

I swear she was at every single church in the area, and never let on that she liked any particular one better than the rest.

So we’d decided to have just the funeral home put it on at my grandmother’s house, and not tell anyone when and where.

It was… freeing.

I didn’t have to deal with the false platitudes. And my grandmother’s true friends, the ones that lived thousands of miles away, were all too old to be traveling themselves. So we’d done a video conference of the service, and that particular torture had just ended.

“No.” I paused. “Can you give us a few minutes? Then we can wrap it up?”

The funeral attendant, a man in his late fifties, smiled. “Everything is already taken care of. Since you have no body to transport, if it’s sufficient, we’ll leave you to your own devices?”

I nodded. “Actually, that sounds wonderful.”

After he left, I stared up at the spray of flowers that dominated the front of the room.

“Your grandmother will never be underdone, will she?” I mused.

Mavis snorted. “My grandmother had to have put a small fortune into that. You’re lucky your entire damn living room isn’t filled.”

I flashed a quick grin, then got up from my position between the two of them.

“I think the worst part now is going to have to be going through all of this,” I mused.

“We’ll help,” Fran promised.

I knew they would.

It was like the two musketeers. They were each other’s best friends. If one needed help, the other would always be there.

I looked to the table of food that had been delivered from the gym members.

“What the hell am I going to do with all of that?” I wondered.

“You’re going to eat everything that you can in two days.” Fran got up and walked to the table, pulling back a few pieces of tinfoil. “Then we’re going to throw it all out and never think of how many calories we just consumed.”

We all had a chuckle at that.

Then a sparkle caught my eye.

I moved toward the shimmer and found myself staring at a shelf with photos of me.

My grandmother had a single shelf that was exclusive to only me.

On the shelf over were the rest of our family.

But something brand new caught my eye.

It was a photo of just the other day. Of Fran, my Grans, and me.

We had full plates of spaghetti in front of us, and it was a Polaroid photo sitting on her shelf between photos of me when I was twelve and fifteen. It was taken using my Grans’ new camera that she’d gotten for her girls’ trip.

Next to that photo was a Post-it Note that said, “Give this to Tay.”

And next to that Post-it Note, there was a black box.

I reached for it and felt my breath catch.

It was my grandmother’s diamond ring.

The one that she wore. The one that my mom wore.

And she wanted to give it to me so that Fran could wear it.

She hadn’t offered that to me when I’d asked Maria to marry me, and now I knew why.

Because what I felt for Maria, and what I felt for Fran, were two entirely different things.

Feeling my heart contract, I pulled the ring out of the box and fisted it in my hand.

Turning, I saw Mavis and Fran talking close, gesturing to a pile of boxes that we were going to use a little later to get started on packing up my Gran’s things.

And I knew what I wanted to do.

Walking up to them both, I said, “Fran?”

She turned to me, and I dropped down onto one knee.

“I know that this isn’t the place or the way that you would want a proposal to go,” I said as I got down on the white-tiled floor. “But I wanted to include her.”

Tears started to stream down her face as she quickly nodded her head. “It’s okay. I promise.”

I took her word for it and continued.

“A couple of years ago, when I broke things off with my ex-wife,” I said, “I didn’t realize that there would be anything out there for me. I thought…” I took a deep breath. “I resigned myself to being alone. And my grandmother always said that there was someone out there for me, but until I met you, I never believed her.” I pressed my hand to my broken heart at the thought of my grandmother. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife? Will you prove my Grans right?”

She looked at the ring, then looked at my face, before nodding hard.

“I will.”