Indiscreet by Nicole French

29

“Maggie, we’re here, babe.”

Calliope tapped my shoulder, almost like she was nervous to do it. It was the same way everyone had been touching me, looking at me, even walking around me for the past ten days.

I let her guide me out of her rental car and into the church parking lot, where people were gathering for my mother’s funeral.

Funeral. The concept still hadn’t really clicked. It didn’t make sense. How could I be here? What was I doing?

We stood outside a pretty typical Presbyterian church—rectangular and white, with a tall spire that reached to the sky, and a gravel parking lot on all sides to accommodate everyone who wanted to say goodbye to Ellie Sharp. The Forsters, God bless them, had walked me through every single step of arranging the funeral. Linda in particular had done almost all of the planning while I had numbly nodded and tried to process what was happening.

Mama was dead. Rolled her car fifty feet off the road into a ditch. The police said that based on the tire tracks, it looked like she had steered into the opposite lane, then over-corrected. She had been going much too fast—at least sixty, given the speed limit on Trent—and the car had flipped.

She was not wearing a seatbelt and was thrown through the windshield.

The coroner estimated she had been killed on impact. Mercifully, he said, though nothing about this seemed like mercy to me. An autopsy revealed that her blood alcohol level was somewhere near .16—almost twice the legal limit.

She had done it to herself, and no one was surprised. Not the police officer, who had showed up to drive her home more than once from Curly’s. Not the Forsters, who were sorry, but clearly expected that something like this would happen one of these days. Not Barb, her best friend, who loved her to death, but perhaps knew in the bottom of her heart that Ellie was never going to make it to old age.

Not even me. And I couldn’t really forgive myself for that.

Amazingly, Mama had taken out a life insurance policy after I was born. I had looked at it in shock—it was the only evidence that she had ever had more than a few days’ prescience when it came to raising me. It wasn’t for much, but it was enough to pay for the funeral expenses, finish fixing up the property, and pay the taxes for at least a year. A strange gift that she was only able to give dead, not alive.

I would have given it back in a second if I could have seen her again. However she was.

“Hi, hon.” Linda greeted me with a kiss on the cheek as I approached the church.

Calliope and I were late, as I had hemmed and hawed in front of the mirror for more than an hour. How do you dress for your own mother’s funeral? In the end, I’d let Callie choose for me—conservative black dress with flower appliqué down the A-line skirt. It swished around my knees. Mama had always liked that cut on me.

“Hey, Mags.” Lucas greeted me with a warm, yet uncertain hug, his brown eyes full of sympathy. “You okay?”

I shook my head. This was going to be the hardest part—a million people coming up to me, giving me their condolences. Asking me to express what I couldn’t put into words.

I fingered the eulogy folded in my palm. “I’m fine,” I said eventually.

Calliope squeezed my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s find your seat.”

“The guitar?” I wondered. “Where’s my—”

“It’s by the microphone, hon,” Linda said calmly, patting my shoulder. “We brought it this morning.”

I looked up toward the altar, where, on the low-lying step of the church I’d attended sporadically as a child and where Mama had tried and failed to fit in most of her life, my Martin had been set on a stand to the right of the closed coffin and the scattered floral arrangements Linda and other people had donated. A blown-up photo of my mom at a local rodeo was propped on the other side of the coffin. She was laughing, holding a cowboy hat on top of her head to keep it from blowing away. It was a good picture of her, but almost felt like a mockery given the day.

“Okay,” I murmured, and allowed Calliope to guide me to my seat in the front pew.

“Excuse me, Ms. Sharp?”

I turned to find an unfamiliar man holding a cowboy hat in a rough, weathered hand, extending the other toward me.

“James Edelman,” he said as he accepted my weak handshake. “I, ah, was a friend of your mother’s. I sure am sorry about your loss.”

Great. Another long-lost lover. By the number of men in the crowd, I suspected the place was full of men who had loved and lost Ellie Sharp over the years.

“Nice to meet you,” I mumbled. “And thank you for coming. How, um, when did you know my mom?”

“Oh, we knew each other way back,” James said. “When I was still playing with my band, back around ninety-one, ninety-two.”

I nodded vacantly. Beside me, Calliope stiffened. James stood there awkwardly, showing no sign of moving.

“So,” I said. “I’m guessing you and my mom were…”

“Involved, yeah.” His shoulders curved sheepishly. “Ellie was…well, I never forgot her, though I messed the whole thing up. She left me after I got a DUI. She was trying to get right back then. I was a slave to the bottle—she was right to do it. I sure am sorry she relapsed.”

“Relapsed. Well. Yeah, me too.” That was one way of putting it. Dead was another. “Did you manage to…”

“Sober up? Sure did.” James pulled a token out of his pants pocket and held it out. “Ten years last month, actually.”

“You knew Eloise in nineteen ninety-one, you said?” Calliope nudged my arm, and for the first time, I really looked at the guy.

He wasn’t a big man––about average height, with shoulders that slumped a little to the sides with the weight of a harder life than most. He had tight, salt-and-pepper curls that were still mostly black and shorn close to his scalp, and his skin was a dark, rich brown with the sheen of a copper pot. His eyes, a kind, dark brown surrounded by substantial crow’s feet, slanted over a long nose and a mouth couched in wrinkles. It wasn’t the face of someone who had lived an easy life, but maybe of someone who tried to live a good one.

“Where, um, where did you say you were from?” I asked.

“I didn’t—I’m from Spokane. The rez, actually—my mother is Spokane Indian.”

“What about your dad?” Calliope’s voice was sharp, maybe unnecessarily curious. “What…um, what was he?”

I glanced at her. “Cal.” It was inappropriate, asking someone about their race. She knew as much as I did how awkward that felt.

James looked between us uncomfortably. “Oh, him. He was from the Valley. Black guy, disappeared when I was a kid, so we didn’t see him much.” He folded his lips together—that was clearly all he had to say on the matter.

Calliope’s mouth dropped slightly, but because of my hazy state of mind, it took me a few more moments to put together the puzzle she’d already figured out.

Nineteen ninety-one.

Mixed ethnicity.

Musician.

My eyes shot open.

“When did you say you were born again?” James asked. His words slurred together, though I didn’t think it was him doing it.

“I didn’t,” I whispered. “But my birthday is in December.”

“December fourth,” Callie added emphatically.

“Nineteen ninety one,” I finished.

James and I stared at each other as a slow realization dawned on both of us.

“I guess we have some talking to do, don’t we?” he murmured.

I turned to Calliope. I couldn’t do this right now. I really couldn’t.

“We’ll be around at the reception,” she said, stepping in the way only a best friend could.

James rocked back, clearly relieved. It was a lot for both of us, that much was clear. “Certainly,” he said. “That sounds…like a plan.”

“All right, then.” Calliope took hold of my shoulders and guided me toward my seat.

“Was that—did I j-just imagine—”

“’Fraid not, babe,” she said as we sat down. “But not now. Put it away. Focus on what you have to do now, and we’ll deal with that later.”

There I sat, staring at the particleboard walls of the church, the ugly red carpeting, and the red stained-glass window panels while the reverend began the service, calling people to sit while he opened with a prayer.

How was I going to get up there? The same thought had been running through my head for the few weeks it had taken to settle everything: your fault. And it was. Nothing I had done had been enough to save her. Not leaving. Not an intervention. I had tried everything, and I had failed. It was my fault that she was dead.

“Babe.” Calliope nudged my arm.

I blinked. “Hm?”

“You’re up.”

I shook slightly. “What?” Then I looked up to the reverend, who was beckoning me to rise. Of course. The eulogy.

I took a deep breath, and eventually I stared out at the congregation of people. They filled the small half-circle of the church seating, so many more than I would have expected. So many more than I even recognized. Who were these people? Were they really here to pay their respects, or were they here for the spectacle of Eloise Sharp’s funeral?

I unfolded the short speech I had spent hours poring over and spread it flat on the lectern. Oh, God. Could I really do this?

“Go ahead, Maggie,” whispered the reverend kindly.

But I opened my mouth, and nothing came out. I could only stare at the audience. How could I do this? How could I say goodbye to my own mother?

The door in the back of the church opened, and the bright sunlight outside framed the tall, familiar silhouette of a man. My voice stuck in my throat as the last conversation I’d had with Will hurtled through my head.

* * *

“Lily, please! Maggie! Margaret Mae Sharp, will you stop for one fucking second and talk to me!”

I stopped throwing my things into my bag at the sound of my full, given name––something I’d never actually heard emerge from Will’s lips. Calliope stood by the hotel door, waiting for me to finish. There was already a taxi waiting downstairs to take me to LAX—she’d bought a ticket for me while I spoke to Lucas.

When I turned around, Will looked crazed, hair standing on end. More like the odd, surly man I’d met on that mountain months ago, and yet more of a stranger in every way.

“Don’t—don’t run,” he begged, his voice cracking over the words. “Please, Lil. Don’t run from me. Stay. We’ll talk through this. I only have to be in LA for a few more days, and then I can go up to Spokane with you, help you with everything. Just don’t fucking leave right now!”

He was breaking apart in front of me, and I could feel my heart doing the same. But unwittingly, I rested my hand over my still flat belly. I had other things to care for than the broken people in my life, especially since I had failed at that anyway.

My mother was dead. The words still rang through my head, louder than any stupid tabloid. Now I only had one responsibility: to build something better, to be something better for the one thing that was sure to be perfect from the start.

I finished zipping up my duffel bag and slung it over my shoulder.

“I’m not running,” I said softly as I stepped toward the door. “I’m going home.”

I drove back to Washington on Calliope’s dime and proceeded to ignore everything. At first, Will had been frantic, calling, texting, messaging whenever and however he could. He was stuck in LA for promotional duties—parts of his contracts that required him to attend two more premieres, finish the feature with Vanity Fair, and do a double interview with Amelia. More pictures from the wrap party leaked, and though it was clear from most that Will wasn’t exactly a lively participant in whatever it was that Amelia staged, he wasn’t exactly fighting her off either. There were pictures of them sitting cozily on the couch. More from another premiere party they attended. There, he didn’t look like he had been drinking—he looked scared in front of the flashing lights. But she was still there. Still with her hand on his knee.

A week passed. Then longer. He was caught up in some reshoots, unable to get away. But he’d be back, said every text, every voice message.

When is the funeral?

When can you talk?

Please talk to me, Maggie.

Sorry, so sorry.

Always sorry.

The phone calls stopped a few days ago. Then texts, then emails.

I replied to none of them.

* * *

“Maggie?”The reverend tapped my shoulder. “Do you need me to read for you?”

I glanced to the back again. Will hadn’t moved, and in their focus on me, no one noticed him. He only nodded.

Something deep inside me unclenched.

“Um, no,” I mumbled to the reverend. “I can do it.”

And then I turned back to the congregation and began to speak.

“I’ll, um, keep this short. Mama and I never talked about what kind of funeral she would have wanted, but she didn’t like too much fuss. Those of you who knew her know she liked a celebration. She liked a party.”

There was a chuckle of acknowledgment, but I couldn’t laugh with them. The truth cut. I had to pause, take a deep breath.

“But it can’t always be a party, can it, Mama?” I wondered aloud. “Because I can’t celebrate your life cut short. I think of all the things you’ll never see or experience. You’ll never open your bed and breakfast. You’ll never get married. You’ll never get to retire, or—or meet your grandchildren.”

My throat closed slightly as I spoke the last line, and in the back, Will bent his head. In the front row, Calliope winced visibly. She was the only one who knew my secret. It had been easy to pass off the morning sickness and fatigue as grief. It was honestly hard to know what was what.

“Then I remember the things she did have,” I continued. “The experiences she did enjoy. Because above all, that’s what my mother lived for—joy. She searched for that her entire life. Maybe not in ways that were the best, but she chose her own path. And for that, I always, always respected and loved her.”

There were several nods around the room, and for a second, I wanted to rage at them. These were the same people who talked about her behind her back. That Ellie, they’d say before they cast knowing looks at both her and me. Mama’s pursuit of joy, men, liquor, and everything else they deemed “un-Christian” had gotten her ostracized from this community for years.

And yet. They were all here. Maybe their reactions to her were only because they were jealous. Maybe it was only because they had wanted to be more like her in some ways that they found it so easy to look down on her.

“Mama wouldn’t want me to talk anymore. She didn’t love to talk either. But she did love to hear me play. She loved it so much that even when we were going through hard times, she somehow came up with the money for guitar lessons so I could pursue my dream—” My voice cracked again. Just like her, that dream was long gone, wasn’t it? “So I could make music. So, Mama. This is for you.”

I picked up my guitar and pulled the strap around my back, then stepped to the second microphone next to the lectern so I could play and sing at the same time. With a soft Travis pick, I launched into a version of Mama’s favorite Emmylou Harris song, “Boulder to Birmingham,” one that was actually written for a friend’s death. By the time I was done, several people in the front row were crying. But it wasn’t until I flowed seamlessly into a folk rendition of “Amazing Grace” that people really started crying—myself included.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me…

My voice broke over “wretch.” Because wasn’t that what she was—my poor, tortured mother, who lived her life on a knife’s edge, hiding from her loneliness, from her past truths? Trying to escape a reputation, and yet still clinging to it because it was the only thing she had left. And in the end, it was what killed her.

I once was lost, but now I’m found.

Was blind, but now I see.

As I sang out my pain and tears, I prayed to God she was found now. I prayed that in death, she had found the peace she’d never managed in life. I hoped that somewhere, above or below, or wherever we went after death, my mother found her absolution, a way to escape her own cycle of fears and doubt. And that through her sacrifice, I could try to break that cycle on my own.

Was blind but now I see.

I managed the last note, choked while I stared out at the congregation, unseeing through my own haze of tears and sorrow. But when I could see through the sheen that covered my vision, it was Will’s face I saw, the tears streaming down his cheeks, mirroring my own. Our exchange was intense enough that several people in the room turned around, wanting to see who had caught my fervent gaze. A murmur rose. Some in the back even took out their cell phones to take a picture.

But Will didn’t look away. Didn’t escape through the back door. Instead, he remained still, hands clasped in front of his belt buckle like a silent gesture of prayer. He watched, letting me know he was there for the last song I would ever sing for my mother.

* * *

After the service was finished,I hovered by the front of the church, vacantly allowing people to shake my hand, kiss my cheeks, offer whatever pallid comforts they could. The pall bearers had already brought the coffin to a hearse, and we would follow it to the cemetery, where I would bury my mother.

Calliope stayed at my side the entire time. I hadn’t seen Will in a while, but had felt his presence, hiding in the shadows as the crowd dispersed. It wasn’t until I had accepted the last wrist-squeeze and awkward embrace, that he reappeared.

“Lil?” he ventured.

I turned around, hating the way my chest froze at the sound of his voice. I wanted to run to him. Wanted to let him pull me into his arms, surround me with his strength.

But how could he support me when he couldn’t even support himself?

“It’s okay,” I said to Calliope. There were things that needed to be said. “This won’t take long.”

“I’ll be waiting in the car,” Calliope said and turned to Will. “Be nice. Otherwise you’re gonna have to deal with me. You got that?”

Will arched a brow, but wisely said nothing as Calliope walked away.

I turned to Will. “Hey.”

He shifted slightly from foot to foot, his uncertainty at odds with his magazine-ready looks. He wore a suit—all black, including the shirt and tie that wasn’t quite done right. I don’t know why, but that was sort of comforting. It meant he had dressed himself somewhere, rather than letting a stylist do it for him. His hair had grown out a little more in the past ten days, the golden waves now brushing the tops of his ears. I knew from recent photos that he had been re-growing his beard, but for today, he had shaved.

“I’d ask how you are, but I have a feeling I know,” he said.

He knew? I shook my head. Of course he knew. His own father had passed away only a few months ago. Mentally, I kicked myself.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I can’t imagine how hard that was for you, considering what happened with your dad…you didn’t need to…”

His finger lifted my chin so I was looking directly at him. “I’d gladly walk through fire for you, and you know it,” he said quietly. “So no apologies. Not from you. Not today.”

He kept me looking at him for a few more seconds, but when I didn’t reply, he released me. I looked away.

“Lil, can we go somewhere for a second? Just to talk?”

I shook my head. “Will, I really can’t do this right now. I have to go to the cemetery, and then there’s the reception, and then…”

“After the burial. Or the reception. You tell me when, and I’ll be there. I don’t want drama. But, baby, I…I won’t let you do this alone. I know I fucked up, Lil, but the last two weeks with you shutting me out have been fucking killing me.”

“They’ve been killing you?”

He swallowed. “Okay, that was a bad choice of words. But, Lily—”

“Please don’t call me that right now.” I felt like I’d done nothing but cry for weeks now, but today I was allowed as many tears as I wanted. That was what funerals were for. “Will, you should go. I know you don’t want to be here. You don’t need to do this for me.”

“The hell I don’t.” When I turned toward the door, Will took my arm and pulled me back to face him. His green eyes held me still, mirroring the sorrow and frustration I felt through every cell of my body. “Isn’t this what you said?” he demanded. “You said this is what people do for each other, right? That they show up? Well, this is me, Maggie. This is me showing up.”

“Well, you don’t need to anymore!” I yanked my arm away. “I’m serious, Will, I can’t do this with you. Not now. Maybe not ever.”

Will looked like he’d been stung. “I deserve some answers, Maggie. I’ve been patient. But you’ve been ignoring my calls, my texts, my emails every day since you left. We don’t have to talk about it all this second, but I need to know when!”

“We don’t need to talk,” I said.

“And why the fuck not?” His words rang out sharply in the now empty church, his profanity harsh, echoing through what was supposed to be holy ground.

“Because we’re over!”

The words were heavy, flying out of my mouth and exploding around us like bombs.

Will’s entire body practically caved. “You don’t mean that. What about your music? What about the promotional tour?”

“I do mean it,” I said, swiping at the streams cascading down my face. Oh God, Mama. Is this how it felt? Is this how it felt when you walked away from your love for me? “I came to a d-decision.” My belly flipped, and not only because of the life inside me. I could do this. “Will, I’m staying here. I’m not going back to LA. My music career is a joke, and you know it. So, I’m going to stay at the house and rent out the other cottages. I’ll work at the inn part time, and…” I looked away, toward the fields of overgrown grass waving beyond the church windows. It was fall now. The summer was over. “This is where I need to be.”

Will swallowed heavily as he digested the news. “Well…fine. That’s fine. If that’s what you want to do, sure. We can move back here and rent the places out. I’ll still have to leave for the release blitz, but in the meantime, we can up the security around both properties, and—”

“No,” I said. “Will, I can’t.”

“Maggie, come on. You can’t give up on us like this. You need us! I need us, I—”

“I’m pregnant.” I spoke to the fields, to the mountains behind them. To the world that was coming, one I had barely begun to consider.

When I turned back, Will looked like he had been run over by a truck.

“What?” His deep voice, normally so strong, was barely even audible.

I sighed and placed my hand over my stomach. There wasn’t even a swelling yet—it maybe looked like I had eaten too much pizza last night, and only when I was naked. But it was there. I felt it with every other change in my body. The mild nausea in the morning. The new weight and tenderness of my breasts. The way my skin seemed to tingle all over.

“You’re pregnant?” Will repeated.

I nodded.

He stepped back again. Once, twice, until he hit the edge of a pew and was forced to stop. “I thought you had an IUD.”

“It failed.”

“But maybe the tests are wrong—”

“They’re not.”

Will stared at my hand and the muscles in his neck moving thickly as he swallowed several times. “How—how long?”

I chewed on my lower lip. “The doctor says about six weeks.”

His gaze bore into my stomach, and reflexively, I covered it with both hands.

“Maggie, we can’t do this. I can’t do this.” Will fell into the seat, his green eyes vacant, lost. “Maggie, I can’t be a father. Look at me! Look at my fucking life!” He whirled back to me. “It’s chaos. Everything I do, everyone around me is pure fucking chaos. I can’t even protect you, much less a child!”

“I know,” I said, thinking of the tabloids. The circus that surrounded him. His inability to deal with it beyond ways that quickly grew out of control.

Will looked up with sudden clarity as he realized what I had been trying to say earlier. That I was choosing this life, one away from Los Angeles, for exactly the reasons he said. It broke him—that much was clear. But not as much as his reaction was breaking me.

Just like I knew it would.

“I have to go,” I said, patting his hand while, inside, my heart shattered into a million pieces. “Will, I have to bury my mother.”

“Okay,” he mumbled as his forehead fell to the top of the pew in front of him. “Oh—okay.”

He barely noticed as I turned to leave. I paused for a moment at the door and looked back. Will still sat there, frozen in place, head buried in his hands. Staring down at the floor, like he was trying to determine how it had been ripped out from under him.