Page 166 of Fault Lines
I let the words wash over me, unsure whether to feel grateful or hollowed out. “He was a good man. One of the best.”
“Yeah,” Jackson said, then went quiet. “Call me if you need anything. Seriously.”
“I will,” I promised, even though I knew I wouldn’t.
After we hung up, I let the phone rest on the table and stared at the carpet, the pattern swimming in and out of focus. My body felt too heavy to move, every limb sunk in cement. I replayedthe conversation in my head, then replayed every conversation I’d ever had with Richard, wishing I’d listened more, or said something smarter, or just… been better.
The darkness closed in. I hugged my knees to my chest, phone still gripped in one hand, and waited for the world to start making sense again.
It didn’t.
But the ache in my chest said this mattered. And maybe, for now, that helped.
∞∞∞
Three days later, the city woke up soggy and gray, every streetlight blurred by drizzle, every branch outlined in cold. Cam drove us across town with both hands on the wheel, silent except for the low, staticky drone of public radio. Rachel and Jackson followed behind in her battered Mini. I stared out the window and tried not to think about the day ahead.
St. Mark’s Chapel looked smaller than I remembered—a shoebox of limestone squatting on a block crowded by high-rises and pawn shops. The arched windows were streaked with rain, and the marquee out front still had the old-timey movable letters, spelling out “A Life Well Read: In Loving Memory of Richard Porter.”
I barely recognized the woman who caught her reflection in the passenger window: hair smoothed and twisted up, eyes shadowed with more than mascara, lips pressed together like a wound that refused to heal. I reached for Cam’s hand, expecting him to flinch or pull away, but he laced his fingers through mine and squeezed.
“Ready?” he asked, voice gentle enough to take the edge off.
“Not even close,” I said, but got out of the car anyway.
The sidewalk was slick with wet leaves. Jackson waited for us at the corner, tie askew, shoes already dark with water. Rachel hovered behind him, hair flattened by the mist, her umbrella snapped in half and dangling from her wrist.
“You look like you could use a drink,” she said, handing me a thermos that definitely wasn’t coffee.
I took a sip—scotch, maybe bourbon, sweet and burning all the way down. “Bless you.”
She smiled, eyes bright but rimmed with red. “Don’t say I never do anything for you.”
Inside, the chapel was already filling with people—regulars from the bookstore, old faculty from the university, a scattering of neighbors and extended family I didn’t recognize. The pews were dark oak, polished so smooth they caught the light from the candelabras up front. The air was thick with white lilies and the faint tang of beeswax.
At the front of the chapel, the casket was draped in a simple white cloth, a stack of hardcovers arranged at the base like a shrine. Photos of Richard—young and grinning behind the counter of Timeless Treasures, older and dignified in his bowtie, laughing with a pair of kids outside the shop—lined the table beside it.
My knees almost buckled, but Jackson was there, steadying me with a hand at my waist. “He adored you, you know,” he said, voice pitched low for my ears only. “Talked about you like you were a lost limb.”
I swallowed hard, unable to form a response. Rachel squeezed in on my other side, hand finding mine and holding tight.
“We’re here,” she whispered, then added, “Don’t you dare faint. You’ll mess up my mascara when I freak out and cry.”
I choked out a laugh, and for a second the ache in my chest faded. Cam slid an arm around my shoulders, pulling me in close, and pressed his lips to my temple. The gesture was so unexpected, so soft, I wanted to cry for a whole different reason.
A hush fell as the funeral director stepped to the pulpit. He wore a suit that looked like it had never been tailored, but he had the calm cadence of someone who’d seen every variety of human grief and found them all worthy.
He welcomed us, spoke of Richard’s legacy: the years of teaching, the sanctuary he built with his store, the way he gave so much of himself to people who needed it. As he talked, I scanned the crowd, recognizing faces from the shop, some I’d seen every day but never spoken to. They were all here, holding each other up with nervous hands and wet tissues.
There were readings—one from Shakespeare, another from a modern poet I’d never heard of. A former student stood and told a story about Mr. Porter reading the entirety of War and Peace out loud to his literature class over the course of a semester, refusing to let the narrative get lost in SparkNotes and Wikipedia synopses. The memory made me smile, and I pictured his voice—dry, patient, unyielding—carrying through the walls of the chapel, demanding attention even now.
Then it was Jackson’s turn. He stood, straightened his tie, and walked to the front with the calm confidence of someone who’d practiced the speech a hundred times but still didn’t want to say it. He talked about how Mr. Porter had given him his first job, how he’d listened without judgment, how he’d offered a place to belong even when the rest of the world didn’t.
“He was a hard man to know,” Jackson said, looking right at me. “But once he let you in, you were his for life.”
He paused, and his voice trembled, just a bit. “I think he’d want us to remember that. To look out for each other. To keep the stories going, even after the last page.”
He sat down, and Rachel reached over to pat his knee, but her own hand was shaking too hard to make contact. I caught her wrist, anchored her, and for a moment the three of us held on together, a tangle of hands and knuckles and grief. Rachel didn’t know Richard well, not really, but she shared our grief all the same.
