Page 76 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
Midsummer
Rebecca
She’s not really paying attention to the funeral until her dad walks in.
Until that moment, it’s a standard Catholic service as far as she can make out. Lots of white people standing in silence, sitting in silence, kneeling in silence, lots of droning hymns and restrained chants. But the priest keeps it moving at a steady clip—enough so that Rebecca imagines they’ll be done in under an hour—and there is no collection plate passed around, so the situation is mostly bearable. The worst part is how much she wants to touch Delphine, how much she needs to, and can’t. She doesn’t care one jot about offending the priest; she spent enough weeks in Accra being dragged to church and listening to preachers rail against homosexuality before going home to their extramarital mistresses that she’s lost all fucks to give when it comes to protecting the sensibilities of holy men.
But she doesn’t know this place, and if she doesn’t know it, she can’t be sure Delphine will be safe. And that, more than her own safety, keeps her hands cautiously wrapped around the hymnal, even as they itch to find Delphine and pull her close.
It’s after Proserpina gets to the lectern and begins reading, that Rebecca hears the door to the sanctuary open, in the quiet way of someone trying to sneak in unnoticed. And they would have gone unnoticed too, but Proserpina pauses in her reading of Psalm 121—
I lift my eyes to the hills . . .
From where will my help come?—
And then looks over at Rebecca, eyes wide. Rebecca turns and looks over her shoulder herself, and her hands go loose around the hymnal.
Samson Quartey is here. In Kansas.
And she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it has nothing to do with her.
The potluck after the service is subdued and soulless. There’s not much Rebecca misses about Ghanaian church, but she finds she misses the funerals. The wailers, the extravagant coffins, the drinking—there’s something visceral about it, like it turns grief into something that can be seen and heard and tasted. But there’s no taste to this, no sound.
The grief here is wet cement. It sits heavy in the room, it pulls at everyone’s shoes, and they all do their best to walk around it, to pretend it’s not there. No one says Adelina’s name. No one is raising toasts to her, crying for her. In fact, Poe and her father are doing their very best not to cry, their very best to keep a polite, unemotional facade.
Unemotional! At a funeral.
Rebecca is the least emotional person in the world, and even she knows a funeral is a time for feelings.
“Why are you making a face?” Saint asks, tipping a bottle of beer to his lips. He’s the only one drinking except for Poe, who mutely accepted a glass of whisky Auden had sourced from somewhere, and Delphine, who is chatting with Becket and Emily Genovese near the door. The way Emily keeps looking at Delphine—like Delphine is her future ex-wife—is also making Rebecca feel very sour.
Rebecca immediately stops making the face. “I’m not making a face.”
“You were,” Saint says. “But it was a subtle one. I think only your friends would be able to tell, and maybe your dad.”
Her dad. Here.
Jesus Lord, as her mother would say.
“I didn’t know he was going to come.”
“He and David Markham seem friendly.”
She looks over at her supposed friend. “I’m only just starting to like you. Tread lightly.”
His eyes smile at that, even if his mouth doesn’t quite. He’s wearing a slightly nicer pair of jeans and a black button-up shirt undoubtedly borrowed from Auden. Same boots as usual. “I think it’s nice.”
Rebecca looks across the room, to where her father and David stand talking in low voices to one another. They haven’t done anything remotely inappropriate in the context of the funeral—no embrace, no hands touching, nothing except for long looks and exclusive conversation—but it’s written all over them. It was written on David’s face when the funeral ended and he finally turned to see Samson there. Twelve years of longing. A love that didn’t die, even when the people around it did.
Is that nice?
She doesn’t actually know the answ
er. Because seeing her dad’s eyes bright and animated for David Markham . . . seeing the way his body is angled toward him, the way he keeps shoving his hand in his suit pocket, as if he has to keep himself from reaching for his former lover . . .
It should be nice, it should be sweet.
Instead, Rebecca is remembering every hard thing there is to remember about her parents’ marriage, about her father, about her mother, about being a bisexual teenager locked in a flat with an unfeeling parent who never made her feel good enough.
