I Died Afraid My Broken Arm Burdened Them novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Fire

They cremated me on Monday.

By then the video had four million views, and a woman from the news had parked a van outside the chapel gate.

Inside, there were my parents, my brother, the funeral director and the box.

My mother sat on a folding chair beside it with her hand on the lid.

She had not let go of it since they had carried it in.

"Ellis," she said.

She spoke softly, the way she used to say my name on the phone when she wanted to know whether I'd eaten.

"I want to ask you one thing. I know you can't answer."

My father stood at the back with his hands folded. The mark on his cheek had turned yellow.

My brother stood at the window with his back to us.

He held a small brown envelope in both hands, and he had not put it down since the funeral director gave it to him.

I knew what was inside it. The staff had cut the tape off my arm last night. They had given him the paint stirrer.

"If you could see us now," my mother said. "If you knew everything. Would you hate me with your whole heart?"

I stood next to her and thought about it.

I went looking for the hate.

There was plenty of it. Ten years of it.

But it had nowhere to go.

She would never feel it. It would never reach her, or change a single thing she had done.

Mostly I felt tired.

"I don't know," I said.

She did not hear me.

"Maybe you do," she said. "Maybe that's right. I deserve it."

She laid her forehead against the lid.

"I thought we were building you a gift. We were going to hand you everything on your twentieth birthday. We never imagined you would stop before it came."

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