Chapter 4: The Front Pew

The wake was on Friday night in the Whitcombe Funeral Home on Lake Street.

There were white lilies on every table and a big photo of Prescott on an easel, grinning in a golf shirt.

Every seat in the chapel was taken.

The staff of Nordquist Freight filled the left side, forty people in dark suits who had watched me walk past their desks on Monday.

Ernest sat in the front pew with his hands on his knees.

Joan sat beside him, holding a folded handkerchief like a prayer book.

I took the aisle seat on their left, in a plain black dress I had borrowed from the school nurse.

Terrence sat down next to me.

He hadn't asked.

He just did it, and put his big, quiet shoulder against mine, and looked straight ahead at the casket.

"You don't have to stay," I whispered.

"I know," he said.

He stayed.

At seven o'clock the double doors at the back opened.

I knew who it was before I turned, because the whole room breathed in at once.

Taryn came down the aisle in a red dress.

It was short, and it was tight, and it was the same red dress from the photograph.

She had the little girl on her hip, in a white dress and yellow boots.

Her lipstick was perfect.

She walked past forty heads and stopped at the front pew.

"That's my seat," she said.

She said it to Ernest, and she said it loud.

Ernest did not look at her.

"Taryn," he said through his teeth.

"This is not the place."

"You told me I would be family," said Taryn.

"You said it to my face in your office, Ernest, with the door shut."

"You said, when Prescott was ready, we'd all sit together."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband's April Fool's Joke Came True from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.