The Girl They Forgot to Love novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Father of Four
In April, on what would have been Dad's sixty-seventh birthday, Tobias held the funeral lunch we never had.
He sent ninety invitations to the same neighbors, the same men from church, the same women with casseroles.
He sent the first one to me, by hand, on the bakery stairs.
"You don't have to come," he said. "I'd understand."
"Who's making the slideshow?"
"I am." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'd like you to look at it first. If you hate it, I'll cancel the whole thing."
I watched it the night before, on his laptop, at Dad's piano.
When it was over I didn't say anything for a long time.
Then I told him to leave it exactly as it was.
The next afternoon I stood in the kitchen doorway of the house I grew up in, in the green dress.
I'd taken it back out of Anthony's closet myself. He had been standing beside the hanger when I did, looking pleased and not saying a word about it.
The house was full. The same faces turned to the same fireplace.
Rowan's name wasn't spoken. Pierce had taken a plea in March, and Rowan had signed away his share of the house before he left Pittsburgh. Nobody in the room needed to be told.
There was no tray in my hands this time.
My mother had one. She came out of the kitchen behind me in a dress I'd never seen, carrying the tray of coffee cups.
They were the good ones from the second shelf, which I had shown her that morning.
Tobias clinked a fork against his glass, and the room went quiet.
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