“I know.” He gestures at his suit. “I was hoping to come with you, if you’d let me.”
Why? I want to ask. Why are you offering your support now? When will you take it away again? When will you remember how much you hate me for breaking your heart?
“Are you sure?” I say instead.
He nods.
Holding out one hand to him, I try to smile. “Okay.”
Outside the funeral home, there’s a crowd of photographers waiting for me. I ignore them, cringing at some of the questions they shout over each other.
Is it true you were only in New York to be with your father?
Will you be returning to L.A. now?
Without a sick father keeping you here, when are you going back to do your movie?
Didn’t you think your fans deserved to know why you were really in New York?
Aidan is holding my hand, and he squeezes it as we both hurry to the door.
“Are you two dating now?” Someone screams just before we enter the funeral home and the door closes behind us.
Natalia and Fiona are waiting inside. Natalia’s eyes are red-rimmed. She’s grieving too. She puts her arms around me and hugs me for a long minute. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m okay. You?”
She shrugs.
“Sweetheart.” Fiona wraps her arms around me, and I sniff. “It’s going to be all right.”
I nod and try to smile. Aidan is talking to Natalia and Fiona smiles in his direction before turning back to me. “It’s going to be all right,” she says again.
There are about thirty people at the service. Some are there for me, but the majority are there for my father, the people he was close to, people who worked with him. A woman I vaguely recognize from pictures as my father’s cousin is crying into a handkerchief. They hadn’t seen each other in decades, she tells me later, ever since they were children. They’d made plans to have a family reunion but kept on postponing.
“That’ll never happen now,” she sniffs.
“At least you’re here,” I tell her.
The service is short and beautiful and after, we go to the cemetery. I watch the pallbearers lower the coffin into the ground and I have to fight the feeling that the earth is going to swallow me up too.
The chaplain is talking but I can’t hear a word he says. Past the graves, outside the wrought-iron fence, I can hear the commotion of waiting photographers in the distance.
Panic seizes me. I want to go somewhere quiet and cry. I look around, searching for a way to escape, but Aidan takes my hand, and the feel of his warm palm enveloping mine promises me safety. The solid mass of his body invites me to lean on him, to draw on his strength.
But I can’t, not now. Not after he has rejected me for so long.
I swallow hard and start to pull my hand from his.
“Please,” he whispers. “Let me.”
I feel his words like a warm blanket on a cold day. I close my eyes, letting him hold me, knowing somehow that he will be here, as long as I need his comfort.
After the funeral, we return to my dad’s apartment. Gertie has worked her miracles and there are light refreshments awaiting the guests. People come to talk to me, to offer me their condolences. I accept them.
Tomorrow, we’ll do this all over again. There’ll be more people, stories, speeches about my dad.
It will be goodbye.