So I didn’t push.
Again, I told myself I would ask tomorrow.
Over the next few days, Vanessa’s visits became shorter and rarer. By the weekend, she barely stopped in, always with somewhere else to be.
On Tuesday morning, she wasn’t there.
Dad passed quietly before either of us could get there.
The call came from a nurse.
Not Vanessa.
Later, Marcus learned through the same friend at the brokerage that Vanessa had been on a call with the listing agent that morning, around the time the nurse said Dad slipped away.
Nothing felt real.
By the time we reached the funeral home the next day, Vanessa had already chosen everything.
“I know exactly what he would have wanted,” she told family friends, dabbing at eyes that never seemed to water.
“The lilies were his favorite.”
They weren’t.
Dad hated lilies.
Mom loved them.
“And this photo. So handsome. He loved this one.”
It was a stiff corporate headshot from a retirement dinner ten years earlier. Dad had complained about that tie for a week.
“Vanessa,” I said evenly, “we have the picture from the lake house. The one on the dock.”
“Oh, sweetie.” She patted my arm. “That’s not really funeral-appropriate, is it? He’s in a T-shirt.”
Marcus turned and walked outside before he said something we couldn’t take back.
I followed him.
He leaned against my car, arms crossed, jaw tight.
“She’s listing the house, Di.”
“What?”
“The house. Our house. I checked. She’s already got it listed with an agent. Photos and everything. She just hasn’t posted it publicly yet.”
Something inside my chest went very still.
“How do you know?”
“A friend at the brokerage. She started the paperwork three days before he died, Diane. Three days.”
I stared across the parking lot.
“I fixed it in time.”
“What?”
“Something Dad said. In the hospital. He said, ‘I fixed it in time.’ I thought he was rambling.”
Marcus looked at me.
“Fixed what?”
“I don’t know.”
At the funeral, the chapel smelled like lilies Dad had always hated. Vanessa had ordered three enormous arrangements for the altar.
Marcus sat beside me, jaw locked, hands folded so tightly his knuckles were white.
Vanessa sat in the front row in black Chanel, tissue pressed to a dry cheek. Every few minutes, she glanced around the room like a hostess checking a party.
“That’s not even his song,” Marcus muttered under the piano music.
“I know.”
“That photo doesn’t look like him.”
“I know, Marcus.”
The picture on the easel was from a charity gala Vanessa had taken him to. His smile looked polite and tired.
I kept my hands folded in my lap and stared at the funeral program. Dad’s entire life had been reduced to a font Vanessa had chosen because it “looked expensive.”
Behind us, family friends whispered. I could feel their eyes moving from Marcus and me to Vanessa and back again, as if everyone sensed something was wrong but no one wanted to say it aloud.
Vanessa checked her phone.
Once.
Twice.
Then she looked toward the main doors.
Phone.
Doors.
Phone again.
Whoever she was waiting for wasn’t coming.
Marcus leaned closer.
“I swung by the house this morning to grab Dad’s good cufflinks. The code doesn’t work. She changed the locks yesterday.”
Something shifted inside my chest.
Not panic.
The opposite.
The pastor began talking about a man I barely recognized. Charitable. Devoted husband. A man who “found love again in his golden years.”
Vanessa dabbed at her dry tissue.
And I thought about Dad in the hospital.
“I fixed it, sweetheart. I fixed it in time.”
I wanted to understand those words more than ever.
Then I saw the funeral director enter through a side door with an envelope.
He moved down the aisle and bent beside Vanessa.
He whispered something.
I watched the color drain from her face.
Her jaw slackened. The hand holding the tissue fell into her lap.
“Diane,” Marcus breathed.
“I see it.”
Vanessa whispered something back, low and urgent.
The director shook his head, calm and immovable, then pointed at the envelope.
She stood too quickly.
Her clutch fell to the floor with a sharp clap that made several people jump.
