Page 176 of Share with Me
Granted, she barely eked out a living running a piano studio and going to graduate school. Every Christmas season she was paid to play piano at parties, dinners, church plays, and so forth. Many times the regulars were on holiday, and she substituted for them. It paid well; she charged three-figure amounts for one or two hours of repeatedly playing Christmas carols and hymns.
Ivan stepped off the porch as Willow coasted her Toyota to a stop. The door flung open, and Willow came running out, tears on her face.
“I’m too late!” She wept into Ivan’s barn jacket. “If I hadn’t taken that extra gig, I could’ve been here at Christmas. It would’ve been our last Christmas together as a family.”
“Shhhh…” All Ivan could do was pat her shoulders. He prayed silently for her. For spilt milk never returning to the bottle. What was done was done—
Done.
Like what had happened between him and Brinley?
Ivan wished he could retract everything he had said to Brinley earlier in the month when they had broken up. Yet dignity forbade such yielding. It would be admitting that he had been wrong to send Brinley away. She could use it against him. She could have wanted her money back. Compensation for plumbing costs. Restitution for the stolen Strad.
“Grandma is in heaven now.” Ivan pushed back a lock of hair on Willow’s face. “She’s with Grandpa. That’s what she had wanted for a long time, to see Grandpa.”
Willow nodded. Two years younger than Ivan, they had been close through high school and then college at Juilliard. Their relationship had splintered after Grandpa Otto died. Lately it had improved as the brother and sister grew older and hopefully, wiser and more mature than their younger twenty-something days.
“Would you like to rest a bit, freshen up before we go to church? Matt can take us both in his van so you won’t need to drive.”
Willow nodded again.
As Ivan helped Willow up the porch steps, he heard thunder in the distance. They had chosen the wrong day to have the funeral. It had been clear skies Thursday when they had the viewing at the funeral home. And clear skies the day before that too. However, today, the forecasters said it would rain through the weekend.
Matt waved to Willow. “Praise the Lord that Yun is saved. She’s not grieving now. We are.”
“It’s hard.” Willow broke down again.
Ivan took her inside, then came out again to speak with Matt.
“Zoe and Quincy texted. They’re meeting us at the church.” Matt hesitated. “Brinley is with them.”
Ivan said nothing.
“She is devastated.”
So am I.
“Zoe says Brinley is having a hard time,” Matt said. “I think she needs you.”
“What am I to do about it? We broke up.” Ivan clenched his fists. His left wrist hurt when he did that, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t Matt’s place to give him relationship advice at this time.
All Ivan wanted was for the funeral to be over. Grandma was already in heaven. She didn’t care how short her funeral was.
“I don’t know, dude. Pray about how to handle her. At least be nice to her when you see her.”
“I suppose I can do that.”
“You’d better. I don’t think your grandma would’ve wanted it any other way.”
* * *
Brinley used to hate funerals, their unremitting obsequies, sea of red eyes, and awful cacophony of sobs. She used to think that there was nothing happy about people dead and gone, family bereaved and left behind. Nothing happy about the cold, dark spaces of loss, a past that could not be recovered and a present sapped of verve, a heavenly future notwithstanding. Things to come were, well, things to come.
Today some of those feelings were still in her as she entered the Seaside Chapel sanctuary to see Yun’s closed casket. The open casket viewing had been the day before, but she had chosen not to go to the funeral home because she knew she’d come face to face with Ivan. Something in her was still raw from his rejection of her that she could not bring herself to show up even though she had considered Yun a friend.
Brinley decided not to sit with the McMillan family in the front. Being Yun’s granddaughter-in-law’s sister didn’t qualify her as close family. Having been rejected by Ivan in his self-focused spell had further widened the chasm. The front rows were filled with not only McMillans, but also representatives from the Park family, who’d flown all the way from San Francisco, Vancouver, and Seoul for this sad day.
Brinley thought that Ivan must’ve favored his father for he looked like none of his cousins from overseas.
