“Does Dad have to wear work clothes in heaven?”
Squatting in front of Asher, I stopped buttoning his shirt and looked him in the eye. “What?”
“Like suits and stuff. Does he have to wear those or can he wear weekend clothes?”
My throat got thick. “It’s heaven. I guess your dad can wear whatever he wants.”
He half smiled. “He’ll probably wear weekend clothes, then. He had this one shirt he wore all the time with a hole under the arm. Mom hated it, so she used to poke her finger in it and tell him to go change.” He slanted his head. Everything from his straight, dark brown hair to his expressive eyebrows looked just like a younger version of Rob. “I wonder if he took that shirt with him.”
Familiar pain wrenched my stomach. Madison and Luna were one thing. They were too young to truly understand what had happened to Jessica and Rob, but Asher was a vortex of curiosity. In the span of a week, he’d gone from a wild child to a Jeopardy contestant stuck on the category Afterlife. I couldn’t blame him though. Death was an abstract concept even to adults, much less a five-year-old.
I didn’t know how Bree did it. I could barely talk to Luna about Jessica and she was usually slapping me in the face and blowing spit bubbles through the majority of our conversations.
“I don’t think he got to take anything with him, buddy. But maybe you can keep the shirt. You can wear it anytime you’re missing him.”
His eyes flared comically wide. “Is that what you do with Aunt Jessica’s clothes?”
The laugh sprang from my throat before my constant state of misery had the chance to tamp it down. If I’d given it a second to really sink in, it would have been a bullet through my heart. I didn’t have any of Jessica’s clothes. Nothing to cling to on the darkest nights. Nothing to pass down to Luna. Short of the photos I’d recovered, nothing from our lives together had been salvageable after the fire.
However, right then, as I stared at a brave little boy getting dressed for his father’s funeral, I lived in the moment.
“What? You don’t think I’d look good in one of her outfits?”
He shrugged. “Not really.”
“I’ll have you know that I look spectacular in a crop top.”
“A crop what?” He curled his lip—again, just like Rob.
I stood up and patted my stomach. “A crop top. It’s a shirt that shows off your stomach. Surely you’ve seen my abs.”
“No, but I’ve seen your chicken nugget chest hair.”
I barked a laugh that I swear traveled through my entire body.
Well, hello there, Endorphins. So nice of you to join me again.
“What’s going on in here?” Bree asked.
I spun like a kid caught with my hand in the cookie jar and found her standing in a long, black dress, her wavy, brown hair pinned back and her makeup flawless—such was her personal brand of excellence.
“Oh, hey,” I greeted with an awkward grin.
Things with Bree were still, um, for lack of better terms, fucking weird. I mostly kept to myself in the pool house. However, with food being dropped off by the truckload, Bree had set an open invitation for dinner. Okay, so it wasn’t so much of an invitation as a demand.
“Dinner will be ready at six. Be there so I know you haven’t gone off the deep end and drunk yourself into a coma, leaving me with three children under six and another funeral to plan.”
Oh, that woman had a way with words. And to think, I was the songwriter. Then again, her harsh words were just how she was coping, and her brash honesty was at least something normal in my chaotic existence.
The first night, we ate in silence. Well, eating was a bit of a stretch. I fed Luna a bottle while staring at a pasta dish Rob’s secretary had delivered. Bree sat in front of Madison’s highchair, feeding her from an untouched plate.
Night two, she silently cried through dinner, swirling around the kitchen and making any and every excuse to avoid Asher’s scrutinizing gaze. I attempted to distract him with questions about his birthday, which was three months away. It seemed to work. He wanted an Iron Man cake and a piñata. Oh, and for his dad to come back from heaven for the day, which immediately sent Bree up to her room to grab her phone charger—for twenty minutes.
For two people who still couldn’t decide if we liked each other or not, we quickly became tag-team champions with the kids.
If I was having a bad day—like, say, when Jessica’s mom called to ask if she could pick up a check for half of Jessica’s life insurance from me at the funeral (a policy my wife did not have, and even if she had, I sure as hell wasn’t giving a portion of it to that woman)—Bree would come outside and, without a word, pluck Luna from the blanket on the grass, leaving me to cuss and rage in private.
Then, on the day Rob’s mother with Alzheimer’s called looking for her son and Bree was forced to tell her for the fifth time that he had passed away, she’d walked out to the pool house, delivered the kids without so much as a request, and then left for over an hour. Asher and I were tight, so that was easy, but Madison wasn’t quite as fond of ole Uncle Eason. Luckily the mini chocolate chips plucked off some cookies had seemed to do the trick—as long as Bree didn’t find out.
Bree smiled warmly at Asher. “Something funny?”
He tugged at the neck of his white dress shirt. “Uncle Eason wears crop tops when he misses Aunt Jessica.”
Her eyebrows shot up her forehead as she turned a suspicious gaze on me.
I quickly waved him off. “No. We were kidding. It was a whole story. You had to be there.” I bumped Asher with my hip, sending him stumbling to the side. He laughed before retaliating with a kick to my ankle. Ignoring the Karate Kid, I looked at Bree. “Anyway. You almost ready to go?”
She hadn’t been smiling, but somehow, her face still fell. “No.”
And just like that, anguish washed over me again. “Me either.”
Drawing in a deep breath, she rolled her shoulders back and lifted her chin. “But if we don’t leave soon, we’ll be late.”
“Right, of course.”
“Get your socks and shoes on, Ash. You’ve got five minutes.”
“Five minutes!” he whined, though I had no idea why. The kid had no concept of time. He’d once told me he hated mashed potatoes because it took an hour to chew them.
Leaning over, I grabbed his navy socks off the floor and chucked them at him before following Bree into the hall.
“You’re not wearing a tie,” she said, more of a statement than a question.
I looked down at my black suit and white button-down with the top button left open. My clothing options were limited to what I’d picked up on my two-hour sprint through the mall during Luna’s afternoon nap. It was literally the exact thing I’d worn to Jessica’s funeral the day before and Bree hadn’t said a peep about a tie then. “I wasn’t planning on it. You think I need one?”
“Up to you,” she snipped.
“Oh-kay, let’s try that again. Do you want me to wear a tie?”
“No. I just figured, since today is for Rob, you might try actually looking the part for once.”
I blinked at her. What did that even mean? It was definitely an insult—there was no mistaking that. But when I had been the best man at their wedding, Rob hadn’t asked me to wear a tie. Why the hell would she think I’d wear one now?