Page 63 of Sinful Deception

I let them chatter. To focus on the good and not on the dark clouds above, and I look over to the hearse as a group of six men hoist a heavy wooden box onto their shoulders and make damn sure she’s secure, even when five out of six couldn’t give a single shit about the person inside.

Tiia and Christabelle stand together, and Mayor Lawrence hovers an easy thirty feet away, security personnel flanking him on either side, though all of them wear suits and solemn expressions. It’s the very best Jada could have hoped for, I think. Considering the hurtful things she did and the pain she caused to those who loved her the most.

While Fifi and Mia talk quietly about dancing, and the little girl squeezes a red Care Bear between her arm and ribs, I watch Archer lead the procession with Fletch on his left. Archer’s firm lips and darkened eyes are focused directly on me. While Fletch’s lips are swollen and his eyes are on his little girl.

Micah, Tim, Felix, and Cato do the job they’ve been tasked with, while Felix’s security team outnumbers the mayor’s by a long way. But they, too, are discreet. Fanning across the cemetery and not infringing on a young mother’s final farewell.

Searching, I cast my attention to the detectives hovering by a large oak tree, knee length coats flapping by their legs, and their eyes slowly scanning for Booth.

Whether he comes… still a mystery.

“They’re gonna set her right there,” Fifi explains, pointing toward the straps crisscrossing the plot. “And then your daddy will tell us all the things he loved about her.” Her voicecrackles, and her shoulders collapse, if only for a moment, before she coughs and broadens them again. “Look at all these beautiful flowers people brought for her. Does your mommy love flowers?”

The closer Jada’s casket comes, the fatter Mia’s tears turn, until finally, they set her down, and the little girl chokes on a painfully quiet sob. “Ifinkshe liked flowers.Ilike flowers.”

“I think she liked them too,” Fifi confirms. So friggin’ selfless. So sweet and kind to walk a girl through the hardest day of her life. “What was her favorite color, Mia? Do you know your mommy’s favorite color?”

“Pink, maybe?” She shakily opens her coat to reveal the lovely soft-pink dress they selected together. “That’s why I picked this one. So she would like it.”

The funeral director speaks, of love and loss and grief and all the usual things. But I don’t hear his words as the guys step away from the casket, and Archer circles around to press his chest to my back. He drops a kiss to the top of my shoulder, a slow, lingering touch of his lips until the warmth of his breath bathes my skin. But I watch everything around us. The mayor, who stands in complete silence, and Fletch, who wanders up to wait on Fifi’s other side.

He doesn’t touch her. Doesn’t even reach around to take Mia, though I know he wants to. His hands fidget for something to hold on to, but he’s selfless, too. And if the girl wants to go to him, she will. And if not, then he won’t be the reason she can’t be where she wants to be.

Felix and the others make a row behind us, respectful and silent, eyes lowered and lips closed.

The undertaker reads a passage from a bible; something about children and peace and grief. About a mother’s love and a father’s sacrifice. And when he’s done, he nods and waits patiently as Fletch realizes it’s his turn.

Silence hangs, except for a soft melody on the breeze. The sounds of sniffling. A little girl’s choppy inhalation of air. And then Fletch wanders to stand beside the older, rounder man, shakily unfolding his prepared sheet of paper.

“Um…” He tests the microphone and brings it away from his lips when the single word comes out too loud. “Sorry. We, uh…” He gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly despite his tall collar. “We’re all out here today for Jada.” Nervous, he reaches up and scratches the back of his neck. “I’m aware of the subtle undercurrents every adult here knows about, but I’m eternally grateful you came anyway for my baby.”

He looks down at the sheet of paper and draws a shuddering breath. “I don’t want to remember the bad anymore. There’s so much we could obsess over, ample details to pick apart and feast upon. But it’s too much to carry, and I consider it a ridiculous shame that the bad could outweigh the good in instances like these. Not when there’s a little girl whose DNA is half made up of the person we speak of. And since I’m the only one here who knew her, truly, back in the day knew her,” he looks up from the paper and swallows, “I want to tell you about that time. Because it’s my goal, my duty, to leave you all with one lasting, positive impression of the woman I made a baby with.”

Shy, perhaps even sorry, he looks at Fifi.

“Jada was an only child who came from a well-to-do family. She was the apple of their eye, in that she was exactly what they sculpted her to be. They were a family of influence, and she was to become the starlet they wished for. But despite what you think you know about her now, when she was a teen and sneaking out of her home, she didn’t do it for the reasons you might think.”

He coughs out a quiet laugh and re-folds the paper. He gives up on it and glances to Mia instead, smiling and holding her devastated gaze. “Your mommy used to sneak out to be with me.Which, in any normal circumstance, would be horrifying. I beg you, baby, don’t do that.”

She giggles, soft and silly and pleading for more. “What were you doing, Daddy?” Her voice is soft amongst the silence. Shaky when she tries to speak louder. “Were you dancing? Or kissing, maybe?”

“We were for sure dancing and kissing. Those were two of our favorite things to do. But we didn’t have to sneak out for that. Your mommy was supposed to perform this one weekend when she was sixteen. It was a show she’d been practicing for months, and though all the other dancers had to audition for their part, your mommy was who the directors created the show for in the first place.”

“She didn’t want to do it?” Mia gently pulls her hand from mine, but only so she can hug her bear and stare across a casket littered with the sweet drawings of a four-year-old. “She didn’t want to dance?”

“She did. She loved to dance. But we found a bird’s nest a few days before the show. It had been knocked from a tall tree, and two of the five eggs must’ve broken from the fall.”

Predictably, Mia gasps. “Oh no.”

“Your mommy was so sad, Moo. She looked for the momma bird for hours, but couldn’t find her. And she checked the broken eggs to see if there was anything she could do. There was nothing. But there were still three good eggs.”

“Did she save them, Daddy?” She hiccups and crushes the bear’s neck with her arm. “Are they okay?”

“Well, it takes a long time for eggs to hatch, and your mommy didn’t have a lot of time to stay with them.Hermom and dad wanted her to be at the dance studio every afternoon, but the day after we found the eggs and waited for the mommy, she said she wasn’t waiting any longer. She snuck out with a shoe box and collected those three babies, and then she hid them in herbedroom, keeping them warm and holding them in her hands. She didn’t want to go to the show, because then the eggs would get cold. So she told her parents she was too sick to dance. She faked a cough and cried of a tummy ache and when that wasn’t good enough, she told them to leave her the heck alone, because she felt sick.”

Mia’s lips curl into a small, wobbly, devious grin. “But she wasn’t sick.”

“Nope. Not even a little bit. She wanted to save those birdies, so she gave up the show and made her parentsmad. She took care of them like they were her babies. She was able to care for something more than she cared about herself. And that’s when I knew we would get married someday, and once we did, I knew she would give me the prettiest, sweetest, most wonderful little baby bird of our own.”

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