Page 96 of Love and Other Champagne Problems

Margot, I’m old, she’d said once upon a time.I’m going to drop dead sometime. You’ll have to get over it.

At least have the decency not to do it while I’m watching.The harsh words were ones I’d snapped out of frustration, anger, and yet she’d listened to them. Peaceful in her bed, she’d left with no one to hold her hand when she went. Gone before I could even say goodbye.

The middle-aged pastor at the podium presumedly spoke pleasantly about the woman in the black framedphotograph behind him, readjusting his glasses every few moments to peer more closely at his papers. I wasn’t sure if the microphone wasn’t working or if his voice was too quiet for the equipment to pick up. Either way, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear a single thing out of his mouth. Most likely, he was repeating the same canned cliché sayings one could find on a webpage “How to Preach at a Funeral.”

“Nancy lived a good life” and “she leaves behind a legacy” and “she’s no longer in pain” were the only phrases that’d been picked up by the mic that I caught.

They weren’t wrong, of course, but empty, as hollow as my chest felt now.

While Nancy Du Ponte had no children, she’d been surrounded by dozens of families she met while helping her late husband establish the very first and only country club in Fenton County. She was gruff at times, enjoyed a good sarcastic remark, but she was someone who attended all the events, the gatherings, and enjoyed seeing life continue around her. Even if she ended up at a table alone, she enjoyed seeing all the hard work pay off. She loved seeing everyone enjoy the country club she helped establish.

And not a single one of them showed up to her funeral.

The vultures that’d been circling her for months, picking at the exposed flesh of a dying woman, scattered when there was no more meat left to peel off. Nancy was gone; there would be no more amendments made to her will. There was no reason to show up at the funeral of an old woman who gave them nothing in theend. Not even Ms. Jennings showed. I didn’t even care to hear her excuse.

It should’ve enraged me to no end, but it didn’t. Staring at the photograph of Nancy near the podium, one taken a few years ago when she still had plumpness to her cheeks, I didn’t feel anything. No anger, no sadness. Nothing at all.

There were probably near one hundred chairs, but the funeral hall only consisted of six people. The pastor, two elderly women, me, and Sumner. Sumner sat at my side and held my hand in his, resting both of them on his knee. My fingers were limp in his grip, but I cherished the small warmth.

“Nancy brought joy to the people around her,” the pastor said, voice suddenly cutting through the room. The microphone had been the problem, after all. “She was a bright light and always put a smile on others’ faces. I can see that from the many—uh, from those who’ve showed up for her today.”

The pastor looked up from his notes with a little bit of horror, realizing his pre-written response made no sense. He looked even sweatier.

I refocused on her portrait.You chose a crappy pastor, Nancy. Her smile never changed.

Nancy had known her health was declining fast. Sunday, when she’d collapsed at the table and we took her to the hospital, Dr. Conan had told her that her heart was tired. Her organs were in the process of shutting down. He’d given her something for the pain, but he’d told her it wouldn’t be long. And it turned out that Nancy had been preparing for her impending death in the weeks leadingup to it. She’d gotten her affairs in order with her lawyers, sat down with the funeral home, picked out a cremation plan. She wanted her funeral three days after her death, and the funeral home arranged it. Apparently, she’d paid for expedited services, given that her urn already sat beside her portrait.

“Nancy chose cremation,” the pastor went on, shuffling through his papers. “She shared with me, once upon a time, that she didn’t want to be in a cemetery surrounded by people she didn’t know. She wanted to be spread at her favorite place on earth: the pond behind her house.”

I thought of the last time we were there together, looking at the water. Of all the times I stood there with her, both of us just quietly watching the ripple in the surface as the wind brushed along. It made sense she’d want to be scattered there, at the home she made her own, but I couldn’t help but feel like it was such a waste. A waste to lay her to rest in a place no one would ever visit.

“Normally, after a service, we continue onto a luncheon, but, well—the only place Nancy had in her notes is booked today, unfortunately. So, the funeral dinner will be postponed.”

My lips twisted, and I tipped my face toward my lap. The only place Nancy requested to have her celebration of life at was the country club, which was rented out for Annalise’s wedding. The main ballroom was, at least. The smaller event hall off the back wasn’t, but they refused to double rent out the space even though they’d done it dozens of times before. I wasn’t sure who’d been in charge of that decision.I didn’t care.

It was just ironic. The place she helped grow from the ground up, the place she helped break ground on, the place that wouldn’t have been where it was today without her, the last place she wanted to visit before she passed—they wouldn’t even open their doors for her ashes.

“I’d like to think Nancy is smiling down at all of you, the warm and bubbly woman she was,” the pastor said as he began his closing statements. “Think of her as you go about life, and continue to do the things that would’ve made her smile.”

But Nancy wasn’t a smiler, I wanted to tell him. She might’ve been smiling in the portrait on the podium, but it was rare for her to show her happiness in that way. Quips and barbs and witty remarks—that was Nancy. Even her laugh had a wicked witch sound to it.Warmandbubblywould never be two words I’d use to describe her.

The funeral director—who was not the man standing watch in the back—took over the microphone from the pastor, sharing his own sentiments, and saying that now the funeral service concluded, there was no other direction for us to go. No dinner, no cemetery. From here, there was nothing left to celebrate Nancy’s life other than going home. The old ladies in the row ahead of me walked out first, not bothering to step up to Nancy’s urn and pay their respects one more time. One had a tissue pressed into her nose and the other had red-rimmed eyes. Both of their cheeks were dry. I didn’t recognize either of them.

I wondered if they were crying for Nancy or because they knew that with their white hair and walking canes that they weren’t far off from an urn themselves.

Sumner sat still at myside. He wore the khaki pants that Nancy had always loved on him, and a black long-sleeve shirt that he had pushed up to his elbows. I wore a black dress pants that tapered at my ankles, with a black shirt and a black vest tight around my midsection. We were a pair of mourners, the only ones left in the funeral hall.

“Well, one thing’s for sure,” I finally said, my voice low with disuse. “Nancy would’ve laughed at that trainwreck.”

A chuckle burst free from Sumner before he could dam it up, and his mouth twitched as he fought to keep the corners down. “It’s not funny.”

“It is a little.”

Sumner pressed his lips together. “We can’t laugh in a funeral hall.”

“What are we going to do? Cause a scene? What, will the ghosts be offended?”

Something about that bled some of his humor, and he looked down at where our hands still rested on his knee. He coasted his thumb over the back of mine.

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