Page 9 of The Woman at the Funeral

The conversation fell away, replaced again with the tension crackling in the air as Nico brought in the bags of food, arranging it all on the island.

He was just about to come back over to me when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

The look on his face told me it was important.

“It’s okay,” I told him. He looked over, those stormy blue eyes conflicted. “You can go. I’m alright. Truly,” I added when he seemed unconvinced.

“Okay. But listen, Blair, if you need anything, I’m here. Someone to talk about Matt too—without all the judgment. Someone to help you go through his things. Just someone to have a meal with. I’m there. Call me.”

Tears threatened again, and I gave him a nod.

He was gone before I could tell him that I didn’t have his phone number.

CHAPTER THREE

Nico

The noise from the nightclub set my teeth on edge as I climbed the steps toward my youngest brother’s apartment.

Zeno claimed the music helped him focus. Fuck knew how that was possible. But there was a lot about Zeno that made no sense to me but perfect sense to him. He was quirky that way.

“I told you I don’t want another of those edibles. I was hearing fucking color—oh,” Zeno said as he opened the door to find me standing there. “You.”

“You just texted me,” I reminded him.

“Did I? I guess I did. Welp, please enter my humble abode.”

He swung the door open wide, giving me a view of the getup he was wearing. Namely, one of those giant wearable blanket things (hood included) that had a taco print on it. It covered up the map of tattoos that covered his tall, thin frame. Though I was pretty sure I spotted a new one peeking out from the neck.

Zeno claimed that, like the music below, the pain of the tattoo needle helped him think straight. I worried about what he might do when he ran out of skin to ink.

The family resemblance between all of us brothers was uncanny in our bone structure. But Zeno’s dark hair was longenough to brush his shoulders—though he had it pulled back in a bun. His eyes were the same dark brown as Cosimo’s and Leondro’s, not the dark blue that Gav and I got from our mom. Like Cesare, he was a fan of body modification and had a piercing in his brow and one in his tongue.

“Christ, Zen, how’d it get so messy in three days?” I asked, looking around his place: the stacked energy drink cans, the scattered coffee cups, the overflowing sink and garbage.

“Hey, nothing’s on the floor this time! Well, just don’t go in the bedroom. Or bathroom. What’s that old saying? Progress, not perfection.”

“Why is there a dog bed here?” I asked, internally cringing at the idea of him getting another living thing he would need to take care of. There was an incident with a fuckingair plantthat made us all decide he couldn’t be trusted to keep things alive.

“Saylor had me dog-sit last night,” he said, shrugging as he made his way to the coffee pot. When he found no clean ceramic mugs, he located a pack of paper ones and poured a cup. “Ant almost fell out the window,” he said, nodding toward the hastily patched-up spot in the glass. “He’s gonna have his crew come by and fix it. Coffee’s new.”

Lord knew I could use a cup after the day I’d had.

I made my way over, grabbing my own paper cup and pouring some coffee. That I quickly spat into the sink.

“Zen, this is burnt to shit. When did you make it?”

“Huh?” he asked, sipping his cup. “Oh, I dunno. At two?”

“That was almost eight hours ago,” I told him, pouring the rest of the pot down the drain.

I’d already lost my brother to something on one of his many monitors, so I went ahead and shrugged off my jacket and got to work cleaning his place. Again.

It was a labor of love I’d been doing since Zeno was old enough to start making his own messes. Messes that he,apparently, just couldn’t see, even when they were right in front of him. His mind was just in another place.Inattentional blindness, the shrink had called it the one and only time I got Zen to go see one. It was like his brain just filtered out the mess because it got too overwhelmed and wanted to focus on something else.

It wasn’t his fault. So, it was hard to get annoyed that I was always the one who picked up after him when we were growing up.

Though I made a mental note to see about hiring a cleaner to come in and handle his place once or twice a week. He was going to get roaches or rats if the trash wasn’t taken out regularly.

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