Page 11 of Sins or Secrets
The dark clouds floating in the skies add to the gloomy atmosphere I sensed the moment my plane touched down at the airport last night.
Lilly was a well known and well loved woman everybody knew.So I don’t think I’m wrong in saying nearly everyone would be grieving her loss.Friends and family alike.
I’ve been sitting in my rental outside the church in the parking lot, just waiting for the right time to go in.
I don’t want the attention on me.
I’m embarrassed that I’m the only person from her side of the family that will be here.More embarrassed that I’m certain Dad knew how sick Lilly was and never told me.He didn’t care. Mr. Mulligan, Aunt Lilly’s lawyer, would have contacted Dad first.
When he called me last week, he told me Lilly had been sick for a very long time and made him her executor.It was only then that I found out how she suffered from brain cancer and how much she went through.It sickened me that I wasn’t here for her.
Sure, a lot has been going on, but I haven’t been able to accept that I never got the chance to say goodbye to a woman who meant so much to me, and in her final hours I wasn’t there either.
If I feel sickened by that fact, I can just imagine what people here must think of me.
The people we knew were all close.They would have known most of what was going on and at the very least been disgusted by the way my father treated her.
I don’t want them associating me with him.
The media didn’t exactly help there, or paint me in a good picture when they mademe look like some princess with a silver spoon in her mouth.Every story was like that.
I don’t know what hardship Lilly might have gone through after I left, so it’s best I tread softly while I'm here.
It will just be for a few days, then I'll be gone forever.There's no reason left for me to come back here.
The service is supposed to start in half an hour.So,I’ll make my way inside in maybe fifteen minutes.
I’ve been watching people go into the church.So far I haven’t seen Logan or any of his family, so I think they probably got here before me and are already inside.
That was what I wanted to happen.Unless I’m wrong and they’re not here yet.
I doubt it. His father hates lateness.Logan and his sister, Avery, are the free-spirited ones in the family who turn up when they feel like.I say that like I still know them.I don’t.
I don't think they would be late for Lilly's funeral though.
It’s just started to drizzle.
How fitting for the day that the heavens would open with tears to mourn with those who loved Lilly.
It didn’t rain at Dad’s funeral, but I remember it raining at Barry’s.
Barry was Lilly’s husband andhow I met Logan Savage.
Barry was a captain in the marines and Logan’s idol.When I was twelve, Barry was killed while serving in Iraq.
His death crushed Lilly. She wasn’t the same after and never sought a new relationship.
Those who knew Barry would understand perfectly.He was a dutiful military man who treated Lilly like a queen.He bought her the lake house and built her dance school right there on the grounds overlooking the lake.
That was where my dreams to dance began.
I wanted to be just like Lilly and to some extent I was.
The only light in the darkness that engulfed me when I left here was going to Juilliard.
Even if the reason for allowing me to go was to keep me under control while Riley was doing law at Harvard and getting settled into his associate's position after he graduated law school.
It was all planned and apparently planned long before I was even born.
