Page 1 of Doctor Grump

1

PIPER

“If they don’t bury that old hag in the next fifteen minutes, I’m going to melt from this heat,” my mother muttered in what she likely thought was a whisper. However, she quickly caught the attention of a few of my cousins sitting in front. One of them turned and gave my mother a dirty glare.

It was a pretty miserable day, even for a funeral.

“Mom,” my sister, Patricia, hissed. “Not so loud.”

“Oh, what?” My mother threw her hands up in exasperation. “This has been going on long enough already. Do they plan to keep us here till nighttime? Ugh, of course. Your grandmother was unpleasant in life. It only figures that she would choose to die in one of the hottest summers in a decade.”

“Oh please, Eugenia,” my father snapped, wiping his brow with his handkerchief. “Have some tact. The woman just died.”

“Yeah, so what?” My mother glared at him. “She hated me when she was alive. Am I supposed to weep for her now that she’s dead?”

“Jesus, you don’t have to mourn her, but at least have the decency to not be so loud in your insults. Everyone can hear you.”

“Let them hear. Fucking traitorous snobs, all of them. After everything our family has been through in the past few months, none of them have even bothered to check in or help us. As far as I’m concerned, they can all go to h—”

“It’s okay, Mom,” I said in a soothing tone, putting my hand on hers. “I’m pretty sure Uncle Fred is about to give the last speech. We’ll get to the reading of the will after that.”

I knew hearing about the will was the only thing that could calm my mother at this point, and I was right. She nodded and didn’t say anything else, fanning herself with her hand fan as she waited for the priest to finish the final points of his sermon. My father gave me a thankful look, but I could tell that despite his admonitions, he didn’t have as much care about his mother’s death as he did about the way people would view us for not showing adequate sympathy. After all, she was only his stepmother. My father was a product of an affair between his father and another woman, which tainted his relationship with his stepmother his entire adult life. While she had reluctantly admitted him into the family when he turned eighteen, she never made it a secret that she had no love for him—not even an ounce of maternal instinct toward him.

But that could have just been Judith’s manner. I doubted the older woman had a maternal bone in her body.

I looked around the room, searching amongst the faces in attendance. There were about three dozen people here, most of whom were members of the extremely large and powerful Santorini clan. The main branch of the family, led by Judith’s oldest son, Fred, stood closer to the gravesite, where they had already placed her body in the ground. Fred, on the other hand, stood by the priest, and his twin daughters stood behind him, looking bored as hell. His wife, looking fashionable in her black Armani suit, was constantly checking her phone, probably needing to get to a meeting for their company. I had no doubt she didn’t want to be there. In general, no one at the funeral looked like they wanted to be there or were even mournful. Their expressions showed various shades of boredom and anticipation about what was to come next. No one was crying. Everyone seemed to only want to get over the formalities and proceed to the main event—the reading of the will.

Everyone except me.

Sadness sat heavy in my heart, as it had been ever since I received news of my grandmother’s death.

In the grand scheme of things, I guess I couldn’t blame my family for their indifference. Judith was often a harsh woman who could be cruel with her words. She had been raised in an era where women had to be cold and unforgiving to be taken seriously in the business world, so that was her defense mechanism against the cutthroat nature of her society. She hardly imparted any warmth toward her children, so it might have been too idealistic to expect them to feel anything but a sense of duty for her at this point.

Still, I couldn’t help feeling resentful toward them.

No one here cared that she was dead.

No one here had probably even known who Judith was beyond the businesswoman. They didn’t know what she was like in those last few days when her disease stripped her of her harsh defensive nature and left her vulnerable. They probably hadn’t seen beyond the billion-dollar will she would eventually impart to them.

They hadn’t sat with her on the porch for hours, listening to her tell stories of her childhood. Hadn’t seen her nearly shed tears over the loss of her first love, a man who had been poor but kind and who she fought for but eventually had to give up due to her family pressures. They hadn’t heard her speak of all her regrets in life and seek peace in her memories as pain ravaged her body and eventually took her life.

They didn’t mourn her because they didn’t know her.

And perhaps I didn’t either.

But I thought I knew who she was during these last few years when we had gotten close, and it was for that woman that my heart was heavy. It was the reason I wanted the funeral to be over, so I could go home and cry for her alone.

“No one will miss me when I’m gone,” she had bemoaned the last time we met. She was looking off into the sunset at the time, lying down on a pile of goose feather pillows.

“That’s not true,” I refuted. “I just went to the company yesterday, and everyone there was talking about you and how much they can’t wait for you to get better.”

She turned to look at me with a sardonic smile. “You have no understanding of how the world works, do you? Those people don’t miss me. They need me. There’s a difference.”

“I’ll miss you,” I replied.

“That’s only because you’re completely pathetic without me.”

Her tone was harsh but laced with that sadness that pricked at my heart strings. The woman was often prickly, but I noticed it was only to hide her true feelings. She was especially prickly with me because, despite herself, she actually liked me. I could tell she hadn’t wanted to, but as my friend, Lucia, would say, I’m infectiously likable.

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