He kind of wished he hadn’t. Because now he was sitting in a small private waiting room at the hospital, waiting for someone to come tell them that Grandfather had kicked it. For sure the old guy was going to croak—they didn’t put people in private waiting rooms unless the reaper was already knocking on someone’s door.
This had to be either karma or irony, but he couldn’t decide which. Now that he’d finally confessed to Ian about liking dick, Milton Terrebonne had had a massive and unexpected heart attack.
When the doctor eventually did come in and told them Grandfather had been pronounced dead at 7:03 p.m., Tierney felt nothing. Or everything. His emotions were chaotic, and it was all too confusing to make sense of, so he gave up and went numb.
While they waited for someone to show them to the emergency department so they could “spend some time with the deceased,” he sat next to his mother. She kept dabbing at tears—real ones, he could tell from long experience—and clutching his hand, her grip alternately loosening and tightening.
Father stood near the door, pale and tense, and Chase sat with his head hanging down and his fingers interlaced tightly between his knees. His wife Emily sat next to him.
How do I look to them?
“I don’t know what to do,” Mother said in his ear.
“Um, I think what we’re doing is fine.” They may own and operate an ambulance company, but none of them had ever worked as paramedics. Still, Tierney’d been on enough ride-alongs, and in enough hospitals, to know the drill. “Um, there might be quite a bit of cleaning up to do in order to make Grandfather look, you know, presentable.”
“Yes,” she whispered, pressing the side of her fist over her lips for a moment before continuing in a shaky voice. “What I meant is that your grandfather didn’t anticipate this.”
Who the hell anticipated having a massive heart attack after being declared healthy as a horse a month before?
“He didn’t leave any instructions.” Her voice rose, and her fingernails were starting to dig into Tierney’s hand. “I’m just not sure what the appropriate memorial—”
“Hyacinth.” Father sat across from her. “A social worker . . .” He adjusted his still-knotted tie. “Someone will be along soon to help us make the arrangements. In the absence of guidance from my—” he swallowed “—f-father, we’ll have to rely on their expertise.”
“But . . . will it be what Milton would want us to do?”
Father took a deep, quavering breath. “We’ll simply have to do our best. We have no other choice.”
“Oh no.” Mother’s voice broke, and she began ugly crying. Tierney patted her hand while his father and brother inspected the room for features of interest.
Finally, thank God, Emily moved to sit on the other side of Mother, putting her arm around the woman and murmuring to her. When his mother let go of Tierney to clutch at her daughter-in-law, he fled to a chair near his father.
“I’m sure we’ll be able to muddle along without him,” Father said, but he didn’t sound sure.
Tierney considered moving again, to sit next to Chase, but he and his brother couldn’t get along on a good day.
“A wake?” Mother asked, lifting her head and peering at Emily. “You think he would approve?”
“Of course,” Emily assured her. “I recently read in Forbes that the family of the Whitewash Consulting Group CEO held a wake in his honor.”
Forbes covered wakes? Not likely. The quick grimace Emily shot at Chase and then him told Tierney it was a lie, anyway. She got them, didn’t she? Emily understood that what his parents needed most in this moment was for someone to tell them what to do and how to behave as a proper Terrebonne.
I need a drink.
“Mr. Terrebonne?” A man appeared in the now-open doorway. Chase and Father stood. “If you’re ready . . .”
It wasn’t until Emily got out of her seat and helped Mother up that anyone moved. Then, like good little Terrebonnes, they all trooped off to go say their farewells to their overlord.
Standing in the emergency cubicle, surrounded by his silent family, Tierney looked down at the old guy’s disheveled body and it hit him.
He could never disappoint Grandfather again.
He could disappoint his parents, but if Grandfather Milton was the old God who turned people into pillars of salt for disobeying him, Father was the less frightening, less vengeful and largely absentee dude in the New Testament. Tierney didn’t know who that made Jesus, or what role his mother played in his analogy—she wasn’t the Virgin Mary, that was for sure—but it mattered less and less as he searched his grandparent’s slack, gray features for signs of condemnation.
He found none. The old bastard really was dead, unable to pass judgment anymore. For a brief second, everything changed inside Tierney, like he was viewing the scene through a kaleidoscope and it had switched patterns on him. Shifting and colliding with other things. Changing.
I could . . .
What? He couldn’t come out. Grandfather was dead, and Ian was in love with someone else. Tierney still didn’t have anyone to come out for. Or against.
No point in doing it at all. And with that, everything inside him settled back into its rightful, repressed place.
Monday evening after work, Dalton stood on Sam and Ian’s porch, casserole in hand, waiting for someone to respond to his knock. He’d been raised right—in case of tragedy, deliver a filling, throw-in-the-oven meal a few days later. He’d had to buy a Cheesy Chicken Noodle Bake at a trendy, nouveau home-style delicatessen on the way over, because he had no idea how to make something like that himself. His cooking skills were subsistence level at best, even after being kicked out of his parents’ house at eighteen.
It was taking a long time for someone to answer the door. Maybe they weren’t home? Ian had called in sick today, but everyone knew it was because of his injured boyfriend. Maybe they’d had to go to urgent care; Sam’s concussion might have gotten worse. But no, when Dalton checked behind him, Ian’s truck was at the curb.
Just as he turned back around, the door opened.
“Yes?” Ian stood there in jeans and a black T-shirt, barefoot, as hot as usual. “Dalton?”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded.
Ian yanked him inside, took the foil baking dish out of his hands, and gave him a one-armed, choking hug. “Thank you so much for helping Sam. Detective Johnson told me what you did and fuck I’m so glad you were there.”