I was thirty four years old the day my father, Victor Kline, was laid in a polished walnut casket beneath a cross of white lilies. The funeral home smelled like flowers, raincoats, cold coffee, and expensive guilt. People came in waves that morning. Neighbors. Cousins. Men from my father’s construction business. Women from church. A few old friends who had not called my mother in years but somehow found time to show up when there was a casket, a guest book, and a chance to whisper.
My brother Bennett stood near the front with his jaw locked. Aunt Lorraine cried into a lace handkerchief as if she had been hired for sound. I sat beside my mother, Miriam Kline, and watched her hands. That is what I remember most. Her hands rested on her black purse, folded neatly, not trembling, not twisting, not reaching for tissues. Her wedding ring was still on, a thin gold band, dull from thirty six years of dishwater, payroll envelopes, hospital hallways, and pretending not to know where her husband had been. My mother looked calm. People mistook that for strength. I did too. Back then, I still thought silence meant acceptance. I did not yet understand that some women go quiet because they are counting.
My father had been handsome even at sixty two. That was one of his problems. He knew it. Even in the casket, with makeup pressed into the lines around his mouth, there was still something proud in his face. His hair had been combed back the way he liked it. His hands were folded over his chest, the same hands that had once built our porch, signed paychecks, held my mother’s waist at weddings, and, as we would learn, wired money to another woman for almost three years.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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