Finley woke to the smell of coffee, which Aidan had brought up from the main floor of the hotel. Dressing for the funeral was a strange, silent affair. Each of them prepared for the day in separate intervals in the bathroom, exchanging only polite ‘excuse me’s whenever they bumped into one another in the small room. RJ was disturbingly sober and dressed first, in a leggings with a conservative black button-up long-sleeve dress that Finley had never seen her wear before. She fidgeted uncomfortably in the attire, and seemed nearly and miserably alien without an ounce of leather on her person aside from her boots. Nearly his entire closet was black, so Finley didn’t have a hard time choosing what to pack for the funeral, but it did feel odd seeing Aidan in such muted colors when he was normally a riot of them. Both of them chose ordinary suits and ties, with the only difference between that Aidan wore a white shirt under a black suit jacket.

Prepared for the long day ahead of them, they headed out as a group to their rental Toyota. Though it’d been rented in Aidan’s name, Finley climbed into the driver’s seat, being the only one between the three of them that was at all familiar with driving through the area. They were headed toward Mountain View Memorial Park, halfway to Boones Mill to the north of Rocky Mount, where the funeral for his aunt would begin in just two hours.

Conversation was nonexistent until RJ spoke out of the blue silence. Fin wondered if she was physically incapable of being silent or still for too long. She undid her seatbelt from the backseat and leaned forward to tap Aidan on the shoulder. “Did I ever tell you about when I ran away from here?” She asked of him.

Aidan shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

Starved for conversation, she rambled on: “So I was sixteen, just freshly emancipated after slogging through that shitshow of paperwork, and nobody but Mara wanted to have anything to do with me. She and I,” and at this she winced, “we didn’t exactly get along. Mostly on account of her being Catholic and me hating organized religion and everything to do with it. Back home, Dana used to use the Devil as an excuse to beat my ass, said I was corrupted and shit and had to be ‘purged.’ So, I was never too keen on God or all that. Mara didn’t beat us which was a nice change of pace, but she was twice as bad about harping on about God and shit.”

“I notice you refer to Georgia as home, whereas Finley refers to here as home,” Aidan noted clinically.

“Well, back home I had friends,” she explained. “That’s part of the story. This place was always more home to Fin than it was to me, but Georgia was home for me and Timmy.”

“That’s your drummer, right?” Aidan struggled to recall and adjusted the glasses on his face. “I think I met him once, at that one birthday party in Portland.” Fin remembered the party bitterly; Teegan had been there as well, and his sister had nagged him to use his gifts as a party trick to ‘guess’ people’s thoughts. Tim, being one of the only people present who knew about Finley and RJ’s actual abilities, had objected on his behalf but was silenced under a mountain of liquor.

“Drummer and best friend,” she corrected. “T was the only one left of the original group which was just him, me and Sam. When Sam died, he and I drifted apart for a while, but after my emancipation we had the bright, high idea of fucking off to LA to make a name for ourselves. I convinced him—well, maybe he convinced me, there was some convincing going on, and anyway we decided to run off together. And because I’m a dick, I didn’t tell Mara about it.”

Fin recalled the incident a little differently. “No. You left me to tell Mara about it. And she was heartbroken,” he amended.

“Yep,” RJ smacked her lips together. “I broke her heart to pieces, apparently.”

The recall made him wistfully smile. “She wailed like a widow all day, convinced you were going to make a deal with the Devil, or that you’d overdose and end up dead or worse.”

“Well, it doesn’t get much worse than that, and to my credit I’ve never overdosed. Not yet, anyway.”

Fin winced. “Why would you say something like that?”

“Because it’s true?” She guffawed. “And who’s to say I didn’t make a deal with the Devil to become famous? Maybe that’s exactly what I did.”

Fin couldn’t help but laugh at that mental picture, even as he kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead of them. “I don’t think the Devil would take that deal. I mean, in exchange for what? Your soul?”

She laughed along with him. “Yeah mine would probably be all gross and mangled and shit. He’d take one look at that soul and walk right back into Hell, just nope right out of the deal.”

Aidan got them back on track: “I thought you were older when you left. You were sixteen? Really?”

Jeri nodded. “Yeah. We got the band together within a year after going to LA, when we met Alex at this party where he was doing bass for this other band and he and I really hit it off. I convinced him to join us after we jammed together a few times. Things didn’t really kick off for us until six months after that when we put out an ad and met Jen when he showed up for auditions. Al thought I was joking when I told him I wanted Jen in the group, but we needed a better frontman because Alex’ face is a nightmare and Jen was perfect. He could sing, he could dance, he could do stage-make-up - he could do all the things! He was like, a perfect Japanese-Samoan Freddie Mercury. So, Sugiyama was in, and after that we just started collecting more people. Loanna was just some Greek studio singer who sounded great with Jen, and they had a lot of stage chemistry, so we put her through dancing lessons and she became our female lead - and then Valentino was another studio artist we kept collaborating with who synched with Alex really well, so we ended up collecting him. Everything just kinda fell into place after Tino.”

“I always thought your band forming had something to do with you being a pyrotechnician,” Aidan commented.

“Oh yeah, that’s how I met Alex. Or, that’s how I got into the party I met him at anyway. I lied about my age to apprentice under another technician and was doing stage work for other bands before things really kicked off. Anyway, I owe Mara for all of that. Weird thinking about it now, but if it weren’t for her pushing me away like she did with all the God stuff, I’m not sure I ever would’ve had the courage to run away.”

“Oh, sure you would’ve,” Finley scoffed. “You hated it here.”

“Yeah, but not bad enough to just up and pack my shit before I even finished high school.”

“You dropped out?” Aidan asked, in disbelief.

She laughed. “Why do you think I never went to college?”

“Huh. I guess that’s just hard to believe, considering everything.”

“Blows your mind a little, I know,” she nodded. “Here you are, working so fucking hard to get a degree, and here I am, and I just coasted my way to glory.”

Aidan shrugged. “That’s one way to look at it. I see it as opportunism. Each of us works with the opportunities that are available to us. I read about a guy in one of my classes with an IQ of over one-hundred-ninety, who never went to college due to a lack of opportunity and abusive parents.”

One of her eyebrows crawled up her forehead in skepticism. “Are you sure you didn’t read about Finley?”

Fin scoffed. “I’m not that smart. That’s way above genius level. I just . . . Have a disability.”

Aidan went on: “Point is, this guy was denied access to the academic world through circumstances outside of his control and ended up working as a bouncer. He’s easily one of the smartest men who has ever lived, and here’s you, running away from home at seventeenish due to a lack of opportunity in your own world and you manage to make it work. You carved a name for yourself. I think that’s true intelligence, right there.”

She seemed surprised and even taken aback by the compliment. “No one’s ever mistaken me for being smart before. Thanks.”

Aidan turned a brilliant grin onto her. “Well, that’s a shame because you’re actually pretty damn smart when you try to be. Why did you end up living with Mara, anyway? I mean originally. How did you come to stay with her?”

Fin blinked and turned briefly away from the road to look at his friend. “Oh. I never told you that story?”

“Oh boy,” RJ muttered and settled back into her seat.

“Do you wanna . . . ?” He caught her gaze in the rear view mirror.

She rolled her eyes, but nodded. “Yeah, so there was this time when Fin didn’t know that he could read thoughts yet. He was still figuring that shit out. He picked up on some of our dad’s thoughts, and it freaked Dad out bad enough that he decided to lock Finley up for a while. We had this guest room in the basement . . . I found out about it and he grounded me and threatened to beat my ass, so I tried sneaking Finley out of there, but Dana found out about it and did beat my ass.”

Finley asked, “How long was I in there? I don’t remember.”

Jeri had to think about this before answering. “I wanna say a week? Or two? Sal was gone for about a week, so that’s about how long it was. You know, it always surprised me that no one from school ever asked about it. Dad just said you were sick and that was the end of it, no questions asked. You’d think people would check in on that sort of thing.”

Aidan’s tone suggested he was quietly stunned. “You were locked in a basement for a week?”

Fin barely glanced over at him. “You make it sound like that’s a big deal. It was a room with a bed, and I’d been locked in there for days at a time before. That was just the longest I’d been stuck in there.”

RJ snorted in derision as she remembered their childhood. “Yeah, I got locked in that same room for like two weeks once before. Sal, too, when he was too little to fight back. Things started changing when he grew up though and ended up bigger than Dad. As soon as he filled out, he started being able to fight back, so the dynamic shifted. That’s why it only happened for as long as Sal was gone - as soon as he came back from camp and he heard about Fin being locked up, he and Dad got into it. Started off with yelling, ended with Dad in the hospital with a broken arm and Fin was let out. After that, he talked to Mara over the phone and before Fin and I knew it we were being shipped off to Virginia.”

“How old were you when this happened?” Aidan wondered, directing this toward Finley.

Fin hummed. “I think I was about eleven. Which means Jeri was maybe fourteen, thirteen?”

“Fourteen, going on fifteen,” she corrected. “You were closer to twelve. Sal was seventeen, and didn’t have a lot to worry about because he shipped out to boot camp a few months later and never looked back.”

All Aidan could say was, “Wow.”

All RJ could do was laugh. “I’ll never forget the look on Dad’s face when Sal came home and heard about what he did. It sucks you never got to see it, Finley, it was priceless.”

Fin laughed right along with her. “I can imagine.”

“Maybe it’s congenital . . .” Aidan muttered.

“What is?” Fin asked.

“Laughing at horrible things,” said Aidan.

“Some things you have to laugh at, or you’ll cry,” was all Finley could say to that.

RJ nodded in the mirror. “Yeah, better to laugh than end up a salty mess.”

“It’s going to be hard not to laugh at this funeral, though,” Finley remarked.

“Somehow we’ll manage.”

Aidan sighed and scratched at his brow. Finley could feel the concern threading through his friend - the impression was quite vivid since they were in the same car together in close proximity. The worry in Aidan fluttered off into something warm, something too close to love, and Finley withdrew reflexively from Aidan’s mind as the feeling became too intense for him to bear.

He was grateful to have traffic and driving to focus on, on the way to the Memorial Park. When arriving, they pulled into a decently packed lot outside of a small funeral home. The sky was sparse with clouds, obscuring the autumnal sun and a slight breeze wafted by. Once parked, the three of them filed out of the car and stood about awkwardly for a few seconds before Finley took it upon himself to lead the way inside, bracing himself against the looming tidal wave of emotions and thoughts that he could sense - even at a distance - waiting for him.

Once inside, a clerk dressed in somber black redirected them to a neighboring devotional chapel, where a small informal wake was being held, despite the body not being on display. The first thing they noticed when they stepped inside the chapel was the wooden coffin, situated before an altar, painted black and limned with brass. There were distant relatives amid the parishioners standing about, but there was only one that mattered to Finley - Félix Serrano - who was standing at the end of the coffin with hands clasped in front of him, with the most sober and miserable expression that Finley had ever seen on a person.

As he approached, he had to fight off a wave of heartbreak that didn’t belong to him. Behind him he heard RJ mutter, “fucking hate funerals.” He could empathize completely with her sentiment in that moment - especially considering how disastrous the last funeral he’d been to had been, when Teegan’s parents showed up just to yell at him for being alive when their daughter wasn’t, and for ‘leading’ her down a ‘sinful’ path. He couldn’t fault them; he blamed himself, too.

He caught Félix’s eye as he approached, and the man’s face brightened for all of a micro-second before he seemed to remember immediately where he was and what he was doing, and reverted to his previous slate of despair. Finley didn’t know what to say or do in that moment, which is when Aidan stepped forward first with a hand outstretched.

Félix clasped Aidan’s hand in greeting. “It’s good to see you again, albeit not under these circumstances,” Aidan spoke hesitantly.

Félix nodded, and seemed just as at a loss for words as Finley felt he was. “Yeah, it’s . . . It’s been a hell of a day,” said Félix.

Finley wandered toward the coffin next to Félix and let his hand wander over its smooth surface, coming to rest on the dark, cold wood. It seemed incredible that someone he had known laughing, breathing, and living had found a permanent rest inside. He felt nothing touching the wood, only the emptiness that was left behind by a once-living being. He thought of what to say - anything - that could mitigate that emptiness, but he saw it mirrored in Félix’s posture and felt a swell of deep-seated grief. Silently, unbidden and uninvited tears that belonged wholly to Finley himself began to pour down his face. A sob welled up in him that he managed to suppress with a shudder, and he turned away from the searching eyes of his company.

Only Aidan stepped forward to comfort him, perhaps instinctively pulling Finley aside and directing him quietly outside where he couldn’t suppress the grief anymore. He reached out to Aidan’s hand and felt what he felt - and it tugged at his heart, dragging that sob out of the back of his throat and caused more tears to fall. He fell down, wept, and buried his forehead into Aidan’s shoulder.

Once it passed, he felt a near-perfect calm, even as the magnitude of the only mother he’d ever known dying truly hit him.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing Finley found himself able to say.

“Please quit fucking apologizing,” Aidan gently requested.

Fin pulled away and nodded. He wiped at his eyes with the wrapped gauze on his injured hand, suddenly feeling very tired and drained. “Fuck me. I fucking hate funerals,” he rasped.

“No one’s really a fan of them,” Aidan pointed out. “By general rule of thumb, they’re bummers to be at. Are you ready to go back inside?”

“Almost.” He glanced inside, where he could see his sister talking to Félix, and stared at the coffin next to them. “Maybe.” As if sensing where his thoughts were going, RJ caught his gaze and exchanged a brief goodbye with Félix before joining them outside. Wordlessly, she pulled a pack of cigarettes out of one of her dress pockets and offered him it with one hand and her lighter in the other. Relieved, he pulled one out and lit it and handed her back the pack.

“Félix says they’re about to gather for mass, so after this smoke, we gotta go back inside,” she reported as she donned her sunglasses.

“Mass? I thought that was on Sundays,” said Aidan.

“Funeral mass is . . . Different,” she explained shortly.

“Special time where her bishop talks her up and reads some scripture,” Finley elaborated. “After that’s the burial.”

“Félix was gonna ask if you wanted to help carry her,” RJ added to Finley.

It sent a sharp feeling through his chest, but he nodded said, “Alright.”

After they went inside and took seats in the back of the small chapel, Félix took a seat next to his wife and impatiently fidgeting toddler daughter who clearly had no idea what was going on. As a man in black bishop’s garb with a white collar took his place next to the dark coffin, Félix’s wife picked up the disobedient little girl and left the chapel, and Finley felt himself envious of the little girl for a moment for getting to skip out on the actual funeral simply by way of having no ability to process the reality of it. He could sense her rampant thoughts strangely stridently high over everyone else’s, as Félix’s wife walked passed them to carry the girl outside; the poor little girl was confused by everyone’s attitudes and angry that things weren’t normal, and that she wasn’t allowed to go to her grandmother’s house.

Thinking of his aunt was unavoidable as the bishop began to wax on about Mara’s community service, her generous attitude, her welcoming nature, her open heart; each deed recited bore the punctuation mark of her violent and senseless death. In a way, he was grateful for the closed casket - at a distance, Félix’s familiar thoughts rose above the chorus of the room, telling a horror story of his discovery of his mother’s body, mangled and shattered on the kitchen floor and in multiple severed pieces. As killing went, it was the most extraordinary of kinds, a deeply personal and ritual death, in contrast to the random violence that the preacher seemed to want to portray it as before the mass.

He sat situated between Aidan and RJ, and grabbed at his sister’s hand when she reached out for his. Abruptly, the background noise of the room’s thoughts went silent. His tears ceased, and he felt calm again.

The rite of committal followed. They made a black line of mourners as Finley followed Félix and helped assist in the lifting of the coffin, in step behind him. Four other men he didn’t recognize formed a pattern around the sable casket, and helped them carry it across the grounds to its final destination.

It wasn’t a far walk, and neither was it a heavy load with everyone’s assistance. Still Finley felt the burden of the task weigh on him through the cool hollow of the wood.

Fin paid no mind to the preacher man. He paid no mind to anyone at all, as his attention was arrested by the ominous black-as-night coffin lid, its brass filigree, and the disturbingly cheerful flower arrangements surrounding the hole in the ground. Splashes of blue snapdragons interspersed with pale dahlias, sunshine-colored roses, white daisies and lilies, fragrantly distracting him.

Aidan and RJ took places beside him near the head of the coffin, standing opposite to Félix and his family. The little girl was, for a change, very still and quiet but still didn’t seem to understand exactly what was unfolding all around her. He kept his gazed fixed on the flowers, and admired the arrangement, noting they’d included Mara’s favorites.

As the bishop began to speak of ashes and dust returning from whence they came, a man in a black suit began to churn a wheel that slowly lowered the casket into the hole. Finley felt tears sting at his eyes again as a new wave of fresh grief spread over the crowd and slammed into him; were it not for Aidan grabbing his hand, he would’ve lost his composure. RJ stood apart, hands in her pockets and looked on behind her sunglasses. Surreptitiously, she wiped at a corner of one of her eyes and sniffled.

The bishop finally took a step back once the coffin was completely lowered and asked if Félix would like to say a few words. After some internal debate, Félix finally stepped forward. “She . . . My mother Mara was special,” he finally said. “She is special. She never judges, she never . . . I’m sorry.” He choked on his words, and Finley felt his heart go out to his cousin in that moment. “I—I can’t find the right words. I wish I had the right words. She deserves better than this.” He wiped at his eyes and stepped back toward his wife who offered him a comforting arm. His small daughter said something unintelligible and Félix chuckled in spite of himself, and held the little girl’s hand.

When asked if anyone else would like to say a few words, no one seemed to know what to say. The small crowd of twenty or so of Mara’s more distant relatives, fellow church-goers, and friends was quiet. Félix chucked in a handful of dirt from the nearby pile and it landed on top of the coffin with a faint rustle. Everyone else followed suit, in a line, and began to depart back to the funeral home - save Félix, his family, and Fin’s group.

It seemed as though RJ and Finley’s predictions were in vain. Neither of them struggled to hold back any hysterical laughter, and none of their family on their father’s side had been in attendance. Both of them were rather disappointed at the lack of fist-fights, compared to the last two funerals they’d attended - their uncle on their father’s side had died four years previously and his funeral had been punctuated by an all-out bar brawl between their father and his cousins over the subject of a long-forgotten argument. Comparatively, this funeral had been downright sobering.

Félix quietly approached. Fin met his gaze evenly. “My place?” His cousin suggested. “There’s food, and uh . . . Beer.”

“Food sounds great.”

They filed back into the vehicle without a word exchanged between the three, and followed Félix’s car out of the lot and into the streets. They kept pace until they reached his house a few minutes away - RJ simply smoked quietly in the back seat while Aidan poured over his phone.

“Hey Jeri,” Fin called out, catching his sister’s eye from the rear view mirror as they pulled into Félix’s dirt-paved driveway.

“What?”

“Do you remember Félix’s wife’s name? Uh, or his daughter’s?”

“Why would I know?” Jeri asked.

Aidan started laughing. “This whole time, and you can’t remember their names?”

Fin flushed and shook his head. “I’ve been drawing a blank and it felt rude to ask.”

“It’s Jenny,” Aidan supplied helpfully. “Jennifer. And the little girl is Angela. You’re lucky I remembered.” RJ thanked him.

The road wound a few times before they reached their destination. Once they pulled in after Félix, tall blonde Jenny retrieved their little dark-haired daughter Angela from the back seat and rushed inside to their ranch-style home, painted a bright pale green with dark slate roofing. Félix waved to them as they all stepped out of the vehicle and into the crisp air and bright midday sun.

A scant few minutes later, they perched in camping chairs on the porch in the shade and shared beer.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” Félix was saying. “What I don’t get — I’m an okay person. I try not to be a bad person. I got a beautiful baby girl, and her baby mama to take care of, so I try to take care of me so that I can take care of them. I try to eat right, I don’t smoke too much, I don’t drink too much. I help people where I can, when I can. Maybe I don’t always go out of my way, but that’s because I’m just an okay person. My mama? She was like a saint.”

RJ snorted derisively around her cigarette. “Get her canonized, then,” she suggested.

Félix regarded her carefully. “She took you in when she didn’t have to,” he reminded her. “Where’s the gratitude?”

RJ looked affronted at this. “It’s not—I’m not ungrateful,” she stressed.

“You?” Félix scoffed, as a deep and unpleasant resentment settled over him. “You’ve always been ungrateful. She tried so hard to reach out to you and you—”

Jeri cut him off, her features contorted with an uncharacteristic mixture of guilt and shame. “It’s not that Félix, god damn it, I’m not—I have mixed feelings about her is all. Because I was angry at her for shoving all that God shit over the years down my throat. For always being disappointed in me and not making the effort to understand me. I felt like she never loved me for who I really am, because I’m not an okay person Félix, alright? I’m a shitty person. I admit that.”

There was a moment of silence after this admission. Even Aidan, normally the first with quips, was stunned into quiet. “Well, she loved you,” Félix finally said shortly.

“I know. I know that,” RJ attested. “I’m not—I’m grateful to her, I just. I was angry at her before she died, and now I’m angry that I never got the chance to fix things. And I’m fucking sad. I hate being sad and angry, but there it is. That’s where I’m at with this. Don’t mistake that for ingratitude.” She punctuated this with a long swig of beer.

Finley attempted to be the peacemaker and cut the sudden tension with, “Look, she loved all of us.”

Félix sniffled. “She loved everyone. So hard. She was always the first in the community to volunteer, the first to bring tamales to her neighbors, and she kept us alive and sane for years. She . . . She was actually a good person. She loved God so much, I just don’t understand why. Why she would believe in a god so hard that let this happen to her.”

Finley could see the scene of the crime play out in Félix’s mind, and did his best to ground himself in Aidan’s presence at his side. He could see the scene of the crime as vividly as Félix remembered it, and something churned inside of him as he realized he would never be able to erase this image from his mind - he would always know the last, horrific moments of Mara’s life. “There’s no such thing as God,” he insisted firmly. “There’s just people, and the things we do to each other.”

RJ glared at him. “Finley, that you can say that with a straight face after everything you’ve seen and done is fucking mind-blowing. I’m dead sure Mara’s God was real, and they’re a giant, flaming bastard.”

That was when Félix started crying. RJ immediately appeared to be uncomfortable and Finley, to his chagrin, felt a sympathy cry welling up inside of him. Aidan cut in, “Would you like a hug? They’re known to help.”

“That . . .” Félix looked dubious for a second before seeming to reconsider. “That would actually be really nice.” Aidan stood to offer him a generous hug while RJ discretely passed Finley a cigarette that she lit, finding the nicotine emotionally soothing. Félix continued to gently cry. “I’m—I’m sorry,” he stuttered out, “I’m not normally like—”

Aidan interrupted him gently, “Don’t ever be sorry for needing a hug.”

“He does give the best hugs,” Finley offered.

“You heard that testimonial - the best hugs only, offered here.”

Félix calmed down fairly quickly and looked embarrassed at his tears. He wiped at his eyes in frustration. “I guess what I was trying to say is that I don’t get why good people like her get taken away, while the rest of us just have to keep living,” he finally managed to articulate.

No one seemed to have an answer for him. “. . . I don’t know,” Finley said slowly. “I don’t have the answer to that. I’d love to know that too.”

Félix seemed to perk up. “Actually Finley, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about while you were here.”

He took a sip of beer. “Well, I’m here. What is it?”

Félix looked to Aidan and RJ rather pointedly. “Do you mind?”

Aidan picked up on the hint much faster than RJ, who was distractedly staring into the distance. “Well, that’s our cue. Let’s get you liquored up,” he said and grabbed RJ’s hand and steered her indoors.

“Those words - they are music in my ears!” She marveled and followed him inside the house sedately.

Félix turned his attention solely to Finley. “I wanted to ask you about Angie. I think . . . She might be like you.”

“Like me what?” Finley wondered. “Adorable? Sarcastic?”

“Gifted,” he said carefully.

“Oh. Ohhhh. Oh!”

“Yeah.”

“What makes you think that?” Finley wondered.

Félix’s brow furrowed. “Well, she’s incredibly intuitive. Especially for her age. She’s way smarter than other kids her age, which I’m happy about, but she picked up on something I didn’t say the other day and said it out loud. And, er, it wasn’t the nicest thing, which made the wife angry. I was hoping you could just tell me what you think after talking to her.”

Fin nodded. “I can do that. Where is she?”

“Back yard. I’ll call her. ANGIE!”

The pitter-patter of stubby little legs preluded the little girl’s entrance as Angela tore around the corner of the house and came running to her father. She was barely hip-height with bright brown eyes and curly dark hair. It struck Finley that she looked very much like her grandmother in the face, and it hurt him a bit.

“Unca Finny!” She greeted in recognition and came to a stop at their knees. She grinned a gap-toothed smile. Finley distantly recalled that she was turning four years old soon, and marveled at the clarity of her memory.

“Still having trouble with your L’s, I see,” he noted.

“No, I see you!” She shot back.

He smiled. “Can you sing? Go, ‘la la la la la?’”

“Waa waa awawa!” she tried.

Félix chuckled. “She’ll figure it out eventually.”

Fin put down his drink and knelt down to Angela’s level. “Angie, can you do something else for me?”

She jumped to attention. “I can do anything! Do what?”

“Can you guess what I’m thinking?”

Her face screwed up in concentration while Finley vividly and with as much focus as he could muster thought of the number three, and the color blue. She seemed uncertain of his request. “Umm . . .” And glanced over at her father, unsure.

“It’s okay,” Finley assured her, “just guess.”

“What do I get if I guess?” She asked.

“So young to be so mercenary,” he commented. “Alright, I’ll . . . Swing you around really fast!” Abruptly he picked her up by her arms as he’d done when he’d last met her only a few years ago as a baby, and she giggled at the ride and spun in a circle after he put her back on the ground. “Now, guess.”

“Bwu! And . . . tree!” She guessed, somewhat accurately. He felt the faintest butterfly’s flutter against the edges of his awareness as the little girl subconsciously reached out to search his surface thoughts. Angie’s thoughts certainly felt different from everyone’s else’s at the funeral - she broadcasted louder than anyone save Félix, and it was only thanks to Finley’s years of control that he was able to detect it.

“Well, it was technically the number three, but you got it close enough. Now, your reward!” He picked her up and spun her around twice and put her back on the ground, still giggling.

“Again! Again!” She demanded.

“Only if you can guess what I’m thinking of,” Finley prompted, and in the same way thought of a big, multi-colored balloon rising into the sky.

She seemed unsure again and glanced nervously at her father, who nodded encouragingly and told her to ‘go on.’ “Okay! I guess—pretty barroon! I like dose, I have dose for my birthday.”

“Spin time!” Fin announced. “Last time, make it count.” This time he spun her three times and deposited her back on the ground where she dizzily turned in a circle and collapsed onto the grass happily into a laughing pile.

Over his daughter’s giggles, Félix asked, “So? What do you think?”

Fin shrugged. “I think someone hit her genes with the same curse that hit mine, is what I think. But I don’t think you need to worry about it. She’s so young, I don’t think it’ll be much of a bother. Just watch what you think too loudly.”

Félix looked dubious, and said with a modicum of sarcasm, “Thanks, I’ll try not to think too loud.”

“It’s not hard, just focus on staying calm,” Fin suggested blithely. “Don’t panic in front of her if you can avoid it, and don’t have any arguments in front of her. She’s hypersensitive to people’s thoughts and feelings. She can learn to control it one day, just like I do. But she has the advantage of growing up in a good home with understanding parents. I didn’t.”

Félix was quiet for a while after hearing this. “I . . . I don’t want her to be taken away by them.”

Keeping his voice low, Fin told him, “then you have to keep it on the down low, like Mara did with Jeri and I. As Angie gets old I can help her—if—if you want, that is. I don’t want to overstep.”

“Not at all, man. I’d appreciate it. I didn’t know who else to turn to.” Finley opened his arms uncertainly to offer Félix another hug. “Oh, alright. I’m nearly hugged out though.” They exchanged a gruff, manly hug with back pats. “Your friend was better at this,” Félix informed him.

“Yeah, he’s the best hugger,” Finley said as he pulled away. “For me, emotions come in too strongly through touch, so I tend to avoid them.”

Félix blinked. “Oh. That makes . . . Actually, a lot of things just made sense, now. Do you think it’s that way for Angie?”

Fin shrugged. “Probably. Don’t let anyone you don’t trust near her, and she should be fine. Just focus on being a good dad,” he suggested. “I shouldn’t have called it a curse. It can be a gift if you treat it right. I just . . . Had some bad experiences. She seems happy enough to me, at least.” He glanced down at the pile of giggling child on the ground and couldn’t help but smile.

Félix frowned and Finley could sense where his thoughts tended - back toward Mara, as they had been all morning. “I don’t think she understands what Grandma’s, you know, is all about yet,” he said delicately. “I’m worried about what’ll happen when it hits her. Or if she . . . Picks it up from me, somehow. I try not to think about it, but it’s all I can think about. All she knows is that everyone’s sad, and I’m worried.”

Angie immediately perked up and stood to latch around her father’s leg. “Daddy worry?” She wondered with heart-breaking concern.

He smiled down at her. “No, Daddy doesn’t worry, baby. Everything’s alright.”

“Okay,” she decided. “M’tired.”

“Why don’t you go back inside with mama and tell her all about it?”

“Okay. Bye!” She hugged her uncle Fin around the leg tight once before running off toward the front door and disappeared inside.

“I seriously think it’s going to be fine,” Finley lied with confidence. “It’ll suck for her as an adult, but right now, you have nothing to be concerned about.” He wasn’t sure why he decided to lie, but it wouldn’t help Angela’s situation if her father panicked. With how easily Finley was able to pick up on Félix’s darker thoughts, he knew it was only a matter of time before Angie became too aware of what happened to her grandmother.

“I hope so,” Félix said with some doubt. “We should probably find your sister before she drinks me out of house and home, though.”

“That’s a valid concern.”

They walked in to find Aidan cutting up vegetables with Jennifer while she chatted pleasantly at him about Angela who sat at the table munching on carrots, and RJ staring miserably at her empty bottle, seated at the dining table behind them. Félix tapped Finley on the shoulder to get his attention.

“Hey, I have an idea.”

“Shoot.”

“Want to come with me over to Mom’s?” He asked, somewhat awkwardly. “I—it’s just that—since I cleaned, I haven’t been. And I thought maybe you might want to have a look through her things. If there’s something you want to remember her by, you can have it. I don’t even know what to do with all that stuff.”

How could he refuse? He only hoped he wouldn’t break down and cry again. He felt better doing that in privacy, than where the emotions of others distracted him too much. “Sure. Just lemme grab Jeri.”

Jeri was a little less enthusiastic about the idea, but relented when Finley gave her a look. Aidan chose to remain behind with Jenny and Angie, perfectly content to mindlessly chat over cutting up vegetables in preparation for dinner.

Finley drove and they took the rental. Mara’s house was about twenty minutes away, and he remembered the route like the lines in his hand. The last time he’d seen the place had been in a dream, and it had changed, even if he hadn’t. It was disturbingly quiet without his aunt in residence, and he wondered what would become of the old home now that no one was living there. He doubted Félix would keep it, considering the memories that inevitably swam to the surface of his cousin’s mind as soon as they pulled in - no one needed a reminder like that.

The three of them entered through the red painted and peeling front door. It was a relatively small house, two stories and three bedrooms, and it would always be the first place Finley had ever comfortably called ‘home.’ Félix pointedly stayed out of the kitchen, although it was spotless. Finley knew that was where Mara had been found, bloodied and broken. “Make yourself at home, I guess,” Félix offered half-heartedly, and plopped himself down on one of the living room’s old forest green couches. He stared at the entrance to the kitchen with a dark look.

Jeri wandered upstairs after staring at a spot on the kitchen floor for a while. She was completely closed off to Finley and had been throughout the funeral, so he had to wonder what was going through her mind. Finley contented himself by swimming in more pleasant memories of being a child in that house, playing and singing and dancing.

He found a photo album in a bookshelf in the living room with Félix’s help of when they were children, full of even more memories than he knew existed. Each photo carried a pleasant emotional memory, and something in Finley broke as he realized Mara must’ve gone through the album dozens of times to show off her children to friends and neighbors. He sniffled back the tears that threatened to pour over his cheeks as he went through it backwards, from the most recent to the most distant.

Jeri came back downstairs a while later while he was still rifling through the photo album with Félix, wearing a new rosary that he recognized as belonging to Mara. “Found what you were looking for?” He asked.

She fingered the rosary. It was black stone and silver, consecrated to one of the patron saints. “Yes,” she answered, and her features twisted into a kind of grim amusement. “It’s for Saint Cecilia. You know who she is? Patron saint of music,” she answered her own question before he could. There had been numerous saints that Mara had prayed to, but Finley had never heard of Saint Cecilia. He was struck with the irony that Mara had a rosary dedicated to the patron saint of music, and yet had staunchly opposed RJ’s career choice. “Makes a sick kind of sense, actually,” his sister commented.

“I found a photo album of us as kids,” Finley explained and gestured. He flipped the page he’d been looking at toward the beginning of the book and frowned in confusion at what he found enshrined in the front page. There, guitar in hand and with a mass of medusa-like curls was a smiling woman next to Mara who looked very much like her, that he’d never seen before. RJ looked over his shoulder, and her breath caught in her throat.

“That’s Mom,” she said in a short, choked voice. She knelt down next to him and touched the photo reverently, still clutching the rosary in her other hand. “She . . . She had pictures of our mom this whole time? Why didn’t she ever show me? God damn it.”

“Maybe it was painful,” Félix reasoned.

“Can I keep this album?” Finley asked of his cousin.

Félix nodded quickly. “Of course. You know, there’s more of her stuff in the attic if you want to see - stuff that hasn’t been touched in years. Might be old photos of your mom up there too, if you want to look.”

“I want to see,” RJ announced definitively.

They went upstairs and pulled down the stairs up into the dusty attic; it was obvious that nothing in there had been touched in many years. Finley’d always known that there was an attic, but he’d never seen Mara or anyone go up inside it in all his memory.

There were boxes upon boxes of things, all frustratingly unlabeled. A quick perusal of a few of the boxes contents revealed old baby clothes and toys, more photo albums of Mara’s youth, and old stacks of magazines. There was more than they had the time to go through, so RJ extracted a promise from Félix that when he inevitably did sort through it all, he’d keep any pictures or artifacts of their mother’s and send them her way.

They did manage to find a very old guitar that Finley recognized from the photo with their mother, however, it was highly damaged from sitting in the dry attic for so long. RJ lovingly stroked its tired old strings and bent neck, and didn’t even ask to keep it - he knew that there was nothing that could pry that old instrument out of her hands. Tears welled up in her eyes as she held it and lovingly, carefully put it back in its case. She slowly lowered it down to Félix at the bottom of the attic ladder and as soon as she was out, swiftly snatched the case back out of his hands and held it close to her chest.

A few minutes of coughing up dust later, they all stood outside on Mara’s weathered porch and lit up a few cigarettes.

“People were upset with me about the state of the funeral,” Félix said.

Finley cocked up an eyebrow. “How come? What’s to even be upset about?”

Félix breathed out a cloud of smoke. “No wake,” he said. “Couldn’t have an open casket. It . . . I . . . The feds, they . . . Well, only part of her is in the ground.”

His clipped and stuttering answer revealed much that Finley hadn’t known. “What about the feds?” He asked. “What do they have to do with this?”

Félix inhaled and exhaled another cloud before he answered, and seemed to gather his wits. “They reclaimed part of my mom’s body,” he stated, depressed. “She . . . She wasn’t intact.” This fact seemed to shame him.

He wanted to comfort his cousin, whom in so many ways was like his own brother, but Finley didn’t know where to begin. He knew the pain of lowering an empty casket into the ground - Teegan’s body had been reclaimed by the government in its entirety. Why had taken only ‘part’ of Mara’s body was unclear, but the reality of it was sobering.

“That’s fucked,” RJ summarized.

“Yep,” Félix agreed bitterly. “This detective, Ibarra, he was just doing his job - but I got so mad at him and yelled - I feel bad about it now though.”

“You know, they did the same thing to Mom’s body,” RJ admitted.

This surprised Finley for several reasons. “How do you mean?” He asked.

“They do that with the ones that are super fucked up, or they can’t explain to civvies. That’s what Sal said, anyway,” she said cryptically.

“Hang on,” Finley held up a hand, “I thought Mom died in a car accident.”

RJ blew a cloud into Finley’s face. “Is that what Dad told you? No, Finley. No. Mom was murdered.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Her body was never released, at least according to Sal. He was old enough to remember the funeral. I don’t remember shit about it, to be honest. No body.”

Just like Teegan, Finley realized. He turned to Félix. “Who’s this detective, you said?”

“Ibarra,” Félix answered. “The one in charge of Mom’s case. You know, to his credit, he seemed pretty upset about it. I chewed him out anyway, just not sure he deserved it. Not really his fault.”

Once they finished their smokes, they headed back to Félix’s house for dinner, which was mostly cooked by the time they got back. Aidan greeted them at the door and RJ took the time to show off her new antique heirloom guitar. Finley saw tears prick at the edge of her eyes when she caressed the long neck of it and it wasn’t long before she put it away, sniffling, and seemed unable to stand holding or looking at it for any longer.

Jenny and Aidan continued chatting pleasantly over everyone’s heads, but otherwise dinner was a silent affair. Finley did his best to guard his thoughts now that he knew about Angie’s gifts, but the little girl kept giving him pointed looks that he began to be sure it wasn’t working. Just how sensitive she was, was hard to say. He didn’t remember his gifts manifesting until he was past the age of ten; this little girl was less than half of that, and was already picking up on surface thoughts. Privately, he knew it didn’t bode well, but he didn’t want to be the one to dishearten Félix about it.

With dinner finished, they all exchanged awkward goodbyes and promised to call before heading out back to their hotel. He let Aidan drive, as Finley’s mind was too focused on other matters to trust himself at the wheel; thoughts of Mara’s body and its condition, and the police, kept circling in his mind.

“Jeri,” he called out to get her attention from the back seat. He met her eyes in the rear view mirror. “You think the police know about Mom?”

“Probably not,” she answered easily. “It’s old news, and happened in Georgia.”

“What’s this about your mom?” Aidan asked, curious.

“Apparently she was murdered,” Finley answered wryly, “and I only just learned about it today.” Jeri said nothing, and continued staring out of the window blankly. Aidan silently processed this information, while Finley continued speaking, mostly to himself as a way to air out his thoughts. “Jeri said that the government kept the body and never released it. Something similar happened to Mara. And I’d very much like to know why.”

Aidan glanced over at him before quickly turning his eyes back to the road. “You think the police will know more?”

Finley shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

The skies had been overcast through most of the funeral, but had cleared up by the time they departed and now revealed a deep azure. The sun beat down on the roof of their car unforgivingly as they pulled in close to the police station. The Rocky Mount police department was stuck out of time in a series of red brick gables stacked atop two individual two-story, rectangular buildings, and looked more like an old firehouse than a police station. Connecting the separate sections of the department was a large garage with five white grid-like doors, and perched atop were two crows in the midst of a heated argument over the contents of a nearby dumpster. Aidan deposited them in the parking lot on the right side of the building, not far from the main entrance. Once parked, no one seemed to know exactly what they were supposed to be doing and the atmosphere quickly became tense.

“So, why are we here again?” Aidan asked anyone in general.

“Beats the fuck outta me,” RJ grumbled.

Finley unlocked his seatbelt. “We’re here to talk to Ibarra. The guy Félix mentioned was in charge of Mara’s case. I wanna know why they didn’t release her body intact.”

“I don’t think we can just go in there and demand to talk to a detective,” Aidan criticized. “I mean, he’s probably busy. Shouldn’t we make an appointment, or call in advance—?”

“I’m gonna talk to him one way or another,” Finley determined. His mind was swirling with confusing details, but one thing he knew that was absolutely clear is that the investigator in charge of the case had to know more than he did. He didn’t know what to do or how to cope with the revelation of his mother’s death, and was mostly operating on fumes at this point, given how emotionally exhausted he was from the funeral. A half-baked plan formed in his mind of simply marching into the station and demanding to speak to someone. “You can stay here. Jeri? You coming?”

She shrugged and undid her seatbelt, and stepped out of the vehicle. “I guess I am,” she drawled, and started to meander her way toward the front door of the station.

“I’ll maintain the getaway car, just in case,” Aidan promised, his citrine eyes meeting Finley’s for a brief vivid moment. A flash of concern passed between them. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Finley said and stepped out to follow his sister inside. He stopped her by grabbing her arm before they entered the station and asked her, “hang on a second. Why didn’t I know about Mom?”

“You’re asking me this right now?” She questioned. One of the two black birds cawed down at them indignantly. “Really?”

“I guess it can wait,” he conceded as the other crow squawked back, and opened the door for them both. “But I’m getting an answer later.”

“Look, the short answer is, I didn’t want to talk about it,” she bit out quickly. “You should ask yourself why Dad lied to you instead and told you she died in an accident.”

“What does Dad have to do with it?”

“Nothing. He’s just a lying dick.”

Once inside, they waltzed up to the officer on duty at the front desk. She was small, slightly shorter than Finley with a name-tag that read ‘Jones’ and took in the sight of them with eyes wide in recognition. Finley was confused for a brief moment before he dived into the girl’s mind and realized she was staring at RJ, and not him, in the throes of fan-adoration.

“Oh my God,” the officer blurted, “you’re Jericho Ravara!”

“Here we go,” Finley muttered.

RJ’s demeanor did a complete one-eighty as she took off her sunglasses and stepped forward with a gentle smile. “That’s me,” she confirmed, causing the woman to nearly leap in place in excitement. “Though, I’m actually here for—”

“Oh my God, sorry. How can I help you?” Officer Jones dialed back the excitement a bit and looked between the two of them expectantly.

“We’re here to see . . .” Jeri trailed off as her memory failed her and looked over to Finley for help.

“Ibarra,” Finley repeated. “We’re relatives of Mara Serrano. I was told he was in charge of the investigation into her death. We’d like to speak with him.”

The woman seemed flustered. “Oh. I’ll, um, let him know you’re here.”

“Thanks.”

Detective Omar Ibarra was a tall, bald, Arabic officer dressed in standard police blues. He assessed the two siblings quickly with sharp brown eyes that took in every detail and left nothing behind. Finley found himself instinctively on guard under the man’s heavy, judging stare. “Can I help you folks?” He asked politely in a deep, pleasant voice.

“Yeah,” Fin answered after watching RJ yawn in response. “We wanna know about the condition of Mara Serrano’s body.”

“What’s your relationship to the deceased?” Ibarra interrogated.

“Aunt,” Jeri answered easily.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Ibarra said mechanically, as if he’d said this already a thousand-dozen other times. “I can’t tell you anything I haven’t already told her son about the condition of the body. It wasn’t my call.”

“Whose call was it, then?” Fin demanded. “And why?”

Omar Ibarra sighed wearily and adjusted his stance to something a little less like an officer and more casual. “All I can say is that a federal order was signed, over my head. It’s proven to be a disruption to the investigation so far.”

“How far has the investigation even gotten?” Fin wondered. “Are there any leads on what sick fuck did this?”

“It’s currently under investigation,” was Ibarra’s automatic reply.

Fin did a cursory scan of Ibarra’s thoughts, but found them surprisingly well-guarded. Still, he could tell deep down the detective was worried that this case would be relegated to their cold-case files and remain unsolved. “So, no in other words?” Finley summarized.

“I’m sorry, I can’t reveal the details of an ongoing investigation,” was his curt response.

“How much of an investigation can it possibly be?” Finley found himself scoffing. “You have no suspects.”

Jeri tugged on his sleeves to get his attention and looked at him somewhat desperately. “Fin, come on. Let’s just go. It doesn’t matter.”

“Fine. Fine, alright. Sorry.”

Ibarra said, “Your frustration is completely understandable. There’s no need to apologize. Again, I’m very sorry for your loss. How long will you be in town for? I assume you came to attend the funeral.”

Fin’s eyebrow quirked up. Am I under investigation now? He silently wondered. “‘Til tomorrow afternoon. Why?”

“I’d like to take your statement in the morning, since you said you were close to the deceased,” answered the detective.

“Not close as in physically. I was in Oregon when I heard about it. But yeah, sure. We’re staying at a hotel in Roanoke.” He had to look up the address quickly on his phone before giving it to Ibarra, who scrawled it down quickly in a notepad he kept on his person. They left the police station disappointed and with more questions than answers.

“Thank you. I’ll be in touch,” Ibarra promised before marching away back to his desk and his job. Finley and RJ stalked out of the building, but not before giving the ecstatic Jones on duty at the front RJ’s autograph on a piece of paper and taking a shameless selfie with her.

“How’d it go?” Aidan asked as soon as they came back to the rental Toyota.

“Badly,” Jeri answered for them both, and lit up a cigarette in the back and rolled down the window. She passed one up to Finley out of habit, and he took the offering.

“He didn’t know anything,” Finley reported. “He’ll be by the hotel in the morning to take our statements, though.”

“Statements on what?” Aidan queried, and started to pull them out of the station.

“Who fucking knows,” Jeri scoffed.