Those He Left Behind

The movies lied to me.

I had woken up with the idea of a storm was rolling in and turning the ground to mud, but sunlight was flitting through the window and illuminating the bare walls of my aunt's spare bedroom. Outside the glass, I could see several small birds shuffling through the trees, twigs and leaves clasped in their beaks. The neighbor's children were in the backyard, playing in a plastic sandbox, their laughter floating on the wind. I could even hear Becca just down the hall, giggling over some toy she found wedge among millions of others. It was all heartbreakingly happy.

I pulled the blanket to my chin and pressed my fingers to my forehead just as Aunt Mercy opened the bedroom door, something black draped over her arm. Normally she would already be dressed in scrubs and trying to convince Becca that cake was only for special occasions, which Becca would retort with something along the lines of, "Today's Mr. Hopscotch's birthday." Instead, today, Mercy was dressed in black, her dark brown hair fastened neatly at the nape of her neck.

"I'm not feeling well," I said in a voice that would convince my father right away.

Mercy laid the black dress out across the foot of the bed before she turned to face me. She looked unconvinced. She placed one hand on my head and the other on my wrist; everything was perfect, at least physically. "You're fine," she said.

"Mommy!"

The door swung open and a six-year-old launched into the room, her thin arms flailing. She wore nothing but her underpants. Quickly, she attached herself to Mercy's leg as Daniel appeared in the doorway, one hand holding the little girl's clothes and the other rubbing leftover sleep out of his eyes.

"She won't leave them on," he said, trying to pry her away from her mother. "She says she's the naked cowboy." He sounded vaguely amused. I couldn't find the will to smile.

I saw the corners of Mercy's lips lift up, but the dark circles under her eyes remained. She hadn't cried, not once since that night, but as the days passed, those circles grew. She slipped her hands under Becca's arms and lifted her up. With her free hand, she brushed some of the child's unruly black hair behind her ear. Ten years ago, that was me as she talked me into taking a bath, something my father had often failed to do.

I sat up, folding my legs beneath me, a yawn escaping my lips. "Can I stay here? I hadn't slept at all last night."

Mercy looked down at me, a frown encasing her features. Daniel collected Becca in his arms and carted her out of the room to face the task of dressing her once more. "You really should come," she said, lowering herself on the bed next to me. Her fingers were gentle around mine, her thumb brushing against my knuckles. I closed my eyes as one warm tear slid down my cheek. She moved her hand to my back, moving it in small circles.

"No one would notice."

Mercy stood up and stepped away. With a small, sad smile, she turned towards the door. She paused, just for a second, and looked over her shoulder, her hand resting on the doorknob. "I would," she said, though I imagined her saying, instead, "Your father did." But she was gone, those words trapped between my own ears.

I leaned over and pulled the dress into my lap. It was a simple, solid black dress that Mercy must have found in the back of her closet. I never had a reason to own such a dress. I wondered how many times Mercy had worn it. In her line of work, there always seemed to be an occasion to.

I worked at a slow pace, peeling off yesterday's clothes and slipping into Mercy's dress. It was too big, but it did its job, painting me in black. My father always teased me, saying that I was always looking for a reason to dress up. But now there was no interest; I slipped on a pair of old, white tennis shoes and left my necklaces in a tangled mess, opting to wear only the ring my father had given me for my sixteenth birthday. Even my hair wasn't bothered with.

By the time I came down the stairs, Becca was dressed and trying to free herself from her father's hand. Mercy glanced up at me, but she did nothing except usher me towards the door with a, "We're running a little late."

I nodded and followed her out the door. I had no, "Good morning" for Daniel or "You look pretty" for Rebecca.

It was nice out, neither hot nor cold. It was a day my father looked forward to. I would often watch him pack up his cameras and head to the park, to take advantage of the natural light. He said it always made his models look better. I always thought he just wanted out of the studio.

Mercy drove, though she and Daniel remained silent. I was stuck in the backseat, next to Becca. She held her stuffed rabbit out to me, happily making Mr. Hopscotch dance, oblivious to the mood that had infected the rest of us. I forced a smile onto my lips and took the rabbit from her small hands.

"He wants a story," she said, clapping her hands together, "about Uncle Jayden."

"Why?" I asked, squeezing the rabbit close to my chest.

"Aren't we going to his party?"

"Rebecca," Daniel said, turning in the passenger seat, and pulling the stuffed animal out of my hands, handing it back to her. "Not right now."

She would hear plenty of stories, though it would be years until she understood the purpose of telling them.

***
The funeral home was filled with familiar faces, my father's family and friends. I could see Addison and Sage standing up front, over the casket. Addison was leaning over it, examining the man's still face. I didn't see any of their many children, though I wouldn't expect them to drag four kids to a funeral. Addison had been my father's best friend, and for years he played the part of my dependable uncle. To Sage, however, my father was like yet another big brother, there to tease her and comfort her when she wouldn't admit she needed either.

I followed Mercy into the last row of seats and sat down quietly. Daniel sat next to her and pulled Becca into the next seat. The little girl fidgeted in her chair and tried to escape, but her father's hand kept her in place. She lifted her head and stuck her tongue out at him, pulling on the corners of her mouth.

Daniel looked down at her, his eyebrows coming together and his forehead wrinkling. "Behave, Rebecca," he said. In response, the girl huffed and crossed her arms over her chest, and when Daniel wasn't looking, she made another face. If it was any other day, Daniel would make his own face, sending Becca into a fit of giggles. Now, she needed to learn the time and place for her games.

I looked up, catching a small smile, though it quickly vanished, on Sage's lips before she settled in the front row of seats. Addison sat next to her, his shoulders shaking, though from silent tears or a recent ailment, I couldn't tell. I couldn't bring myself to ponder it, instead I turned away and folded my hands in my lap. I stared ahead, at a single point in space, until another hand fell on my shoulder, calling my attention to their presence.

Kaylee was a photographer that worked with my father, who had become one of his closest friends. I used to measure myself against her, only because she was a lot shorter than my father – a lot shorter than most people. Even I had long exceeded her mere four feet and eleven inches.

It was almost a comfort to see her there, smiling at me. Out of all the smiles I received in the last week, it was that one that seemed the most genuine. It didn't feel like she pitied me, but as if she was truly happy to see me. "How are you?" she asked.

I tried to return her smile and force my voice sound convincing, but my, "Good, thank you" sounded weak instead, like the lie it was. Her smile twitched, but she said nothing as her husband stepped up next to her. He looked awkward and out of place, but then again, there were few social occasions where he was comfortable.

Besides being my childhood babysitter, Bryce was Daniel and Sage's brother. Sage and my father had teamed up to set the couple up on a blind date, though it wasn't until over a year and a half later that they actually started dating and years until he finally asked her to marry him – I remember, I was the flower girl. The day they were married, my father told Bryce to keep an eye on her, otherwise he would spirit her away. Those were the kind of jokes my father liked to make.

"Good morning, Becca," Bryce said as the child spun in her seat and waved both of her hands enthusiastically at them.

"Where's the cake?" she asked, leaning forward over the back of her chair.

Bryce gave her a small smile, with the promise to make her a cake later.

"She doesn't need any," Mercy said as Daniel pulled Becca back down, forcing her to sit properly in the chair. "How's the adoption?" she asked, addressing Kaylee, though I assumed it was simply to be polite. It didn't matter, Kaylee's face brightened anyways.

"There's a baby available, we're just a bunch of paperwork away," she said. The glee that usually accompanied the idea of being a mother quickly disappeared, though, as her wide blue eyes fell on the open casket in the front of the hall. My father had been one of the people that had encouraged them to adopt and was there when the process had taken longer than they had hoped.

"I'm sorry about your brother," she said sadly, not looking in the other woman's direction.

My aunt sighed and said, "It's all right." Although I tried to listen without feeling, I couldn't help the guilt that swept over me. How many times did Mercy have to say those words? How many nights did she have to convince herself of that truth? How many times did I feel as if I was sole mourner?

Kaylee nodded and looked down at her feet, seemingly at a loss for words. The woman who could hold an hour long conversation with a hobo found that she had nothing left to say. It was almost unsettling to watch her standing there in silence, fiddling with a loose string on her dress, until Bryce wrapped his fingers around her own and led her away, towards the front, where Sage and Addison were sitting.

The quiet quickly settled back into place, coating us in a somber mood. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Daniel take Mercy's hand into his and stroke her knuckles with his thumb, just as she did for me this morning. She pulled her hand away, resting it on her lap. She didn't look at him, but kept her eyes focused on the line of people that were shuffling up to the casket. These people felt the need to see what remained of him, but Mercy had been there in the ER when he had arrived soaked in his own blood. Although she had seen plenty of people come in with fatal injuries, she was unable to do anything besides hold my father's hand and listen to his last words.

But my father wasn't just a stranger who was in a car accident. He was her brother, someone she had grown up with, sometimes the only person she had, and he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

My father had a box of pictures, of memories, from back when they were children, when my father carted a Polaroid around wherever he went. There were pictures of Mercy playing with her dolls, bandaging and kissing their boo-boos, of her dancing in the rain, of her trying to balance books on her head. There were fewer pictures of my father, taken when Mercy had stolen his camera. There was a picture of him wrapped up tight in bandages and another of him dressed in a frilly pink dress.

In that box, there was one single picture, without a name or date, of a woman with short brown hair and a cigarette between her lips. She was glaring at the camera, as if she could barely stand the person standing behind it. Whenever I asked him about it, he would just frown and say that he wasn't sure why he kept that picture, just that he felt like he had to. I always assumed that she was his mother, the one he and Mercy was taken away from before they were bounced from foster home to foster home, then adopted by an older couple, somehow lucky enough to not be separated.

That luck finally ran out.

Just as I had relied on my father to chase the monsters from my bedroom, she had always expected him to be within her reach whenever she needed him. Now he was gone, and both of our monsters were slowly starting to return.

Two bullets to the chest; that was all it took to bring down my father, to bring down the hero of my childhood. He wasn't the only victim; I found it unfair that it was my father that they weren't able to save. Mercy said the two others would be released with a few ugly scars and a great deal of pain, but at least their families would still be able to hold them; all we had left were pictures, and he was very rarely in front of his own camera.

In fact, the picture that they had set up in the front was two years old. Even though it was cropped to show just him, I could recall the exact day. Mercy had taken that picture when we were invited to Bryce and Kaylee's for dinner. We were standing on the porch with his arm was wrapped around my shoulders. We were both so happy.

"Leila."

The voice cut through my reprieve and brought me back to world of black dresses and mourning loved ones. I looked up to find myself staring at the face of a man, another close friend of my father. William wasn't smiling, though he still managed to look as dashing as ever, neat and trim. On any other day, he would probably comment on my dirty tennis shoes and barely combed haired. Instead he just brushed a lock of that hair behind my ear and glanced up at the casket.

"Have you gone up, Sweetheart?" he asked, resting his hand on the back of my neck. His voice was soft, as if he was afraid anything louder than a whisper would destroy any peace that had settled over the hall. I only shook my head in response. "Would you like to?"

I hesitated before I nodded and took the arm that he was offering to me. I wondered if Mercy would disapprove as I walked up. She had wanted to keep the casket closed, but Addison had insisted on having at least a viewing before the funeral. I couldn't blame Mercy for not wanting to see my father, not if his trademark smirk wasn't firmly placed on his lips. My last memory of him, however, wasn't his smile or his smirk, it was his anger. As the door slammed between us, I didn't see that it me who was wrong.

It was too late now.

When we stopped in front of the casket and I looked down at what was left of my father, I felt a gasp force through my lips. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought that they had simply pulled him out of bed. I gripped William's arm tighter to keep myself from reaching out and touching my father's cheek.

At any of the weddings my father ever attended, before the couple even said I do, he had his suit off; his tie shoved in his pocket and his jacket lost in some dusty corner. He wasn't wearing his suit here. Addison had opted to have him dressed in something he might have had worn every day. The effect was startling; he wasn't some doll with my father's name.

My father was gone.

William carefully pulled me away and led me down to the nearest seats, in the row behind Trent and Callie. They were whispering among themselves. My father had been the best man at their wedding. Going through the photographs, Trent would often joke that my father should had been the photographer instead. Later, he confided to me that it didn't matter if he was part of the wedding of taking pictures of it; it had been hard on him. He imagined Callie walking down the aisle before, but never to be handed off to a childhood friend. I had once asked him why he had agreed to be the best man. "Because," he said, "I could have had her if I hadn't tried so hard to be someone I was not. Who Trent is was enough."

It wasn't until William handed me a handkerchief that I realized that warm tears were dripping onto the collar of Mercy's dress. William had always been one of the consolers in my life. For the injuries that my father couldn't fix, William would with cookies and candy. This, though, wasn't pain he could subdue with a lollipop.

Soon, A hesitant hand started to pat my back. I turned around, preparing for another wave of condolences. Instead I came face to face with a woman I hadn't entirely been expecting to see.

My father had only known Sara for a few months, but they had grown close. Mercy had told me that he hadn't dated in nearly ten years, and though she wasn't technically his girlfriend, she was the closest thing he had.

I nodded at her and turned back, not really feeling up to holding a conversation with anyone. I chose to sit there in silence as the last of the guests took their seats and Addison went up to close my father's casket. As he returned to his seat, all the hushed conversations disappeared.

The funeral officially begun.

The service was quiet; except for the creaking of chairs and awkward coughing, there was nothing but the officiant's voice filling the hall. In the books or movies I have read or seen there was always at least one person sobbing hysterically. I wasn't sure what I had expected; public displays of devastation and the weather conforming to our mood were just ideas, whimsical expectations.

Not even Addison, though friends with my father since middle school, with his shaking shoulders and trembling hands, had been crying. I should have known better than he would be. I had him every day for my second period English class, and he had been shaking for the last month and a half as the result of some new medication his doctor had prescribed him.

Then came the time when people were asked to come up and say something. The silence grew awkward and people remained in their seats. Next to me William stiffened, across the room Sage patted Addison's shoulder, and towards the back Mercy was looking away, her lips pressed together. I had been wrong; Becca wouldn't hear one story about my father's life, because not person, not even I, had the guts to go up there.

The officiant stood in front of the crowd, his hands folded neatly in front of him, ready to close close the service. A metallic crash echoed through the hall, breaking the trance that had spread over the gathering. Everyone donned expressions of surprise as they looked around for the disruption. Becca was running down the aisle, her dress tossed behind her. Her father, his face red with anger, was on his feet and pushing his way out from the row of seats. Mercy had turned, poised as if she, too, was about to jump up and chase after their daughter.

There was small bursts nervous laughter while Daniel chased his daughter towards the front of the hall. She was almost directly in front of the casket before he caught her arm and dragged her out. He paused only once, to yank her dress off the hardwood floor.

"I think your father would approve," William whispered. "Someone has to be the comic relief. I can imagine him standing up there, not particularly pleased with us. He would say something like if he had been in charged, there would be ten strippers dancing around the room." He winked down at my wide-eyed expression. "He wasn't afraid to joke about his past mistakes. But that wasn't who he died as; he was a better man than that."

"Are you suggesting my cousin's going to grow up to be a stripper?" I asked, trying to ignore the rest of what William had said. "I don't think her daddy would be too happy with that."

William smiled at me, patting my hand once more before he pushed himself up and made his way towards the front to play his role of pallbearer. Trent and Bryce joined him a moment later, waiting patiently for the fourth. Addison sat rigidly in his own seat, watching them. He had offered many times to take the job, but both Mercy and Sage had forbidden him, concerned for his health.

I looked over my shoulder as Daniel rushed back in, handing a dressed and crying Becca back to his wife before made his way towards the casket. The last of the pallbearers. I almost found it amusing that he had volunteered; a decade ago, for my father and him to be in the same room would result in broken noses and wounded egos. I wondered what Daniel would be thinking as he carried my dead father on his shoulders.

I closed my eyes as I stood up to follow the casket out of the funeral home. I couldn't read Daniel's mind, or anyone else's, but I knew what I was thinking of: My father's mistakes. His life had been full of them. Yesterday Mercy had sat me done at the kitchen table, to explain my situation to me. My father had no will. Of course, why would a thirty-six-year-old man think he would have a need for one? Thus, as his only child, I inherited everything, including those mistakes. My father had been paying several debts, the remains of a life-style he could joke about and be ashamed of at the same time.

But I thought about what William had said. Those mistakes weren't who he was, but helped shaped who had turned out to be. I, too, had been a mistake, one made in poor judgment. Although he regretted his mistakes, even my conception, he worked to right his wrongs in any way he could. Most of his debts had been paid off.

Set apart from all those debts, he had a fund, though not extremely large, it was enough. A fund for Leila. He hadn't needed to set up that fund, nor did he have to go looking for me when I ran out.

"I'm not a hypocrite! My mistakes shouldn't be yours to make."

I smiled slightly as I watched them lift the casket into the hearse and apologized silently; I had been wrong.

My father had been a good man.