A/N: not mine.
Thanks to those people who always review. I really appreciate it. Sorry if I didn't make this clear, but the song at the end of chapter 5 was One Moment More by Mindy Smith. I just though it fit with the mood of the chapter. She's a great singer and if you get the chance to listen to her album then make the effort.
Chapter Six
The funeral was awful. I don't want to go through all the details, but it was really like any other funeral. There was crying and a closed casket and photos of the deceased and flowers. But then it was different, because it was someone I knew, someone full of life. Someone who wasn't supposed to be gone yet.
Ephram was devastated as I guess you could imagine. His dad and his step-mom, Nina, flew in from Colorado to help him. Delia moved out of the dorm and into his apartment so he wouldn't be alone. I stayed away from them. As much as I wanted to be, I wasn't part of his family. And I had no wish to see Andy Brown. I don't think I'll even totally get over my bitterness towards him.
I managed to stay away until the day after the funeral. Ephram called me and demanded that I come and join them all for lunch. I didn't want to go, but how do you say no to your friend when he's just lost his wife?
It was never going to go well, and my nervousness made me a half-hour early. I was buzzed up to the apartment by Delia who greeted me at the door and pulled me into a hug.
"Thanks for sticking by Ephram. At the hospital I mean. I wanted to be there, but I was stuck on Long Island at my friend's wedding. He called me and I tried to get back, but the traffic was awful. By the time I got back to the city she was already…." Delia's eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away with the palm of her hand. "He told me that you sat with him, and got him coffee, so thanks."
"It's ok sweetie. I guess once you've lost someone yourself, you know what to do."
Delia nodded. "I guess." A pause. "It's so weird. It's so much like when Mom died, but then it's so not. Ephram's a wreck and I'm doing the best I can, but I know that Ephram knows I wasn't Katie's biggest fan. I just feel like everything I say is so hollow."
"Everything anyone says to Ephram right now is going to sound hollow to him. You love him and you're trying and that's all that counts."
Delia half-smiled but her eyes filled with tears again. "You always were good with advice."
"I was good with pretending, I still am."
"Who did you loose?" Delia suddenly asked. "You said you understand if you've lost someone yourself, so who did you loose?
I thought for a moment. I didn't want to lie, but I couldn't say too much. "The love of my life," I answered finally.
I headed into the kitchen to avoid more questions, and there he was. I hadn't seen Andy Brown for 10 years, but somehow in that time my mind had turned him into some kind of devil. His interference in my life had cost my son a chance to meet his father. It had cost Ephram the knowledge that he had a son and it had driven me from the town I had always called home. But somehow now that I saw him he wasn't so scary any more.
He looked almost exactly like I remembered him. His hair was grayer, and he was dressed in a suit rather than the jeans I remembered him wearing, but he was still the same Dr Brown.
"Madison." I guess Ephram had told him I was coming, because he didn't look surprised to see me.
"Dr Brown." I was determined to be polite even though I wanted to yell at the guy.
"How are you?"
"I'm fine. Obviously I'm sad about Katie but…"
"And your family?" As if I couldn't tell what he was asking. I'd never told him Jacob died. In fact I'd never told him Jacob was born.
"My father's god-knows-where, I don't talk to my mother and other than that I have no family." That seemed to satisfy the asshole.
I stalked out of the kitchen and found Ephram. We sat on his bed and talked about nothing for a while. He told me he was trying to spend as much time as possible in his bedroom, because he was trying to feel comfortable in there again. He'd been sleeping on the couch because he couldn't get into bed without Katie.
We stayed in there for a while, sitting on the bed, and watching a DVD he'd put on to pass the time. Delia joined us after about a half hour and we settled down, barely talking until Nina came in to tell us lunch was ready.
The meal was horribly uncomfortable. I couldn't even look at Dr Brown, Ephram didn't eat, he just pushed his food around his plate, and Dr Brown looked incredibly uncomfortable. I made my excuses and left as soon as lunch was done.
Nina hugged me goodbye and thanked me for being a friend to Ephram. I'd forgotten how much I'd liked her. Delia promised to meet me for lunch sometime in the next week. Ephram pulled me aside.
"Come out with me tonight?"
"Huh?" I wasn't sure what he meant.
"My father is driving me crazy, and I can't sit around here any more. Come out with me and we'll get shitfaced and forget everything that's happened."
I could have told him that drinking wouldn't help, I'd tried it a time or two. But I agreed and we met up later that night at an upscale bar near my apartment.
We didn't get that drunk in the end. He drank scotch and I drank wine. Not enough to loose control, but enough to loosen tongues. He told me how much he hated having his father there. That Dr Brown kept trying to persuade Ephram to go back to Everwood for a while. He told me how he couldn't breathe in his apartment because it was all Katie, that he barely slept.
I told him about how bored I was. That I was supposed to be working on stuff for a new album, but I couldn't make myself do anything. That I felt like another pointless party girl, but without the parties. His stuff made mind seem so unimportant, but I was just drunk enough not to care.
When I was about 2 am we finally decided it was late enough to go. I'd agreed to let him sleep in my spare bedroom for the night. We got into my apartment and I went into the kitchen to make some coffee while he headed into the lounge. When I joined him he was looking at pictures lining one of the bookshelves.
"Is that Mindy?"
"Yeah." I smiled and looked over his shoulder. "That was last summer at a concert. She lives in Austin now so I gave her backstage tickets to our concert there."
"Who's that with her?"
I looked at the photo closely. "Oh, that's her husband Mike."
He moved on to the other photos, asking me questions about some, just looking at others.
"Who's baby is that?" he asked, looking at a picture of me holding Jacob.
I was just drunk enough not to censer myself.
"Mine."
"Huh?" He just looked at me.
"My son."
"You have a son?"
"Had. He died."
"Man, Madison. I'm so sorry. I…"
I cut him off. "No sorrys. We've both lost people. Shit happens, right. Other people can give me sympathy, but not you. Ok?"
Ephram nodded, still looking at the picture. "Cute kid. You look happy."
"It was a long time ago."
