“Yes. Come by my office after the funeral when you’re up to it and we’ll talk. There’s a lot to talk about.”
Asher wasn’t sure he liked the cryptic sound in Lyle’s tone, but he let it go for now. He went into the house and pulled out his green army duffle bag. He had been carrying the same one since boot camp seventeen years ago. It was faded and held scars from its many travels but like his dog tags, he was attached to it. It gave him a feeling of comfort. They were both part of a life where he felt he had purpose. At least for a while.
He finished packing and then showered. He dressed in a black t-shirt and jeans and put his dog tags on before grabbing the bag and his keys and heading out to the garage. Haddenfield was only a fourteen hour drive. He decided that instead of flying he would drive. It would give him time to mentally prepare himself for seeing everyone back at home.
As he drove he thought about Haddenfield. He wondered if the town had grown any. When he had left there were only nine thousand people living there. His parents and Mia’s parents had owned most of the property and real estate in town. Dean’s father and the Proctor’s had been pretty even split on the rest of it. The families had all been there since the beginning of the town. Until all the bad shit happened, it had been a great place to grow up.
A lot of the real estate his parents owned had been rented out to farmers and ranchers when Asher had lived there. His mother had had a special penchant for the ranches. They had been important to her father and she had been willing to lease them out, but never sell them. Most of the folks who had lived in town were employees of the ranches and the few restaurants and shops in the small town, or they taught at the schools or they were retired and settled in Haddenfield because it was a quaint, quiet little place. There had been a small hospital and medical clinic there too when he had left and a dentist and a few beauty and barber shops. Beyond that, they would go to the city which was almost an hour away for anything else they needed.
He wondered if Dean would be at the funeral. He had forgotten to ask Mr. Kenworth. Last time he had talked to him Dean was working in Sioux Falls North Dakota near the Minnesota border on some property development project there. He wasn’t married then and still didn’t have any kids. That didn’t surprise Asher. Dean was always kind of a Peter Pan. He refused to grow up. He was a hard worker, but once he was finished working for the day, it had always been about the party.
Asher’s mind then went to all the time he and Travis spent with Dean when they were kids. Dean was older and the two younger boys had thought they were so cool hanging out with him. Dean was a party guy but he had also been like a big brother to Asher and Travis. He took them fishing before they could drive and he taught them what he knew about girls. He pretended to know a lot more than he actually did, Asher knew now, but he treasured those memories. Travis and Asher had never been big drinkers like some teenagers, but if they had a few beers, it was usually with Dean. Even when he was drunk he never let them drink if they were going to drive. Asher knew that if Dean had been there the night he and Travis had been drunk; the accident would have never happened. Dean never would have let them leave. Asher wondered if things would have been different for him then. His father would have still known his secret and he would have still hated him but not Mia.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her now and wondering how she was doing. His beautiful Mia, who he never stopped loving. In the seventeen years since he had left Haddenfield, he had sex with countless women, but he had only been in what he would call a ‘relationship’ with two of them. He hadn’t been in love with either one. He had tried so hard to recapture the feeling that Mia had given him, but it was not just elusive, it was impossible. He had finally decided that she had been his one chance at love and since he messed that up, he was destined to be alone. She was undoubtedly still angry with him. She had loved her brother fiercely. Travis had been her hero and one of her best friends. Asher didn’t have any plans on trying to recapture anything with her. Even if she wasn’t married or with someone which was doubtful, he knew that she would be better off without him, she would have to be. He was already fucked up and there was no way he would put that on anyone else, especially Mia.
As he drove towards his past with the top down and the radio on he knew one thing was certain. This was a get in and get out mission. He would go to the funeral, see what he needed to do to wrap up the estate and head back to South Dakota and his safe haven. A week at best…
Mia stood out in front of the Fury house and stared up at it. She could remember when it had been a happy place. Even when Lily was sick for a while, they had been happy. But Greg had slipped into his alcoholism and then Lily died and Travis died and Asher left. Asher had walked out of her life without so much as a word. He had left a hole in her heart that had never healed. He had left her with trust issues to say the least. Now Asher’s father was dead and that hole in her heart was aching like an open wound.
She walked up onto the porch past the porch swing that Lily used to love. When Mia helped Asher care for her in the last days of her life, she used to sit out there with her and they would swing and talk. Mia had loved Lily. She had loved her own mother too but Lily was everything that Norma wasn’t insofar as she had such a huge capacity for love and forgiveness. Lily hadn’t cared that Mia’s mother and father had been on the outs with her and Greg for years. She had treated Mia with respect and love always. Her death had broken Mia’s heart not only for herself, but for Asher. After Lily died, Asher hadn’t even called her. Instead, he had gone drinking with Travis. By the time Mia saw him again they were burying his mother and her brother. She had just turned seventeen years old. She had just lost a mother-figure and her brother she adored. She hadn’t known what to do with those feelings and when she finally saw Asher that day, those feelings had come out as anger and blame.
Mia knew that Asher had adored his mother. She knew that Asher had also loved her brother. She knew that Asher would have traded places with either of them that day if he could have. She had seen the pain in his eyes and it had killed her. It was almost palpable. Yet, instead of taking him in her arms the way she should have and comforted him, she had displaced all those feelings that she didn’t know what to do with, on him. She had been so damned young. Then her mother had stepped in and Norma had told him it was all his fault that Travis was dead. The look of horror on his face then had snapped Mia back to reality and she called after him, but he hadn’t even looked back. She had thought he was only going for a drive that day but he never came back and no one in town had heard from him since, not even his father. She often wondered if Dean ever heard from him but he had long since left town too.
Mia used her key and let herself into the Fury home. She had been helping Mr. Kentworth with the planning of the funeral and she was here today to get some photos for the service. He had left provisions for what he wanted in his will. He wanted to be cremated and have his ashes buried in the plot next to Lily. Mia had arranged the graveside service for him through his Priest and she had ordered the flowers and arranged for a reception at her own home afterwards. She wanted something personal at the service though a photo of better days. There was one photo on the mantle of Greg and Asher and Lily when Asher had been just a little boy. Mr. Fury had loved that photo and that was the one she was here to get today.
She was comfortable here. Before Lily had died she had been here a lot, helping Asher care for her and just spending time with him. Once Asher was gone she couldn’t stand the thought of Greg being alone. She had taken meals over a few times a week, each time trying to sit and talk with him for a while and let him know that he wasn’t alone. Eventually, he admitted to her that his drinking was out of control and he’d hated it. She had helped him get into a program and she had visited him regularly. Once he had been released she had continued to help him around the house. He’d had staff to do his cooking and cleaning, but she had liked to do things for him like pancakes before church on Sunday morning or a pot roast on Friday night. Those were things Lily had done for him and he was so touched that he began to open up to Mia about a lot of things and they had become very close.
Greg blamed himself for Asher leaving. He told her all the time that Asher loved her and if he had stayed, he would have married her. He told her that the day Asher left it was because of him. His drinking had escalated, completely out of control and he had said some horrible things to his son. He had never told her exactly what was said or what the fight was about and Mia hadn’t asked. She knew that Greg’s main goal in telling her had been to ease the pain she felt when Asher had left. It hadn’t work. Her heart had still ached. But the friendship she had developed with Greg helped. She at least felt close to him when she was in the house.
She took down the photo that she had come to pick up and suddenly the gravity of it all rained down on her. She slumped down into one of the chairs in the living room and she began to cry. She wasn’t just crying for Greg, she was crying for them all. Lily, Travis, her mother Norma, Asher, Greg and herself. Lily’s illness had set into motion seventeen years of pain and suddenly Mia was feeling overwhelmed by it all.
She sat there for some time, just crying and wishing that things had turned out differently for them all. She heard the front door open after a while and she looked up and saw her father.
“Oh baby!” He came over to her and knelt at her feet. She crumpled into his arms and he ran his hand through her hair, rocking her back and forth and telling her that everything would be okay. “Sweetheart, you can’t do this to yourself. You were the best thing that could have happened to Greg for the past seventeen years. You saved his life and he knew how lucky he was to have you. He told me that more than once.”
Mia pulled her head up and looked at her dad. “He told me that a lot too. I think we saved each other, all three of us.”
Mia’s dad nodded and said, “Because of you. If not for you, Greg and I would have continued that ridiculous feud that had been going on for too many years. Who knows what it was even about?” He chuckled.
Mia wiped her tears and smiled. Even ten years after her mother’s death, her father still refused to say a word against her. They both knew that her mother was the one who hadn’t liked the Fury’s. She had been jealous of them and she had let that colour her attitude about everything they did. When Mia had been twenty-four years old, her mother had suffered an aneurysm that ruptured in her brain. She had gone into a coma and for a month, her father had sat at her bedside, refusing to take her off life support. Mia had been the one to talk her father into it. She told him her mother was gone and keeping her body alive was prolonging everyone’s suffering. He had refused for weeks and one night after leaving the hospital, he had gone into one of the bars in town for a drink. He saw Greg Fury there. Greg had already gotten sober, but he was there just talking to some of the old farmers that hung out there and having a good time. When he saw Frank, he went over to him. Mia had told him about Norma. Frank told Mia later that Greg had sat down next to him and said, “Lily begged me to let her go.”
“What?” Frank had no idea what he was talking about.
“When she was really sick, she begged me to let her go. She was suffering and I selfishly wanted to keep her alive as long as possible, because I didn’t know what to do without her. I’m sorry about Norma. I know the decision you have to make will alter your life either way you go. I just wanted to let you know that I refused to let her go, and that has haunted me ever since.” He had clapped Frank on the back then and as he stood up he had said, “This is going to sound strange coming from me, but if there is anything I can do for you, just let me know.”
He had left it there and Frank confused. He ultimately made the decision to let his wife go, based in part on what Greg had told him. Mia had urged him after that to let old wounds heal and befriend Greg. They had both suffered such loss in their lives. They had both lost their sons and the wives they had adored. It had taken some time, but eventually they did become friends. For the past ten years, the two had been inseparable.
Frank looked at the photo Mia now clutched in her hands and then up at his daughter. “Is that for the funeral, or you?” She smiled and wiped more tears away.
“It’s for the service.” She looked up at the mantle at one of Asher and his mother right before she got sick. That was the Asher Mia remembered. His cocky smile looked like a kid on the verge of becoming a man who would set the world on fire. “I want that one,” she said pointing at the picture.
Frank smiled too. He got up and took the photo off the mantle and handed it to her. “Then take it. You have a right.”
She ran her finger across Asher’s face in the photo. “Do you think he’ll come back for the funeral?”
Frank shrugged. “I don’t know honey. As far as I know, no one has heard from him. I’m not sure anyone was even able to reach him about Greg’s death.”
Mia nodded. She thought it was probably best if he stayed away, after all these years. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to stay away from him if he came back, even though he had hurt her so badly. She still loved him and she probably always would. It was what had gotten in the way of every relationship she’d ever had since, except the last one. And he was just an abusive asshole.
Mia stood up and grabbed several other photos off the mantle. Frank raised an eyebrow at her and she said, “In case he does come back. There are some things that will need explaining before he sees these.”