Excerpt
Nearly Beloved
1Four Questions and a FuneralMonday, September 22
Forcing consumers to go paperless wasn’t a victimless crime. Dylan Turner knew this because of the email splayed across her phone. There they were—her DNA test results—set against a backdrop of blue light, committing manslaughter.
The victim? Everything she’d thought was true about herself for the past thirty years.
And her family.
She’d waited weeks for these results, but now that she had them, they’d arrived a century too early and with the gentleness of a meat grinder. She dreamed of a historical era when someone might sit her down face-to-face with a cup of tea before ruining her life with information. Or, at the very least, handwrite her a letter and mail it through the postal service, giving her a three-second buffer of ignorance while she opened the envelope. A buffer that might make living with the threat of cholera worth it.
Her screen went dark, and cold sweat prickled the back of her neck. She was at her parents’ house, standing at the bottom of the stairs that emptied into a gracious foyer. She squinted—would that make the room stop spinning?—but the rust-colored velvet armchairs, ivory rug, and seafoam walls swirled like a kaleidoscope.
If the Bluetooth speaker were playing Tina Guo and fragrant notes of merlot were hanging from the breath of the middle-aged adults piled into the room, she’d feel right back at one of the housewarming parties her dad had thrown each time they moved to a new city. Buzzing, humid, and full of faces so unfamiliar they might as well have been pixelated.
Her knees buckled, and she grabbed on to the banister with both hands, dropping her phone in the process. She wasn’t even supposed to be looking at her phone, not on the day of her dad’s funeral anyway. Her mom would throw a fit if she saw her staring at it now. Then again, Candis Turner was caffeinated by criticism—giving it, that is. But Dylan hadn’t checked her phone as part of some scheme to exasperate her mom. She’d checked it out of habit, like one of Pavlov’s dogs conditioned to respond to every ding inside her coat pocket.
Her coat.
That was what her mom had ordered her to do when she got caught staring out of the living room’s large bay windows—not at the raspberry mums on the porch steps or the black-throated green warbler perched at the birdfeeder, but at nothing in particular. She was supposed to put on her coat and shoes and move toward the exit so they could leave for the funeral.
She picked up her phone and somehow managed to wrestle each of her arms into a sleeve. Putting her feet into boots proved harder, but that was because her gut decided to float outside her body and hover above, laughing at her because deep down it had always known something was off.
These test results, delivered digitally to the device that was her constant companion, meant her life would never be the same. Not in a way that was like “You just won the lottery! Congrats!” It was more like a fog rising inside her body, wrapping itself around her brain until she no longer knew how to move or think.
•
“Please buckle.” The clipped words dragged Dylan back to reality, where she was now sitting in the back seat of her mom’s car. When had she climbed into the car? Let alone walked from the front door, down the porch steps, and to the narrow driveway next to the house where the car was parked?
Maybe she’d been teleported by the sheer force of her confusion.
A sigh as strong as last night’s September storm gusted from the front passenger seat. It came from her mom, who checked herself in the mirror, then flipped the sun visor back into place. “Look, I know this isn’t easy, but let’s just try to get through the rest of today without being at each other’s throats.”
Dylan wanted to scream her first question at her mom:
Why didn’t you tell me?“It’s okay to be nervous about giving the eulogy,” said another voice—far gentler—from the driver’s seat. “You’re going to do great.”
It was “Aunt” Lou, her mom’s best friend since college. Aunt Lou had booked a flight from Jacksonville to Milwaukee the moment she learned Dad had passed. She’d also booked a couple of other flights during the past month to give Dylan’s mom breaks from caretaking. Now she leaned over and squeezed Candis’s hand and glanced back at Dylan with a soft smile. She’d long been their glue.
Did Aunt Lou know already? The thought lit a firework in her chest.
Does everyone know the truth but me?“Yes, thank you again for giving the eulogy.” Her mom massaged her temples. “I didn’t think I could do it.”
It was her mom’s only earnest request of her regarding the funeral. She didn’t know how she’d get through it now.
Aunt Lou drove the city blocks between the house and Saint Mark’s Presbyterian Church, pulling the car up next to the curb and parking just as a cold rain began to pour.
Dylan heard the drumming on the roof of the car and then felt the drops on her cheeks, where more tears should be by now. Maybe they’d fall once the shock finally wore off, once she told her mom about the email and her mom said it was simply a colossal misunderstanding.
The heavy drops of rain on her skin made her realize her body was moving again—mostly without her help—from the curb to the church’s front doors, down the tiled aisle to the front wooden pew.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to honor the life and memory of Darren Turner . . .”
The rest of Reverend Schwartz’s words trailed off into a void, including whatever prayer or reading followed his formal introduction.
“Dylan,” Aunt Lou whispered. It was Dylan’s turn to walk up to the ornately carved pulpit.
Onstage, she scanned the sanctuary with its vaulted ceiling and long chandeliers. It was small and yet still too spacious for the audience of four that included the minister and a pretty ceramic urn. Her dad would have made friends with everyone in his new city like he always did
and thrown that party, if only he’d had more time between their move to Milwaukee and his diagnosis.
She put her sweaty hand into her coat pocket. The words she’d composed to try to honor the life of Darren Turner were written in the Notes app on her phone. When she pulled it out and unlocked it, she would be faced with the same bombshell of an email she’d been struck by earlier. Her last ounce of willpower lifted the phone and set it on the podium.
She cleared her throat and looked up at her mom and Aunt Lou, both dressed in black. Candis was wearing a professional bun and pearls, glazed over like a ghost, while Aunt Lou, with her frizzy mane and armful of bangles, kept her warm focus on Dylan.
Aunt Lou nodded, prodding her to begin.
The fog entangling her mind and limbs started to burn off, and she wondered what it would be like to chuck a brick through one of the church’s lovely stained-glass windows. She fixed her eyes on the urn sitting on its pedestal a few feet in front of her, full of ashes and memories now tainted.
“He’s not my father.” The words came out barely a whisper.
Her mom gasped; Aunt Lou’s mouth gaped.
Who is my dad? And who am I?
