“Your father was a useless man,” he said. “Your mother married beneath herself, and he dragged the entire family name into poverty with him.”
I lifted my head slowly.
“My father worked until his hands could barely close.”
My cousin Travis laughed loudly enough for the people near the back to turn.
“And what did that earn him?” he asked. “A discount funeral and a daughter with nothing but mud on her dress?”
A few people laughed because weak people often borrow courage from a crowd.
My mother’s younger sister, Camille, came close enough that her perfume made my stomach tighten.
“You should be grateful we even came,” she whispered. “After today, you will sign over whatever little paperwork they left behind, and then you will disappear before your neediness becomes our responsibility.”
I looked at her through the rain.
“There is nothing to sign over.”
Her eyes sharpened immediately.
“Do not lie to me, Nora.”
Before I could answer, Travis shoved me.
I stumbled against my mother’s coffin, my palm striking the damp wood, and something inside me went very still.
“Do not touch her,” I said.
