One More Time

1

The funeral was the worst day for me. Not that anyone loves funerals, but I had to stand there accepting everyone’s condolences for Donald’s death as though my life for the last six years hadn’t been one big lie.

Well, maybe six years was an exaggeration.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Dane,” a neighbor, Mrs. Worth or Mirth, something like that, said as she stopped before me at the cemetery. She held my hands in a viselike grip, her skin ice-cold. I shivered. “Donald was such a sweet man. And he adored you so.”

He did, once. I didn’t know when he had stopped; he hadn’t told me, though I guessed maybe he’d planned on it.

“Thank you,” I said, numb to the words but not to the hollow feeling in my heart. She continued past me and another person took her place, saying similar words meant to comfort me for the loss of my partner.

I wanted to scream, to rage, that Donald had not loved me, not anymore, and was planning on leaving me before he inconveniently had a heart attack, but his service wasn’t the time or place. And there never would be a good time for the people here at the cemetery. They didn’t need to know.

The sky was dark and ominous with clouds, though the rain hadn’t managed to appear…yet. The news reports were all about storm watch. Rain was so dramatic in Southern California.

A colleague of Donald’s came to stand before me. They’d taught at the same university for years before Donald’s mother’s death a couple of years ago. Donald’s mother had been very wealthy, and since he had inherited everything, Donald had taken early retirement.

“You know, Dane,” Professor Arndt said, taking my hands as everyone had before, “it’s all right to cry. You don’t have to be so strong and controlled.”

I supposed that was some sort of comment on my dry eyes. I hadn’t cried during the service, hadn’t cried as I tossed a handful of dirt on Donald’s coffin. But if this guy thought my heart hadn’t been shredded, he was wrong.

“I will. Thank you for coming,” I said, like a robot.

“If there’s anything you need…”

I didn’t miss the innuendo. The offer came with a barely hidden leer. My stomach lurched.

“There’s nothing. Thank you, Professor.”

I’d met Donald at the university as a student myself, barely twenty when I entered his classroom. Expecting to take a class on criminal justice, I had instead found myself a lover and a mentor. Donald was by the book, though, and insisted I transfer out of his class before he took me to bed the first time. We’d moved fast then. Too fast, really, and just a month into our relationship, I was moving in with him. But I’d never left in the last six years. I wondered as Professor Arndt continued down the line if he and Donald had ever been lovers.

As people do after funerals, everyone made their way to our house—Donald’s house—to talk about Donald and to bring food and see if I needed anything in that big lonely house. I could barely function as people tried to engage me in conversation, some pushing glasses of brandy in my hand as though that would bring Donald back to life or make him love me again.

I missed my best friend, Marty Castle, who’d left only a couple of days before Donald’s death for a whirlwind European vacation. I didn’t figure his trip needed to be ruined by me contacting him, but just then I really felt his absence.

Friends offered to stay with me as everyone finally, mercifully left, but I turned them down, assuring them I would be fine. Alone.

I shut the door on the last well-meaning person and double-locked it.

For a few moments, I leaned against the closed door, the silent, empty house mocking me. This had been the house Donald grew up in, inherited upon his mother’s death. When I’d first moved in with Donald, he’d had a small bungalow in Burbank. This house, this mansion really, was in Hollywood Hills.

I moved away from the front hall and made my way to the kitchen. Earlier it had been a mess with glasses and paper plates everywhere from those who had visited, but some of the neighbors had cleaned it for me before they left. Tears stung my eyes, and I willed them away. I couldn’t afford to break down. I might never recover.

After I made myself a cup of tea, I walked down the long hallway to the room at the end on the right. Donald’s office. I twisted the knob and entered the dark room. Flicking on the light, I stared at the large empty leather chair behind his mahogany desk.