His nose had clearly once been straight but it had been broken and not set well, he’d gone with that and it was not a bad choice by any stretch of the imagination. His cheekbones cut a line from his square chin to his dark sideburn. This was because, not only was his frame big but his features on the whole were aggressive. Strange, but true and also somewhat startling.

I’d been around a variety of men and women who had commanding presences, Henry being one of them, but this man’s wasn’t that. They also told me he wasn’t a stranger to emotion.

These told me he was not a stranger to sun. His sunglasses, I was certain, hid lines around his eyes. He also had lines on his forehead and around his hard mouth, that even hard still had lips that were so full, they were almost puffy, especially the lower one. It was thick and clipped well but in a way that was not a nod to style, instead it was apparent he didn’t want to spend time on it so his style was wash and go. His black hair had a hint of silvery-gray in it. The surprising part was the rest of him didn’t look Hugo Boss. The small town where Gran lived had some money in it and apparently that man was one of the people who had it. With a practiced eye, I saw his suit was Hugo Boss, which was a little surprising. I knew this from experience not just liking clothes but also being on the fringe of the fashion world for the last twenty-two years. His clothes fit him well and suited him even better. He was wearing a dark blue suit, monochromatic shirt and monochromatic tie. This was because in all my life, and I’d had a long one, and in all my wandering, and I’d wandered far, I’d never seen a man like him. My eyes behind my sunglasses lifted and slid through the crowd standing around the casket.Īnd when they did, my breath also stopped.

On that thought, I felt something else-a strange prickling sensation of awareness gliding over my skin. I wanted no one to notice the tears so I wouldn’t give them any reason to do so, not even movement. I felt them drip off my jaw but I didn’t lift a hand. I felt the wet crawling down my cheeks from under my sunglasses as I moved my eyes back to the casket.

The last time I let loose that kind of emotion was decades ago. Fortunately, when they spilled over, they were silent. On this thought, I felt them coming and I couldn’t stop them. Outside of Henry, she was the only person I had. That didn’t mean I wanted her to be gone. I knew it was coming, seeing as she was ninety-three. Gran, my Gran, the Gran whose body was in that casket. I wanted to rise up from my chair, snatch the words from the air and shove them down his throat. My mouth filled with saliva when I heard these words, my eyes-shaded by both sunglasses and a big black hat-moving from the shining casket covered in a massive spray of deep red roses to the preacher standing at its side.

Read the will by kristen ashley