There were no Christmas dinners or visits.

But from the scant amount of time I’d known him, he’d seemed decent, and trapped by the viper who was my mother.

“My brother is not being buried,” I notified my mother, the first time I’d spoken to her directly since she told me my brother was dead.

“Of course, he is,” she replied, not looking at me, brushing imaginary lint from her Chanel suit.

“He isn’t,” I reiterated through gritted teeth. “He did not want to be buried. He does not believe in burials.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “Oh, I know that he had all sorts of things that he believed in, what with crystals and full moons. But that is not important right now.”

“What my brother believed and how he wanted to be laid to rest is the only thing that’s important right now,” I shouted at her, standing from my chair.

Mom looked anxiously to the funeral director who had not batted an eyelash at my outburst. I suspected that people didn’t always behave their best at these kinds of things. Death tended to make people ugly.

“Keep your voice down,” Mom hushed. “This isn’t seemly.”

“Oh, give me a fucking break, Mom. You grew up in a trailer; you have no fucking clue what’s seemly.”

I reveled at the apples of rage that bloomed on my mother’s cheeks.

She pushed out of her seat then too. “I didn’t raise you to—”

“You didn’t raise me at all,” I interrupted. “Nor did you raise Ansel. I did that. For the both of us. You forced that on us. Forced a lot of things on us.” I stepped toward her. “Like a man who would change the course of my brother’s life forever. I’d bet everything I have that we wouldn’t be standing here right now if you hadn’t married him.”

My mother flinched as if I’d struck her. My palm itched to do just that.

But I’d done all the damage I needed to do with bringing up what happened to Ansel. What ultimately set him on the course to trying to find an escape, the numbness that drugs gave him.

I felt nothing, seeing tears well in my mother’s eyes. They weren’t real. Nothing about the woman was.

I looked at the funeral director, his expression still impassive. “He’ll be cremated,” I informed him.

Then I turned on my heel and left, Rowan at my side, where he’d be for the foreseeable future.

* * *

Ansel was not buried. But Mom kept the plot. It didn’t surprise me. She didn’t like losing at anything, not getting her way. So, she had to hold on to control wherever and whenever she could. Plus, she needed it for whatever bullshit appearances she’d created. The stuffy circle of socialites she’d managed to elbow her way into.

But appearances didn’t matter to me. All that mattered was that my brother’s wishes were being respected. That he’d be scattered across the ocean as he’d wanted.