Page 65 of The Last One to Let You Down

“Coming out to my family was one thing. The world? That big, ugly place out there?” Cypress shook his head. “That’s another thing entirely.” He rested his hand on Tom’s knee, squeezing gently. “What about you? You out with your family?”

“Yeah, I am now, but I hid it for a long time.” Tom chuckled mirthlessly. “Well, I tried to anyway. I know they love me, but they are definitely on the conservative side, and I was terrified. I didn’t officially come out until I was in mortuary school.”

“And when was that?”

“2008.”

“Wait, what year did you graduate high school?”

“2003,” Tom replied. “I fucked off for a few years trying to figure out what I wanted to do. You?”

“I graduated in 1997. I’m forty-one.”

“I’m thirty-five.”

“Ah, just a young little thing.” Cypress grinned, pouring them both more wine.

“Pffft, you are not that much older than me,” Tom protested.

“Mmm, I feel old sometimes.” Cypress sipped his wine. “When you were starting at mortuary school, I’d already been working here for thirteen years.”

“Holy shit.”

“I started when I was sixteen, fell in love with it, never gave it up.” Cypress smiled fondly. “Took over when my parents retired.”

“They still with us?”

“Oh, yeah. Grandma and Grandpa, too.” Cypress laughed. “That day I was on the phone? Fussing about cake? That was about my Grandpa trying to get into this cake my mother had baked for me.”

“Stubborn, huh?”

“Very.”

“They live close?”

“They all live next door. The blue house.”

“No way!”

“My mother had wanted that damn house for as long as I can remember because it has that big wraparound porch. It finally came up for sale a few years ago, and well, there they all went and gave this place to me.”

“That’s so sweet,” Tom chuckled. “And a little weird that they’re so close.”

“Nah, they’re family. I like having them there.” Cypress rubbed Tom’s thigh. “Your family still around?”

“Um.” Tom paused to take a big drink of wine. “No siblings, Dad is around, but my mother died in a car accident when I was fifteen.”

“Christ, I’m so sorry,” Cypress said, reaching for Tom’s hand, his eyes full of sympathy.

“Dad got remarried pretty fast. It was hard. It was… not easy for me to adjust.” Tom squeezed Cypress’s hand. “They live like an hour away. We don’t talk much. My mom dying, well, it’s kinda how I got into the funeral business.”

“Really?”

“So, she was hit by a drunk driver, and my dad had insisted on an open casket.” Tom paused for another drink to help him get through the story. “She looked awful. She didn’t look like herself at all. Knowing now what I do about embalming and restorative arts, I know the people who took care of her were lazy.

“You could still see this big bruise on her hand they didn’t bother trying to hide, and there was this blob on her forehead that looked like a lump where they were covering up a cut but didn’t finish the wax. It’s been twenty years since she died, and I can’t remember what her voice sounded like, but I will never forget what she looked like in her casket.

“It’s hard enough to say goodbye to someone you love, but it’s a hundred times worse when you don’t even recognize them. That last picture, that final viewing, stays with you. It’s why I work so hard, why I spend so much time with every case that I have, why I spend ten minutes just trying to get a collar straight or whatever.