Page 1 of The Woman at the Funeral (Costa Family #11)

Nico

The dead don’t care about punctuality.

It was those left to miss him that had me running through the crowds of umbrellas on the street to race toward the church. Rain splattered my black suit and dripped down my unshaven face.

It had been a long three days since I’d gotten the news—straight from the five o’clock news. These days, news cycles work faster than common decency.

No one should find out that the friend they’ve had since they were five years old had been gunned down on the street from a slick-haired man with mock sympathy in his eyes and judgment held tight in the corners of his lips.

What was he doing out on the street at four in the morning?

What was he into that had people wanting him dead?

They were questions everyone was likely thinking, to be fair. Including the people sitting inside the church that frowned down on the city, ancient and judgmental of everything it had seen since the first massive sandstone brick was laid several hundred years before.

I glanced up, taking a deep breath, then forcing my legs to take me up the steps.

I’d been to plenty of funerals in my day. It came with the territory when you spend your life in a profession that all but guaranteed bloodshed.

That said, this was the first funeral I’d attended since my grandparents passed that belonged to someone I’d known almost all my life, someone who I cared for on more than just a surface level.

The heavy doors groaned open, like they, too, were heavy with grief.

The welcome sign had my step stuttering.

Celebrating the life of Matthew Ferraro.

I recognized the picture that had been used. It had been taken the day before his wedding, snapped by his younger brother just after announcing they were all heading to a strip club, despite Matt promising his fiancée that we were just going out for steak and drinks.

He was smiling big.

I remember I’d been the only one frowning about the whole situation.

I knew instantly that the photo had been chosen by Matt’s family, not his wife. She would have picked something more polished. Maybe one of their wedding snaps. Or, at least, a picture of him with his face shaved and his hair combed.

Though, I had to admit, it was probably the picture that represented the man best. Carefree, unguarded, maybe a bit mischievous.

I forced my gaze away, dipping my finger into the holy water at the entrance and made the sign of the cross like muscle memory before stepping toward the side.

Mary sat watch over the flickering votives in their red glass holders.

I lit one flame for Matthew.

And one for everyone left behind to miss him.

Turning back, I wiped lingering water from my face and looked down the center aisle, the old wooden pews pouring out toward each side.

This wasn’t a Family funeral—packed to the rafters with family, friends, and associates.

This was a small, intimate affair.

And I couldn’t help but notice that Matthew’s family—mother, father, brother, and two aunts—sat to the right.

Leaving Matt’s wife to sit alone on the left, where she’d likely arrived first and sat.

The rift between Matthew’s family and his wife had been there since the beginning—fostered and encouraged by Matt’s mom.

But it felt especially cruel, in their shared grief, to sit apart.

My gaze slid to the left, finding Matt’s widow sitting alone in the front pew.

Her head was ducked.

And I hated that I noticed how the light inside the church bounced off the colorful stained glass and danced on her dark strands—pulled tight into a low bun.

That was the kind of thing I had to work not to pay attention to when Matt was alive. And it was something I really needed not to notice now that he was dead.

Pining for your dead friend’s widow was fucking unhinged.

The ceremony still hadn’t started, so I made my way down the aisle toward Matt’s mom.

As soon as Ronny spotted me, her hands reached for mine, clutching a damp handkerchief between our skin.

Crouching down, I gave her hands a squeeze.

“I’m so sorry, Ronny,” I said, noting her swollen lids and red-stained cheeks. “He loved you so much.”

“He loved you too, Nico. His one true friend.”

“You know I’m here for you if you need anything.”

Her hands squeezed mine again before releasing me to cry quietly into her hands as I moved down the aisle, speaking to Matt’s father, brother, and aunts before making my way toward the side.

I meant to simply slip into a pew behind them.

I was closer to the Ferraro family than I was to Blair.

But I found myself making a big circle around the church, coming down the other side toward the front row.

Silently, I slid in next to Matt’s widow, being careful to leave several inches of space between us, knowing it was dangerous to touch her.

It was bad enough that I could smell that subtle chocolate scent that I knew came from her skin. “She rubs that chocolate lotion all over her. You can smell it best on her neck, behind her knees…”

I forced Matt’s words away, knowing the other places he mentioned. And really, really needing not to think about pressing my face into them, breathing in that scent I knew I’d find there.

Beside me, Blair’s already pin-straight posture went straighter as her head turned, not knowing who to expect to find there.

She didn’t have family or friends with her.

All she had was Matt.

And now she had nobody.

She looked the same as I pictured sometimes, still, at night in my dreams. She had a round face with porcelain-perfect skin, dark brows and lashes, pillowy lips, and the kind of brown eyes that held warmth instead of shadows.

She was breathtaking by anyone’s standards.

Even sitting there, face clean of makeup, in her black mourning dress, she made my chest ache.

Unlike Ronny, she wasn’t puffy and red-streaked.

But I could see tides of grief crashing behind those pretty eyes of hers.

She wasn’t like Matt and his family—loud, extroverted, tossing their opinions and feelings around like beads on Mardi Gras. Blair was more reserved, more private with her true feelings.

“Ever melt an ice princess, Nico?” Matt asked once.

I objected to the term. But I understood the sentiment. There was something special about getting to be the only person that someone opened up to.

That said, I could practically hear the hushed words of Matthew’s family from just across the aisle.

What kind of wife doesn’t cry at her husband’s funeral?

I dipped my chin toward Blair.

She spread her lips outward. It wasn’t a smile. Just a silent thank you for not making her sit alone in her grief.

My gaze slid toward her hands clasped around the funeral program, crinkling the thick glossy paper.

On her left hand, her engagement ring sparkled even in the low light.

A simple square-cut diamond I’d loaned Matt the money to buy and had immediately regretted when he showed me the ring, knowing it wasn’t the style Blair would wear.

There was no wedding band.

That was sitting on the coffee table in my living room. Where Matt had tossed it when he told me that Blair had kicked him out and thrown it at him.

It had sat there since. Matt would occasionally grab it, spinning it on the glossy table surface while lamenting about how he had no idea what he’d done wrong.

Clearly, his biggest sin had been not listening. Because I could give him a whole laundry list of reasons his wife finally had enough.

Seeing what I was looking at, Blair rested her left hand on her thigh over the program, covering it with her right.

The organ music dulled, and in the silence that followed, we all turned to watch the priest bless the casket before draping the pall.

We all rose to our feet as the choir started to sing and the casket rolled down the aisle toward the altar.

The priest followed as Ronny’s cries swelled louder than the music.

Beside me, Blair’s breath shook before we all lowered back into our seats.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” the priest began. “We gather here today to commend our brother, Matthew Ferraro, to the mercy of God, and to comfort one another with the hope of the resurrection.”

The words echoed softly through the nave, reverent and familiar.

“In the face of death, sorrow weighs heavy, but we come not only in grief, but in faith that death is not the end. Let us pray…”

The service was painfully long, the sounds of Ronny’s cries punctuating the grief they all found themselves surrounded by.

Eventually, though, they were all getting to their feet and making their way out toward the front of the building, ready for the drive toward the grave.

Stepping out into the rain, both Matt’s brother and father produced umbrellas, using them to shield their mother and aunts, but not offering the same protection to Blair.

I suddenly cursed myself for not bringing one with me as the raindrops slid down Blair’s cheeks. She didn’t even bother to wipe them away.

“We don’t have any more room,” Ronny said as her sisters loaded into a stretch limo they’d reserved so everyone didn’t have to rely on cabs or fight with city traffic on such a somber day.

There would be plenty of room.

But the meaning was clear.

We don’t want Blair to come with us.

“I’ll bring her,” I offered.

I got a disapproving look, but a shrug from Matt’s mom before she climbed into the limo.

We watched them pull off before Blair turned to me.

“You don’t have to drive me.”

“You don’t drive.” She’d been born and raised in the city. And while she’d traveled extensively for work at one point, she never did get around to getting a license.

Those were little details about her I probably wasn’t supposed to have memorized. But despite myself, whenever Matt tossed out crumbs about his wife, I picked them up and stored them for later.

“I can take a cab.”

“No, let me drive you. You shouldn’t be alone.”

As I gently guided her with a hand near her lower back, but not quite touching, I could have sworn I heard her mumble something about being alone under her breath, but the city streets were too loud to make it out.

Beside me in the car, Blair trembled a bit. Whether it was from the cold rain or the effort to keep her grief in, I had no idea. So I turned on the seat warmers and the heat as we drove toward the cemetery, despite the fact that it was still summer.

Neither of us said a word, and the tension grew tight by the time we were walking toward the grave. Blair’s heels kept sinking into the muddy ground. And when she pitched forward one time, she finally took my offered arm as we gathered under a white tent set up beside the casket.

The service started, and Ronny’s cries were joined by those of Matt’s aunts, father, and brother.

Beside me, Blair was stony-faced as she watched the casket lower.

As for me, well, being the oldest child in a large family with a lot of emotional weight put on my shoulders, I learned to tamp my feelings down at an early age.

The grief was there.

But it wasn’t allowed to surface.

Eventually, it was all over.

And Ronny turned toward us. “There’s a repast at Maria’s. For close family,” she added, casting a quick sideways glance toward Blair. Who was not close. And now would never be. “And you, of course, Nico. Though I know you’re a busy man.”

Blair and I both watched as the family made their way back toward the parking lot before we silently started the trek ourselves.

Again, we said nothing. Not on the drive back to the city. Or toward the apartment building she once shared with Matt.

She didn’t even comment on my following her up to her door. She just silently slid her keycard into the lock and moved inside, leaving me to follow. Or not.

But she stopped a few feet inside the door, back to me.

“Was he staying with you?” she asked, her voice a hollow shell.

“Yes.”

“So you know,” she said, turning toward me.

“Yeah, I know.”

“I probably have no right to grieve,” she said, her voice getting thick.

“Regardless of what happened the past few days, Blair, he was your husband. You have every right to grieve. In whatever way you need to.”

That, apparently, was the right—or wrong, depending on how you were looking at it—thing to say.

Blair’s hands rose to her face as a cry escaped her.

Then she just… shattered.

“Oh, sweetheart,” I said, moving forward to catch her right before she slid to the floor.

I gathered her close, holding her against my chest as she fell apart.

And hated myself for thinking of how nicely she fit in my arms.