I looked at Clifford coldly, and with everything I had left, I let the words drift out:
"My father is already buried. No need to trouble yourself."
He stared at me, disbelief all over his face.
"That's impossible! If I wasn't there to perform the rites, how could he be buried? Have you forgotten your father's dying wish?"
His accusation made me want to cry and laugh at once.
Cry, because he still remembered my father's wish.
Laugh, because he was the one who broke his promise, and yet he had the nerve to question me.
Brendan kicked him hard in the shin.
"You animal. Can't you see she's sick? Can't you see she's hurt?"
The pain lit the fury he'd been holding down.
"If she hadn't been vicious enough to shove Lindy, how would she have fallen on her own? She brought this on herself! If Lindy weren't so forgiving, she'd already be locked up for assault!"
So Lindsay faking a faint was fine, and my real injury was something I'd brought on myself.
Meeting my cold stare, something in Clifford turned uneasy, and out of pure instinct he reached to grab me again.
His hand caught the wound they'd just stitched closed.
I couldn't hold it back. The pain sent the tears rolling down my face.
Brendan ignored him and lifted a hand to wipe them away.
Clifford, furious, slapped Brendan's hand aside, seized him by the collar, and demanded coldly,
"When did the two of you get together behind my back?"
A dirty heart sees dirt in everything.
I had no strength to explain, and no wish to. My head hurt so badly it felt ready to split.
The room kept going dark at the edges.
So I simply let myself sink into the endless black.
But somewhere in that black, I thought I heard someone screaming,
"Stop hitting him!"
When I woke again, I was in a hospital room.
Brendan sat by my bed, the corner of his mouth and his cheek all bruised.
Clifford stood off to the side like a doorman, his own face marked up, a dried smear of nosebleed down his shirt that was hard to look at.
I understood at once. They had fought.
Seeing me awake, Clifford spoke first.
"Ada, you go apologize to Lindy, and I'll come back and perform the rites for your father!"
Then he pointed at Brendan.
"And you. If you don't want a lawsuit, kneel and apologize, then get lost back to your country!"
Brendan scraped his chair back and stood, fist clenched. I forced him back down by the hand.
I looked at Clifford, cold.
"Brendan and I did nothing wrong. We won't apologize. And my father doesn't need you to perform his rites anymore."
Clifford let out a scornful laugh.
"I'm as good as a son to your father. Who else is there to perform the rites but me? Don't tell me you're pinning your hopes on him. Is he even worthy?"
I had just nodded when Lindsay came rushing into the room, dropped to her knees at my bedside, and sobbed,
"Ada, I'm sorry. Everything is my fault, all of it. I never should have gotten sick! No, I should just die of it, then the two of you wouldn't be fighting over me..."
Clifford pulled her up at once.
"Lindy, you did nothing wrong. Don't you kneel! The dead don't matter more than the living. Who doesn't understand that?"
Her tears turned to a smile, which she forced back down.
"Cliff, it's all right if my wish goes unfinished. Take good care of Ada, then go home with her for the funeral."
Her thoughtfulness moved him so much his eyes shone with tears, the corners of his mouth curving up.
"That's my Lindy, always the sensible one! Not like some people, staging a whole scene just to fight for attention!"
I looked steadily at the man in front of me, and he felt terrifyingly like a stranger.
When my father was putting money and effort into him, no matter how big anything else was, nothing mattered more than my father.
Now my father was barely gone, and already he'd decided the dead didn't matter, and that my injury was some ploy to win his attention.
It was never that my father didn't matter. It was that my father had nothing left to offer him.
I saw it all clearly now, and I turned to Brendan, full of guilt.
"Does it hurt?"
The smile Lindsay had coaxed onto Clifford's face froze there in an instant.
"Ada Matthews! He hit me till my nose bled everywhere. Can't you see that? How can you still be worrying about him?"
He couldn't see that I was hurt. So what gave him the right to demand I worry about him?
Calmly I looked at Lindsay's hand, dabbing at the corner of his mouth.
"Brendan is my fiancé. If I don't worry about him, should I worry about you, my ex-fiancé instead?"
"Ada Matthews, you really are something, making a scene over a little thing like this. Is it worth it?"
So carrying out my father's dying wish was a little thing.
"It's worth it!"
Clifford saw I wasn't joking, and his tone cooled.
"Then go on making your scene. I won't play along!"
"As it happens, I need a suitable role to be at Lindy's side for the nine things she has left to do. If you still want me to perform your father's rites, if you still want our wedding to go ahead on schedule, then quit while you're ahead!"
"Otherwise, the rites and the wedding both get put off indefinitely!"
"As for your precious Brendan, if he doesn't kneel and apologize within three days, he can wait for my lawyer's letter!"
Clifford slammed the door and was gone.
Watching him walk away, the heartache I'd braced for never came.
Brendan started after him to give him another beating. I caught his hand and said softly,
"Don't dirty your hands over someone who isn't worth it."
"Our wedding. What day do you want it?"
Brendan closed his hand around mine.
"We'll register on the seventh day after your father passed, so he knows I don't break my promises. The wedding, any day you want."
So the wedding I'd begged for and never gotten in all those years could be had for the asking, from the man who truly loved me.
Seven days later, Brendan and I registered our marriage.
Fingers laced together, we walked out of the marriage registry office, meaning to head to the cemetery and tell my father the good news.
And there, of all people, we ran into Clifford.
He looked at the marriage certificate in our hands, and his eyes went red in an instant.
"Ada, what are the two of you doing here?"
