I grabbed Homer's wrist.
“Stop!”
He wrenched his arm free hard.
My feet slipped out from under me.
I went down into the gravel of the yard.
My palms burned.
A sharp stone tore open my elbow, and blood seeped through my sleeve fast.
A dozen or so relatives stood around, there to help set up the wedding room.
Every one of them saw him shove me.
Not one came to help me up.
Instead the uncle seized the moment and raised his voice.
“Let everyone here be the judge.”
“This is a burial casket meant for her grandmother, and the old woman is a Pruitt, so of course the thing belongs to the Pruitts.”
“Homer's the eldest grandson. Sleeping on the casket before his wedding wards off misfortune for the old woman and adds to her blessings.”
Several relatives crowded in at once.
One said a happy occasion pressed down the death-aura, and maybe Grandma would live a few extra years for it.
Another said the casket was already inside the new room, and hauling it out again before the wedding would cut off the eldest grandson's line.
Someone else stared at the blood on my hand, blaming me for spoiling a joyful event with bad luck.
The aunt waited until every voice had swung her way, then dabbed at the corner of her eye and drove the knife in.
“Your grandmother hasn't even closed her eyes yet, and here you are rushing to spend a hundred and sixty grand on a coffin.”
“So which is it, are you being a good granddaughter, or are you hoping she goes soon?”
Something in my chest clenched tight.
The blood in my palm ran down between my fingers and dripped onto the ground.
Grandma was so afraid of being a burden to me that even in the hospital she wouldn't let herself buy a carton of milk.
And in their mouths,
my preparing her burial casket turned into me wishing her dead.
I pushed against the ground and got to my feet.
“The contract is mine. The money is mine.”
“You broke the lock and hauled it off. That's theft.”
The uncle's face went black on the spot.
“I'm your uncle, and you're calling it theft?”
“A few years earning money in the city and you've forgotten every rule your ancestors set down?”
Homer stood at the uncle's side.
I looked at him for a long moment.
“At nineteen you couldn't even pay your own training fees. Who was it that shoved her summer-job money into your hands?”
Something flickered in his eyes.
The uncle gave a cold snort.
“Dragging up old grudges again.”
The line was like an out he'd handed Homer.
Homer's head came up at once.
“It's a hundred and sixty grand, so what?”
“You've held that little bit of money over this whole family for three years, and you actually think you're some grand devoted granddaughter?”
With that he turned and hurried the others to keep making up the bed.
A big red mattress covered the longevity patterns that had been hammered through.
To get the casket flush against the wall,
the uncle even had someone bring a saw and cut off the tenons jutting out the side.
Wood shavings scattered across the floor.
In that instant, I didn't rush forward again.
A yard full of kin, all on their side.
If I threw myself at them now, they'd only pin me down.
And I'd keep carrying the name of the one who wrecked the wedding and offended Grandma.
I took out my phone.
I photographed the casket lid hammered through.
The joints sawed apart.
The cracks the dragging had caused.
And the whole wedding room draped in red cloth.
Seeing me take pictures, the uncle actually laughed.
“Get it nice and clear.”
“Let the city folks see too, how grand our Homer's hundred-and-sixty-grand solid wood wedding bed is.”
He thought I was already out of options.
He even had the aunt hand me wedding candy and tell me to stay and help.
I ignored it.
When I got back to the family home, the broken lock was still lying on the ground.
The door frame was all dented from the crowbar.
I went into the security system and downloaded the full raw footage from the small hours.
The uncle prying the lock.
The aunt holding the flashlight.
Homer looping the rope around the casket and dragging it.
Every single move caught clear as day.
I backed the video up three times.
One copy saved to the cloud.
One copied onto an external drive.
The last one sent to a lawyer.
Then I dug out the woodworking contract, the bank records for the hundred and sixty thousand, and the workshop's signed delivery receipt.
The first page of the contract had my name on it.
The line for whom the casket was made read: Grandmother, Zoey Pruitt.
The casket's serial number matched the number in the footage exactly.
The lawyer replied quickly::
【You have enough evidence. Don't get into any more head-on confrontations for now.】
I pressed the phone dark.
The wound in my palm was still seeping blood.
Only then did I notice I'd been shaking the whole time.
I went to the sink to rinse off the grit, my fingers curling with the pain.
That line Homer had thrown out just now, that I was hoping Grandma would die soon.
It hurt worse than the wound.
I'd once thought of him as my own brother.
From this moment on, no more.
The phone rang out of nowhere.
The aunt's shriek stabbed into my ear.
“Tessa, Homer's fallen off the casket!”
“If anything happens to him, I'll make you pay with your life!”
