Chapter Three
The next week passed in a blur as I took time off from my internship to attend to all of the somber details following the death of a parent. Jeanne seemed similarly overwhelmed, and our mutual discomfort following our interlude in my bedroom rendered us both useless to the other as emotional supports. Once the funeral was over the interminable meetings with lawyers that were apparently necessary in the resolution of a large estate took up many hours until they began to slack off later that week. Then I began to feel the void, both of my father’s loss (mainly symbolic in that he and I seldom spoke), and of my stepmother (an enormous gulf as our current uneasiness cut off our previously rich daily conversation).
So it was with a surprising amount of gladness that I received a
