The Price of Grief
Mom pressed a check for $1,900 into my palm right in front of Dad’s casket, whispering that it was my full share. My brother Kyle smirked like the deal was done while Mom held out a waiver for me to sign. They didn’t know I was carrying an envelope Dad made me promise to open only when they tried to push me out.
My name is Taylor Martin, and I had been standing in the Henderson Funeral Home for exactly forty-five minutes when my mother decided to put a price tag on my grief. The drive back to Maple Hollow had been a blur of gray highways and static-filled radio stations. I lived three states away, a deliberate geographical buffer between myself and the suffocating gravity of my family home.
When the call came about Dad on a Tuesday afternoon, I was at a construction site wearing a hard hat, completely unprepared for the ground to drop out from beneath me. Frank Martin was dead. Heart failure.
It happened so fast that by the time I processed the words, he was already gone. I drove back expecting to find a house in mourning. Instead, when I walked into the viewing room, I felt like I’d walked into a corporate mixer that just happened to feature a casket.
Dad looked small. That was the first thing that hit me. Frank Martin had been a quiet man, but in death he looked diminished.
They’d dressed him in a navy suit I didn’t recognize—likely something Kyle had picked because it looked expensive, not because Dad would have liked it. Dad was a flannel-and-corduroy man who hated ties. Seeing him in that stiff silk noose made my eyes burn.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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