The suit coat was a traditional, funeral appropriate dark, but from the small podium Dave Bantrim imagined that Cameron Lusick was in his royal blue Oakland Catholic varsity jacket.
Somewhere in the collage of photos, was Dave in his maroon and gold All Saints varsity jacket holding Megan’s hand.
Maybe it was a grief response, Dave’s brain traveling back to the happiest days, when he met the love of his life, Cameron’s sister.
Cameron hated Dave back then, of course, the school sports rivalry, silly adolescent stuff.
Megan had a pregnancy scare, and when her brother found out they had fought, really fought, blood and stitches, idle death threats.
It was a cruel fluke that Dave had graduated from State and gone to work at Complex Synthetics, which bought out Seltadyne, and laid Cameron off permanently.
None of Dave’s invitations to water ski, or come to the winter house in Muscle Shoals, or any of dozens of kindnesses Dave extended had changed things.
Dave, for his part, didn’t need Cameron’s friendship, but the feud bothered Megan deeply.
Dave glanced behind him, Megan’s cold hands clasped
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Jimmy Doom's Roulette Weal to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.