Read Funeral with a View for Free Online

stood rigidly at the sink, elbows locked, her palms on the counter.
Her head hung low, looking into the sink as if studying the mating patterns of
lemon-scented soap bubbles.
    “Cat, did Bill just
leave? Jerk didn’t say goodbye.”
    With a snap of her head,
Catherine turned and hurled a dish sponge at my face.
    I ducked out of the way.
The sponge missed my head by inches and hit the wall behind me with a wet splut .
    “Hey! What was that for?”
    “You told him,” she said.
Her tone was venomous, her eyes smoldering. “I can’t believe it. Dammit, Rick,
I can’t believe you fucking told him!”
    That sneaky shit. So much
for him keeping our conversation a secret. I vowed to tear him a new asshole
once I got a hold of him.
    “Look, Cat—”
    “Why?” I felt the calm
before the storm. Things were going to get ugly.
    I shrugged and shook my
head.
    “ Why?” she
shouted.
    “I don’t know why, Cat. I
felt like I had to get it off my chest. And he’s my best friend.”
    “And what am I? Don’t you
give a shit about my feelings?”
    “Of course I do. You know
that.”
    “You have a funny way of
showing it.”
    “How did this even come
up?”
    Cat uttered a short,
mirthless laugh. “He said he knew about our,” she gestured air quotes, “‘ situation ,’
and that his father knows a guy if I wanted to get rid of it.”
    That jerkoff.
    “Okay,” I said. “I fucked
up. I blabbed when I shouldn’t have, but still, it’s not like he wouldn’t have
found out eventually anyway. You know how Bill is. He probably thought he was
helping. I understand you’re bent out of shape, but aren’t you overreacting
just a little bit?”
    “Don’t tell me how I
should and shouldn’t react, Ricky.”
    I slowly walked to her
and took her shoulders gently in my hands. She turned her head, avoiding eye
contact.
    “Look, Cat …”
    “Stop, Ricky,” she said,
shaking her head.
    “I’m sorry I let the cat
out of the bag. I wasn’t thinking.”
    “Ricky …” She clamped her
eyes tighter, her lower lip quivering.
    “Whatever it is you
decide, I’m behind you one hundred percent.”
    Cat placed her arms
between us, her hands on my chest. “Ricky, please.”
    “It’s your decision.”
    She shook her head
faster, pushed my chest harder. “Stop.”
    “I’ll be here either way,
whether you want to keep our—”
    “Stop!” She thrust her arms
up, breaking my hold, and shoved me away. Her face was contorted. Tears flowed
freely down her cheeks.
    “Jesus, Cat. Why are you
being so difficult?”
    “Because I don’t know whose
baby it is!”
    The sentence floated in
the kitchen and bounced off the walls, hitting my ears as if it had been said a
thousand times.
    Eventually I whispered,
“What?”
    “You heard me.”
    “Say it again.”
    Her voice trembled. “I
don’t know which one of you is the father.”
    The walls of my small
kitchen closed in on me. The air felt suffocating despite the air conditioning.
    “But … That doesn’t make
any sense.”
    Cat took a breath, her
arms around her stomach. “I went online and found a conception calculator. It
gave me a range of dates. The night we fooled around with Bill was smack dab in
the middle.”
    I staggered backward,
almost tripping over my own two feet, until I ended up with my back against the
wall, palms pressed tightly against it to keep myself from collapsing to the
floor.
    The baby. Not mine? The
possibility made my head swim. I didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t believe
it.
    My spread fingers turned
into fists. “You knew about this for how long, and you’re just telling me now?”
    “I wanted to tell you.”
    “But you didn’t.”
    She wiped at her
tear-streaked face. “Are you still behind me one hundred percent?”
    “I … I don’t know.”
    “That’s what I thought.
Fuck this.”
    “What?”
    “You hesitated, Rick.
That tells me everything.”
    She tore past me into the
TV room.
    I followed.
    “Where are you going?” I
said,