Get caught up:
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It was just about the last place in the world that Max wanted to be but he felt duty bound to be there. The funeral home was typical: decorated like some kind of Victorian mansion and laid out to distract the visitors from realizing their dead family member was only one of many. There were also no visible doors that led to anything distasteful – like the body preparation rooms, offices, etc. Everything was spotless. There weren’t even any dust motes to be seen where the sunlight streamed in through spotless windows. Max took a closer look and realized that at least one of the windows as a big computer monitor. It gave the illusion of an interior wall being an exterior wall and offered distraction to the visitor in the form of a sunlit grass expanse.
When Max had announced his intention to go into the military as an enlisted man rather than going to college for financial management, Max’s adopted father had been irate. When Max made it clear that he had no intention of EVER going into the “family business” – which essentially involved managing the family’s various money making businesses and insuring that the money itself made more money – his adopted father had disowned him. Max hadn’t talked to his adopted father for years; not since the day his adopted father had ejected him from the house and told him that he wasn’t welcome back.
Max had, since then, talked to his adopted mother a few times but not much. She made it clear that she felt like she was betraying her husband even by just talking to Max. Max’s adopted older sister though… she was cool and Max talked to her at least a couple times each week. She too had rejected the family plan of marrying some rich guy who was also part of the family business. Her name was Rose. She and Max agreed on one thing as they grew up together: the “family plan” was all about maintaining appearances for the family friends. It had nothing to do with being happy, pursuing what made you feel fulfilled, or anything even remotely similar. It was about making the Breaklin name look rich, powerful and perfect in every way.
Max’s adopted parents, Frederick and Mary, had not shown up for Max’s graduation from Navy basic training, nor for his graduation from Corpsman school. They hadn’t done so much as send him a Christmas card or send him a letter during his deployments. He’d made sure he invited them to his graduation from the police academy but he hadn’t even gotten a polite negative RSVP. They simply pretended as if he didn’t exist.
So when Rose had called to tell Max that their father (her biological father, his adopted father) had passed from a sudden massive heart attack, Max didn’t really have it in him to feel any sense of loss or sorrow. He was still acutely aware of the loss his sister might feel and he was VERY aware of how devastated his adopted mother was going to act – whether she actually was or not. It would be a grand show of grief and sorrow and – Max was willing to bet – she would somehow make a big deal out of how there was no family to take over the business now that her dear husband was passed. What with Rose having married and doing well in her own business and Max having just turned his back on the family in favor of wearing a uniform – and she’d say it as if it was a distasteful thing to do – there was just no one to take over. Whatever would she do?
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Read the rest of this episode, part of Season Three, in the anthology ebook available exclusively on Amazon for kindle: http://amzn.to/2jcbPVB
