CHAPTER 14: Julian's Last Seat in the Front Row

Julian sank into the front pew because standing required more certainty than he had left.
He stared at Adrian's coffin with a resentment that looked almost like grief from a distance. Eleanor wondered if, beneath all the debt and envy and ruin, some boy inside him still loved the brother who had once tied his skates and paid his tuition and lied to their father when Julian crashed the first car.
Then Julian looked at the folder, and the boy vanished.
'You think you won,' he said to Eleanor.
She was tired suddenly. Tired in her bones, behind her eyes, in the old scar of every family excuse she had accepted because Adrian kept asking for peace.
'No,' she said. 'I think my son is dead.'
That answer left Julian with nowhere honorable to stand.
Eleanor faced the guests. 'Anyone who came to mourn him may stay for the prayer. Anyone who came to calculate may leave before the door is locked for the examiner.'
For once, old money obeyed without being told twice.