Read Online Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng - Free Book Online Page A

white-toothed, clean-cut, and solid. The Lees do not attend church, but the funeral home had recommended him, and James had accepted without asking any questions. Now James sits up straight, pressing the chair’s back into his shoulder blades, and tries to listen to the service. The minister reads the Twenty-third Psalm, but in the revised text: I have everything I need instead of I shall not want; Even if I walk through a very dark valley instead of Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. It feels disrespectful, a corner cut. Like burying his daughter in a plywood box. What else could you expect from this town, he thinks. On his right, the scent of the lilies on the casket hits Marilyn like a warm, wet fog, and she nearly retches. For the first time, she wishes she were the sort of woman, like her mother, who carried a handkerchief. She would have pressed it to her face and let it filter the air, and when she lowered it the cloth would be dirty pink, the color of old bricks. Beside her, Hannah knits her fingers. She would like to worm her hand onto her mother’s lap, but she doesn’t dare. Nor does she dare look at the coffin. Lydia is not inside, she reminds herself, taking a deep breath, only her body—but then where is Lydiaherself? Everyone is so still that to the birds floating overhead, she thinks, they must look like a cluster of statues.
    Out of the corner of his eye, Nath spots Jack sitting at the edge of the crowd beside his mother. He imagines grabbing Jack by the shirt collar to find out what he knows. For the past week, his father has called the police every morning asking for new information, but Officer Fiske says only, over and over, that they are still investigating. If only the police were here now, Nath thinks. Should he tell his father? Jack stares at the ground in front of him, as if he is too ashamed to look up. And then, when Nath himself glances back to the front, the coffin has already been lowered into the ground. The polished wood, the white lilies fastened to its top—vanished, just like that: nothing but the blank space where it had once stood. He’s missed it all. His sister is gone.
    Something wet touches his neck. He reaches up to wipe it away and discovers that his whole face is wet, that he’s been crying silently. On the other side of the crowd, Jack’s blue eyes are suddenly fixed on him, and Nath blots his cheek in the crook of his arm.
    The mourners begin to leave, a thin line of backs filing toward the parking area and the street. A few of Nath’s classmates, like Miles Fuller, give him a sympathetic glance, but most—embarrassed by his tears—decide not to speak to him, and turn away. They won’t have another chance; in light of Nath’s high grades and the tragic situation, the principal will exempt him from the last three weeks of school, and Nath himself will decide not to attend commencement. Some of the neighbors circle the Lees, squeezing their arms and murmuring condolences; a few of them pat Hannah on the head, as if she’s a tiny child, or a dog. Except for Janet Wolff, her usual white doctor’s coat replaced by a trim black suit, James and Marilyn don’t recognize most of them. By the time Janet reaches her, Marilyn’s palms feel grimy, her whole body dirty, like a rag passed from hand to soiled hand, and she can barely stand Janet’s touch on her elbow.
    On the other side of the grave, Jack stands off to the side, waiting for his mother, half-hidden in the shadow of a big elm. Nath weaves his way over, cornering him against the tree trunk, and Hannah, trapped at her parents’ side by a thicket of adults, watches her brother nervously.
    “What are you doing here?” Nath demands. Up close, he can see that Jack’s shirt is dark blue, not black, that though he’s wearing dress pants he still has on his old black-and-white tennis shoes with the hole in the toe.
    “Hey,” Jack says, eyes still on the ground. “Nath. How are