Beneath the Stain - Part 7 by Amy Lane

the ordered chairs and looking solemn, and Samantha and her mother and father—and then looked at his phone for the time.
    “We about ready?” he asked, tuning idly, and Kell, Jefferson, and Stevie shook their heads.
    “You’re doing all the hard shit, Mackey,” Kell answered, getting his own guitar out of the case. “Are you ready?”
    “If you drop the fucking song, Kell, I will throw you into the big hole.”
    “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. Grant didn’t make this easy on you.”
    Mackey rolled his eyes. “God, ain’t that the truth. Didn’t make it easy on any of us. Okay, everyone. Whether you’re ready for this or not, here goes.” He swung to the assembly without ceremony or reverence, and Trav wondered if everyone was as surprised by Grant’s edict as he was. Tell the truth. Tell it unvarnished. Be pissed off if you want. And sing something angry. This isn’t the real ceremony. That’s private. This is the rock star show. It’s all the public needs to know.
    “Grant Adams,” Mackey said, and then paused like he was choosing his words. He said Grant’s name again, licked his lips, and then, like a cannonball, he was off.
    “Grant Adams asked me and my brothers to talk at his funeral. You may notice we’re burying an empty casket, which I think is weird and Kell thinks is fucking hilarious, and you’re welcome to think what you like, but it’s what we’re doing. See, Grant Adams and I….” He took a deep breath and met Trav’s eyes. Whatever he saw in Trav’s eyes must have given him strength, because he kept going.
    “Grant Adams and I were in love for five years. We were lovers for five years. And we kept that from everybody—from his parents, from his girlfriend, from my brothers. And he let me go, at first because he was afraid of what would happen if he came out and told the world about us, and then because his girlfriend lied and said she was knocked up, because she knew it would keep him here.”
    Samantha gasped and Mackey rolled his eyes. “Yeah, don’t nobody think I can do math or anything. Grant neither. We knew. We figured it out. It was a shitty thing to do, but Grant loved that baby, so he forgave you for it. Don’t worry. Anyway, my boyfriend and my brother’s best friend felt like none of you knew him. You knew what you thought was him. The good boy who stayed home when he wanted to fly, the nice husband, the good father, and maybe he was partly those things—but that was just the outside. That’s what you get to bury. Kell?”
    Mackey’s delivery had been sarcastic and aggressive, and Kell’s was not much better.
    “We’re going to take his ashes to the San Francisco Bay and we’re going to throw them in. He’s got a boat, and a trust, and a whole thing worked out. Me and my brothers are going to see it, and we’re going to ride on the ferry, which he told us was hella fun, and we’re going to eat fried donuts at the pier and buy all sorts of shit we don’t need and ship it up here to his daughter. He told me once that some of his happiest moments had been in San Francisco. I didn’t know then that those were when he was sneaking away to bang my brother silly, but now that I know, I figured you all have to live with that information too. It should make you happy that he got some happy, and if it does, then you can count yourself as someone my best friend—my brother—really loved. If it doesn’t, I’m going to let you live with that, because it should, and yes, I think it makes you a bad person if you think worse of the dead because he stole him some happy.”
    “Grant wanted us to sing a nice song and all,” Jefferson said, picking up the thread. Even in rehearsals they’d gotten good at picking up the thread when the last person dropped it. Which might come in handy, especially if the crowd turned ugly. “But not here. He wants my brother to play their love song, which I don’t know if Mackey will ever be able to sing