Chapter 59 Funeral and Memory
The actual day of Layla’s funeral arrived without sunlight.
It looked like the whole of New York was muted like someone had turned the volume down on the entire city.
I wore my grief so deep that it barely had shape anymore.
Layla’s family went ahead with the funeral after the police found a body three days ago—an unidentified woman who was burned beyond recognition in an alleyway in Brooklyn was concluded to be Layla.
Now, the question everyone asked was, who would be so cruel to burn her body? But at some point, it looked like it didn't matter anymore because everyone seemed almost relieved to have something physical to mourn.
As for me, I didn't even know what to think because a part of me rejected it completely yet, another part clung to the finality of Layla’s misfortune.
Alas, I just knew that grief had settled deep into my bones.
The funeral gathering was small and intimate probably the kind she would have wanted because she was the kind of person that hated spectacle and attention.
Only close family, a few old friends, and a handful of Vale Corp employees who actually knew her. But then, the absence of the high-level executives was loud.
I shook my head in pity, they were men and women she had served loyally for decades, yet, they couldn’t spare an hour to stand beside her grave.
I stood beneath the canopy beside the casket, my black coat was pulled tight around me like an armor, my hair was pinned neatly back, and my face felt hollow. My eyes burned but no tears came again. I guess it's because I'd run out of tears days ago that crying had became useless.
Jack stood beside me and I let him because I didn’t have the strength to push him away.
His hand enclosed mine as his thumb brushed slowly over my knuckles in a quiet rhythm, like he was grounding me, reminding me he was still there.
He didn’t speak much and I was thankful for it. Every so often, when my shoulders trembled and when they did without warning, he would pull me closer, his arm firm around my waist.
I could swear that If I had refused his touch, I would have shattered.
Then the priest’s voice drifted over us. “Layla was a woman of remarkable generosity… of intelligence and quiet strength…”
That was when my mind drifted back to when I was nine years old—the day I watched my mother's casket disappear into the earth. That day, almost no one came and I desperately needed someone to anchor me, even Conrad lasted five minutes for his wife's burial.
I remember he stood at a distance, surrounded by his bodyguards and occasionally glanced down his wrist watch as if he had more important place to be.
I was having more than a bad day when Layla came to my rescue.
“I’m here, Elena,” she had whispered into my ears and she had stayed with me.
The memory hit so hard that my chest tightened with pain because now I was standing at her funeral and history was repeating itself in the cruelest way.
Then a black car pulled up near the edge of the cemetery. I didn’t need to look to know who it was—my body recognized the presence before my eyes confirmed it.
Conrad stepped out looking composed as ever. Jack stiffened beside me which was weird because I'd never seen him react that way to my father's presence.
Conrad didn't bother to approach the casket, he just stood at a distance and observers turned subtly, whispers rippling through the small crowd.
Good thing there was no paparazzi, it would have been worse.
My father looked exactly the same as he had when my mother died—unbothered and untethered from the grief of others.
And soon, our eyes met across the burial ground like we were acknowledging each other in a boardroom.
Then he turned and got back into the car and left. Exactly five minutes, again.
My bottom lip trembled before I could stop it and I almost broke down in tears but I didn't.
Jack felt the shift in me immediately and his arm tightened around my waist, pulling me subtly closer.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured near my temple, his words almost undid me but I inhaled deeply.
The priest concluded the final prayer and the silence that followed felt sacred before the casket began to lower into the earth.
I watched it descend inch by inch and at the sight of it, something inside of me folded in on itself and I knew what it was: a part of my childhood, my safety and whatever little softness I had left.
When the casket settled into the ground, people stepped forward one by one, tossing handfuls of earth but my feet were rooted in place.
I just watched until the top of the casket was no longer visible and until the soil began to swallow it whole.
Layla was everything to me and she's no more.
My eyes burned again.
“Elena,” Jack whispered, brushing his lips gently against my temple. “It’s okay.”
But It wasn’t.
A few birds fluttered suddenly from the nearby trees, startled by something unseen. The sound made several people glance up but I barely registered it before the guests began to leave gradually mumbling soft condolences and light touches on my arm.
“She was wonderful.”
“She’ll be missed.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I answered none of them and eventually, the chairs emptied and the priest left.
The cemetery grew quiet again but I stayed because if I left, it would mean accepting this to be real.
I was glad that Jack didn’t rush me, he stayed with me in silence.
When my legs finally weakened, because the weight of standing became too much, he gently guided me as we walked slowly towards the car.
I didn’t cry, yet.
As we reached the car, I glanced back one last time at the fresh mound of earth and in that stillness, something inside me shifted but grief remained.
I just had this resolve that no matter what, I won't cry until I bring her killer to justice.
Now, I was ready to know the truth and allow it burn me.