Chapter 146 The funeral - Miguel POV
The Cargills are saying goodbye today. The funeral is going to be small, private and family only.
Thes device is being held in a small church close to the cemetary. Nothing fancy, no lunch in a hotel afterwards. It's not a funeral fitting for a Cargill, but it's even more than what my little brother deserves.
I would've wanted all those women and men in those videos to have seen him in a coffin, knowing that he can no longer terrorise them, or blackmail them into doing something that they didn't want to.
My brother was a vile man, and I'm coming for the vile woman who raised him next.
She's sitting next to my father like a zombie in the car that is driving us to the church. She's dressed appropriately in a demure black pants suit, her hair and makeup done by a professional, but she looks like a dead woman walking, her eyes glassy from the medication the doctor put her on.
Ben left her a letter. After the police cleared it, they gave her the letter, but nobody knows what's inside it. Maybe I can give my dearest stepmother a little too much to drink on the top of her medication so I can read what Ben said before his final hours.
When this funeral is over, I'm moving out. I can't stand her stifling presence or the atmosphere of death hanging over me anymore.
And I want to see my woman, I want to kiss the stomach that is housing my baby.
My life is not how I want it yet, but I'm gaining so many things that I thought would never happen for me. Things are certainly not the way I thought it would be when Caroline came into my room. Back then I just wanted everything to end.
If I didn't see that dark haired girl on the first day of my senior year, maybe I would have become someone like Ben.
Who knows?
He can be glad he killed himself, because if he ruined her life more than he already did, his death wouldn't have been so kind.
Father has to help Caroline out of the car, it's like she can't even move her legs. There aren't even many of the family that came out. Caroline's parents are there, looking as stiff and stoic as usual. I wonder what kind of parents were they for her to have done the things she did. Was she abused as a child? I read somewhere that abusers were usually abused. Was it her father? Did he do to her what Lucille's stepfather did?
I have so many questions, the demons she created in my teenage years wanting to come out and demand answers.
The Navy gave me an outlet, calming me when I was in high pressure situations. Without it, I'm feeling bloodthirsty, and I keep on having to remind myself that I'm not like them. I have a mother who loves me, who wants me to be a good man. I'm going to become a father in five and a half months, I have to be a man that child looks up to.
I have to get rid of Caroline so the monster inside me can finally rest.
The casket is open when we enter the church. I'm walking behind Father and Caroline, and her knees buckle down the aisle. I grab her other arm so she doesn't go tumbling to the ground, but the only reason I'm helping her is so I can see the anguish on her face.
The makeup artist did a fine job, because the tears streaming down her face does nothing to the products. Her perfect face full of pain stays intact, and Father and I walk her to the casket.
Maybe I didn't believe it myself, but finality rings through me when I look down and there he lies.
The last time I saw him, his face was blue, but they must have done something to his face too, because he looks like a damn angel sleeping. The similarities to my own face is so striking, and I yet again wonder how we can look so alike and be so different.
"My boy!" Caroline cries out, the same sound she made when I got home, like a wounded animal looking for its cub. "My baby!"
With a strength I didn't know she had, she pulls herself from our grip and throws herself on the casket.
It's a good thing there aren't many people to witness this spectacle.
"Caroline!" Father whispers, trying to pull her back up. "Get it together!"
I'm trying really hard not to smirk. We have been taught from a very young age that there is a certain way we should act in public, and the way she's acting right now contradicts everything she used to say.
It looks like Father's words aren't helping, so her father steps in and drags her off Ben's body, the whispers from the other family members attending, loud even in my ears.
She still sniffles softly in her seat when they eventually manage to get her to sit down. I reluctantly sit down next to her, listening to a Reverend talk about God and how His way is the best.
I can't help but wonder where was God when I was a vulnerable child who needed someone.
It seems the longer I sit and listen to him, the more jaded I become.
There is nobody saying anything kind about my brother like in other funerals, aside from his grandfather who gives the eulogy which seems cold and factual.
And when we go to the cemetary, and his casket goes down the hole, a part of me gets buried with him.
I suddenly feel angry that he decided this is how his life ends. I feel like he stole something from me.
I realise he's probably not the one I should blame for how my life went, and the one I should be mad at, is crying next to me.
I look down at Caroline, and her perfectly manicured hand clutching my arm.
Her day of reckoning is coming.
And this time, I will be the executioner.