Rain mixed with dust, turned the sky into an ochre bruise as Crystal Armani stood by the cemetery gates. The others crowded around her father's grave like an uneasy congregation shifting under umbrellas. She lingered apart, feeling like a stranger trespassing through her own grief. As the prayers rose in the air, their murmurs caught in the wind and unraveled into nothing, she wondered if she had already forgotten how to mourn.
The imam's voice floated above the silence, wavering against the hum of rain and wind.
"He was a good man," he uttered loudly.
Though to Crystal, the words sounded like a phrase he'd recited one too many times. The mourners were a blur of muted colors, a sea of charcoal suits and dark dresses. She recognized some, a distant uncle here, a family friend there, but the others had faces that melted into each other, strangers united by their curiosity more than grief.
"Crystal," her sister called, an edge of reproach cutting through the soft din. Amira stood closer to the grave, her face drawn and serious, the same way it had been the day their father's doctors announced, with solemn predictability, that the end was near.
Crystal dragged her feet across the gravel, each step heavier than the last, until she reached her sister's side.
"You should say something," Amira whispered, her breath warm against the cold front of Crystal's indifference.
A reluctant sigh escaped Crystal's lips. She took a breath, felt the air recoil in her chest, and finally spoke. "He worked hard. He tried." Her voice cracked, not from emotion but from the strain of sincerity.
Amira placed a hand on her shoulder, a brief and formal touch. "It's okay to be sad, you know."
Crystal nodded, not because she agreed, but because she didn't trust herself to argue. Around her, the crowd shifted, performing their grief like seasoned actors. The clumps of wet earth thudded on the casket, muffled, rhythmical. It was supposed to be comforting, she thought, this ritual of goodbye. Instead, it felt hollow like an echo with no origin.
The memory of their father loomed large, more substantial than the man himself had ever been. In life, he'd been the hustler and dreamer, his hands always chasing the next big thing. A modest start with leather handbags, then a rush to build empires; boutiques, superstores and each one as fleeting as a breath on glass. She remembered him consumed by endless projects, while the rest of them sat on the edges of his obsessions, afraid to be drawn into the emptiness of his ambition.
"Do you think he knew how much we cared?" Crystal found herself asking, the words left a stale taste on her tongue.
Amira gave her a sidelong glance. "Of course he did."
"Then why didn't he tell us?"
"Maybe he didn't think he had to."
Crystal let the silence answer for them, watching as the dirt filled the hole where her father's coffin lay underneath. Around her, the murmurs died down now replaced by the mumbling of condolences offered and umbrellas folding.
"We're having a gathering at the house," Amira said, almost an afterthought. "You should come."
"Maybe later," Crystal replied, knowing she wouldn't.
She drifted to the edge of the crowd, the damp cold sneaking its way through her skin. There were people to greet, hands to shake, but she felt clumsy and out of place, a child in the oversized coat of adult grief.
The words of sympathy washed over her like rain, persistent and numbing. She caught the gaze of her mother, who was accepting the condolences with a stoic grace. It was an act of strength that Crystal couldn't comprehend, a pillar that only made her own frailty more apparent.
"I'm sorry for your loss," someone said, and she nodded automatically, the response sticking to her throat like wet cotton. It was only when she turned to face the cemetery gates that she realized how thin the crowd had become, how quickly people moved on when the dust began to settle.
She walked back to the car, her steps a slow resignation. The rain had finally stopped, but the sky remained bruised, a reminder that even storms leave their marks.
The apartment was a history book with too many pages, and Crystal Armani had read them all.
There was the crack in the living room ceiling that had watched over every one of her birthdays, a stack of old newspapers she'd never gotten around to recycling, even a stub from the ice rink where she broke her wrist at twelve. It was a museum of expired time, and she had the unsettling feeling that it was curating her as much as she was curating it.
Her father's desk dominated the corner, an altar to his mania with its chaos of papers and half-formed dreams. It even smelled like him; leather, tobacco, and hope, each scent as suffocating as it was familiar.
She sat at the desk, a general taking stock of a battlefield. The papers were the ruins of her father's empire, maps of ambition crisscrossed with the red ink of his own making. She leafed through the invoices, the business plans, the letters to potential investors who never bothered to respond.
To her, each sheet felt like a shard of glass. She recognized his handwriting, the jagged scrawl that barely contained his urgency. The chaos was so like him, filling the space and her mind with an ever expanding pressure.
He was always going to make it big. She could still hear the way he said it, his voice booming with a conviction so strong it made her believe him, even against her own instincts. She remembered the day he signed the lease for his first store, how they toasted with cheap soda because he said champagne was for the finish line, and they were just getting started.
"One store in every major city," he had promised, his eyes already miles ahead. "We'll leave a legacy."
Crystal let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding, a long exhale that did nothing to lighten the load on her shoulders. Legacy. Even the word felt broken now, like the neglected fixtures and faded dreams around her. When things were good, she had worked marketing jobs, chasing her own kind of independence, while helping him part-time at the store. She'd convinced herself she could have both.
"Crystal?" Amira's voice was a gentle intrusion.
Crystal turned, surprised to see her sister standing at the doorway. "I thought you'd be with mom."
"She'll be fine," Amira said, moving into the room. Her eyes scanned the clutter, an expression of resigned empathy on her face. "How about you?"
Crystal shrugged, unwilling to let Amira shoulder her burdens. "Trying to figure out what to do with all of this."
"He really believed he'd succeed," Amira said, picking up a crumpled business plan draft from the floor. "Remember how excited he was?"
Crystal nodded. "He thought he was setting us up for life. I wanted to believe it, too."
Amira sat on the edge of the couch, careful not to disturb the catalog of the past scattered around her. "It wasn't your fault, Crystal. You know that, right?"
The words hung in the air, sticky and unwanted. Crystal wanted to believe them, to let herself off the hook, but they felt hollow. "It's all a mess," she said instead, her voice thick with the unsaid things.
"Everything he touched.....", She trailed off, tears In her eyes.
"It was a mess before he touched it," Amira cut in, trying to reach across the chasm of Crystal's isolation. "And it will be after. You just need to find your own way out."
Amira's presence was a balm and an irritant, reminding Crystal of both the comfort of family and the suffocation of its expectations. She had been slowly realizing how deep their financial hole was, and she resented the helplessness that crept into her life like a slow flood.
"You should come by more often," Amira said, standing up and smoothing her skirt. "Mom would like that."
"I will," Crystal lied, knowing how tied she felt to the weight of their father's failed ventures.
When Amira left, the silence in the apartment grew even louder. Crystal looked at the chaos around her and wondered if it mirrored her own thoughts ; cattered, incoherent and impossible to sort. Her future seemed like a smudged line on an otherwise blank page.
It was late afternoon by the time she shook herself from the shock that had enveloped her. She prepared for another day at the market, moving through the rooms like a ghost passing through memories. The crack in the ceiling watched her go, a silent witness to all that she was and wasn't. She gathered her things, a tired soldier mustering for a familiar, unwinnable battle.
Out on the street, the sky was still the same dusty bruise it had been the day of the funeral. She couldn't help but feel that time had forgotten to turn its page, and she was stuck in the same chapter with no way out