Rom-Com Collection. Kristan Higgins

all of us here in the funeral home—our home—all of us together, this time as mourners. I wished Noah could’ve seen Mom and Dad together again. Maybe he knew now. Freddie looked somber and mature in his suit, standing next to Bronte, slipping Josephine butter rum Life Savers and telling the girls jokes when they got too weepy. Mom let Louis run the show, and Dad, handsome as ever, greeted the people who paid homage to his father.

      Jody was in the receiving line, too. I’d gone to see her the day after Noah died and broke the news, then asked her to stand with us. “I’d like that,” she’d said in a small voice. Then she gripped my hand with surprising strength. “Thank you, Callie.”

      “Well. Anyone who can do a full split and put up with my grandfather deserves some recognition,” I murmured.

      “He thought the world of you,” she said.

      “Right back at you,” I said, and then the two of us had had a good cry.

      Ian was here, too, standing in the back of the room like a mastiff … quiet and calm and protective. He brought me a glass of water, fished a handkerchief out of his pocket when I got a little tearful.

      “Who even carries these anymore?” I asked, wiping my eyes.

      “I stocked up after I met you,” he said, looking down at me. He gave my hand a squeeze, then returned to his post in the back of the room, bending slightly as Elmira Butkes asked him a question about that Methuselah of cats, Mr. Fluffers. All the hip-hop yoga ladies had come, as well as the River Rats, not to mention at least a dozen people who’d bought their boats from Noah’s Arks.