57. the tortured friend's department

                                    

                                              
It had been almost a month since the last time I talked to her, on the front lawn of the Rosenbloom estate after the funeral—and after she reluctantly posed for the photo Bridgette's mother had wanted of us together with her memorial portraiture, because instead of translating that Dylan hadn't wanted to do it, I pretended to be the one uncomfortable with it, which at the time seemed like a better idea than it turned out to be, especially when Mrs. Rosenbloom-Preston's eyes gleamed as if I had given her the correct answer to a question she had asked. 
I thought I had been sparing Dylan from the wrath I was almost certain would've come thinly veiled in a cloying but sardonic tone of voice, or from further persistent nudging doused in a heavy layer of guilt, but as Dylan readily pointed out, she didn't need me to spare her. 
Unlike you two, she had signed then, I'm not afraid of upsetting Queen Victoria. 
I didn't follow Mrs. Rosenbloom-Preston on Instagram, too apprehensive to be listed as one of her several hundred thousand followers, but I had searched for her account in the days after the funeral to see if she had uploaded the photo, then conjectured when it was posted the week after the funeral if she felt she had waited a respectable number of days to start sharing content on her social media from the funeral. It was the third photo in a carousel, captioned simply as celebrating her life with what appeared to be the trademarked funeral emojis, each post since her death concluded with a heart and a dove with an olive branch in its beak instead of proper punction. 
The other photos she included in the carousel were of the catered charcuterie tables in their back garden, the white roses carefully arranged in a meticulous bouquet of other white flowers rested on the gleam of an emptied casket, her memorial portraiture boarded with likewise botany at the cathedral, then the last one was of Mrs. Rosenbloom-Preston with her husband and Noel behind the casket at the cemetery where she must have been buried right after the funeral and before the repast at their home. 
I wondered if it was just in my imagination that her smile seemed a little too wide, a little too sincere, a little too bright against the dark contrast of the mold and mildew contaminated headstones in the background. Her husband, Noel's father, looked a little more reserved at her side, their arms touching like their hands might've intertwined but the closed casket in front of them obscured anything from the waist down. 
And then there was Noel, the distance between him and them an inch or two too long to appear natural as he stood there with his hands shoved into his pockets, sunlight glaring off the lens of his glasses, so his eyes were shrouded from the camera and anyone who stumbled onto his stepmother's account to catch a glimpse of his grief immortalized for likes and shares. 
The rest of his expression was blank, but when I scrolled through the comments, I spotted his name over and over again, with some speculating on how hard this must've been for him, others congratulating Mrs. Rosenbloom-Preston for being such a good mother, praising her and her husband for being such loving parents during this devastating loss. I almost commented back that Mrs. Rosenbloom-Preston wasn't his mother, then it occurred to me as I quelled the urge that I hadn't seen Noel's real mother at the funeral at all and no one had mentioned that she was there, not even Noel, like she had never even left California after she learned that her son's stepsister had died. 
The reminder of it, and of yet another photo that had incurred me even further wrath, brought a clench to the muscles of my jaw and a slight grind to the grooves of my teeth while I watched Jun out of the corner of my eye turn her head to the side to follow my gaze to where Dylan was crossing the sidewalk near the recently planted orange mum bushes in the mulched garden under the flagpole. 
"I still haven't talked to her since the funeral," I quietly admitted. "Have you?" 
Jun seemed somewhat distracted while she shook her head in response, her preoccupied stare still glued to the back of Dylan's head where her ponytail of tangled, thick hair bobbed against the collar of her blazer and swished between her shoulder blades.