The next few days were a haze for Katie. She slept away most of them. All those sleepless and restless nights spent in the chair by her mother's bedside suddenly caught up with her. She felt like a newborn baby, who lived to eat, sleep, and poo.
Through it all, they handled everything. Of course, her mother had made most of the arrangements already, but still, someone had to be there to see that things went as Joy had wanted and make small decisions that arose at the last minute. She did not have the energy or the focus to be that someone, so they did. Chance and Chase.
Oddly enough, when she was awake, her whole being strummed with energy. Everything was brighter, louder, more fragrant, just...more. The hardest part was filtering out the overwhelming emotions of others. Her empathic gifts that had always seemed minuscule suddenly were amplified ten-fold. A hundred?
And she could see auras too. She had rarely seen them the way her mother sometimes could. But unlike her mother, who saw them on occasion, usually, when she focused and was working with someone, Katie now saw them all the time.
That first day, they told her she had passed out after her mother... After her mother's death. Chance had carried her into her room and gotten her undressed, stayed with her, cared for her. While Chase had handled the details of calling Melody, answering what few questions were necessary. Dealing with the funeral directors and all the rest.
Chaos had begun that next morning. It seemed all her mother's clients felt the overwhelming need to connect with her, offer her their sympathy, and drain what little reserves she had. She did not know what she would have done without them then.
Two imposing former SEALs made an excellent security team. No one dared to countermand their orders when they nodded and said that Katie had had enough for one day. People just seemed to flee like ants when their hill had been stomped on.
Her mother had chosen to be cremated, so there was no rush for a funeral. In fact, they decided that the memorial service would not take place for a couple of weeks while they processed the necessary paperwork for scattering her mother's ashes, which turned out to be way more complicated than Katie had imagined.
She had thought a simple walk along the pier like they had thousands of times before. In fact, it necessitated hiring a boat and scattering them at least 500 yards from the beach itself. Hell, even the ship's captain had to have a special license to do so.
It was way more than she was up to dealing with, after over a year of surgeries, therapies, hospitals, and finally hospice care. But with the help of Melody, Chase had managed to locate the right captain for the job.
Even that though came with issues of its own as the boat could accommodate no more than two dozen people. So, Katie had been left to decide who among her mother's flock would have the coveted places and who would stand vigil on the shoreline.
She had been about to break down under the weight of even that decision when Chance stood up and slammed his hand onto the table, "The solution is simple. No one goes with us."
She and Chase had looked at him like he had grown another head, but he explained, "We will video it and play it at the memorial service. After the fact."
Chase's deep, rich laughter that was all too rare, rang about the kitchen as he cleared the dishes from their simple dinner. "Damn, big brother, sometimes I think you are a fucking genius. Of course, it is perfect. The only question is who we get to video it."
Chance smiled, "Deke, of course. He is brilliant with all that shit. He, Seth, and Sebastian have started their own videography company. They can do it and compile a video for the memorial service that includes that as well as testimonials and clips from Joy's life."
He looked over Katie, "It also means that you do not need to say anything either."
She shook her head, "No, Chance, I want to. Maybe, I need to. Yeah, I know I have been such a pussy these past few days with everything that has been happening."
She stopped and inhaled deeply. She had not told even them about what was going on. About the auras and the overpowering emotions of others that seemed to bombard her constantly.
In fact, the only respite she seemed to have from the sensation overload was when she crawled into bed each night between them. From that first night, they had both insisted on sleeping in the bed with her.
She had thought that after her mother's death one or both of them would take Joy's room. Katie could not bring herself to sleep in the space that had been her mother's, even with all the comforting memories of crawling into Joy's bed on lazy Sunday mornings, during storms, or simply to talk.
Instead, as she had stepped from the shower that first night, wrapped only in a towel, they had stood waiting outside the door. Chance had smiled, and Chase scowled a bit as she had clutched the material tighter between her tits. "Sorry, I took so long. The bathroom is all yours now."
She had stared at her bare feet as she sought the proper good-night in such situations. Did she kiss them on the cheeks? Did she brush past them and casually toss a nite-nite as she ran for the relative safety of her room?
