Seat Three: The Sister Denial. Is that even an emotion? Or is it a state of mind? As a former philosophy major, she should know. Even if her other major was fashion merchandizing. That shouldn’t matter at all. Whatever she was feeling, part of Ashleigh French Tarrington insisted that this wasn’t real. She was not sitting in a church, waiting to bury her brother. Too many things point to the fact that this wasn’t happening. And, to distract herself in this dream, she listed them. First, her mother was still alive. Although the woman couldn’t quite handle coming to the funeral, she was alive and well at the house. Parents don’t survive children, so her brother couldn’t be dead. He had promised to help her bury their mother like he had helped her bury their father five years before. And Jay kept his promises, even though he was annoyingly quiet and often had no sense of style. If there were really fashion police, Jay would have been arrested a long time ago. Second, this funeral wasn’t real because Samantha was wearing something fashionable. Samantha never seemed to care about how she looked, for all of Ashleigh’s pushing. She cared about her niece and her niece was gorgeous when she wore the right things. Like what she had on today. It had been featured in this month’s Vogue. Obviously the girl had finally gone to Nordstrom. As she always swore she wouldn’t (and Ashleigh believed her), this had to be a dream. Third, this wasn’t real because her daughter had arrived trying to look more like a “tarty” fashion plate than someone attending a funeral! Ashleigh had always impressed on her daughter to look fashionable, but appropriately fashionable! That black thing her daughter sported looked like she was her way to a club, not to bury her uncle. It was embarrassing. She thought Soliel knew better. But she had failed so many times with her daughter, what was one more? That tended to weigh in on the side that this was real, so Ashleigh quickly ignored that. Yet, it all came down to the fact that this wasn’t real because it couldn’t be. Her brother wasn’t dead. And definitely he wasn’t dead of what they said killed him. He was always healthy. He wasn’t overweight. He was in great shape. He’d run two marathons. Two! He wasn’t dead. And Ashleigh would insist to everyone that her brother wasn’t dead…if she wasn’t in this dream. Deluded wasn’t fashionable, and Ashleigh worked so hard to be fashionable like her mother and brother that she’d be fashionable in her dreams as well, damn it. Ashleigh winced as her daughter continued to wail in the dream. “When I wake up,” Ashleigh muttered under her breath, “I’m going to have a long talk with my daughter about how the fashionable behave at funerals. If this were real, I’d be mortified.” - end seat three -