Ace didn’t cry at his father's funeral. He barely even knew the man, let alone the litany of estranged family members that peppered him with condolences and hugs.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” a woman claiming to be his aunt Rita said, staring at Ace with sad eyes behind tear-tracked eyeshadow. She probably wasn’t lying about her name, but he just didn’t know these people.

Don’t be, he wanted to say, no loss on my part. But instead, he gave a sincere-looking smile and thanked her.

“It’s so good to see you,” some cousin or another told him through fake-looking tears, “I just wish it were under better circumstances.”

It’s fine as is, he wanted to say, at least I don’t have to think of conversation topics. But instead, he smiled and shook his cousin's hand with an empty promise to reconnect later.

“Your father was a great man,” a skeleton of a woman told him with snot and tears streaming down her face as she draped herself over Ace. His paternal grandmother, he realized. “I just wish he had been a better father.”

Oh fuck you, Shannon, he burned to say, to scream in her thin, lying skull-face. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to fling the scrap of a woman off him, heedless of whether or not he would set off another funeral when her fragile form smashed on the floor. Instead, he returned the “hug,” giving her a few half-hearted pats on her bony back, muttering some well-to-do nonsense. He barely even knew what he was saying.

“He did his best,” Ace had said. The lie tasted sour, but at least he could stop the stream of mucus and tears from dripping on his shoulder. His grandmother smiled with the sad eyes of a mother who had outlived her child, weakly squeezed him on the arm, and said some more well-wishing, woe-is-me “pleasantries,” before moving on to more receptive shoulders to cry on.

He hadn’t felt any need to look at the body, but in front of the open casket seemed to be the only open space in the room. He looked down at the tree the apple had fallen from, the eyes closed and hands clasped peacefully around its abdomen. People had said he looked peaceful, at least, but all Ace saw was a stranger's corpse, and he didn’t much care whether it was peaceful or not. It looked gaunt, in fact, the sockets sunken in and skin even closer to the skull than the old bag. Ace was no expert, but its makeup looked wrong, somehow, something about the shading made it look even more dead than it was. The polished oak wood of the casket caught his eye, the brass handles gleaming in the harsh lights of the funeral home.

Expensive casket, cheap morticians, Ace mused to himself. It was the kind of state-of-the-world trite nonsense that rose to the surface during events like this. Maybe following the rituals stripped away the higher thoughts, and every remotely clever thought that could be thought had to revolve around the center of attention. A narrowing of the mind. Mental tunnel vision.

Ace let out a quick breath from his nose. Not quite a laugh, but the closest he had come to feeling anything all night. Closest to feeling anything in weeks, if it came down to it. Years, even. Come to think of it, Ace wasn’t sure if he had ever felt much of anything. He hadn’t felt anything when he was six and his father left him a note explaining how he wouldn’t be around for a while. Or when he was ten and realized a while meant forever. Ace felt especially numb when he found out what he had left for him in his will.

There was no reading of the will, as movies had braced him to expect, just a business-like call from a lawyer informing Ace of his loss and windfall, in that order. If his father hadn't left Ace the farm, there was a good chance he’d never even know the old man died.

“Old man,” was a misnomer. His father wasn’t old in the grand sense; late-forties, but Ace was twenty-five himself. He looked ancient in the box, but that still had something to do with the makeup shading. Whoever the makeup artist was, Ace half-hoped they would be fired. The other half wanted them to go on to make more bodies look unnaturally dead. To continue this deader-than-dead sorcery so no one would ever remember their family members peacefully at rest. To ensure the dead lived on as corpses in the minds of the living.

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Ace rubbed his eyes. The harsh lighting was getting to him, and the unlively company wasn’t helping either. He was about to turn and walk off when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s a tragedy, isn’t it?” Ace followed the hand and saw it was attached to a young woman, maybe two years his junior. She had long blonde hair, a sharp nose with otherwise soft features, and dark brown eyes. The same color as his own. “That big fancy box, and they can’t even get the makeup right.”

She had thought he was crying, wiping away a tear rather than rubbing life back into his eyes. And she had played it off as a joke. Not only that but one based on an observation he had made himself. Ace couldn’t help himself, he honked out one sharp laugh. From his perspective, he sounded like a wounded goose, but the young woman only smiled.

“You have his laugh too, huh?” She asked with a curled smile.

Ace coughed and composed himself, trying to ignore the gaze of all the grievers who looked over to find the dying bird they all heard. “My mother used to tell me that. When I was younger, I practiced and practiced until I could laugh like a person. The real one still comes out from time to time though, especially when someone hits the right mark.” He looked her in the eyes, “Well done, hasn’t happened in months.”

She smirked and mimed a slight curtsy. “I had to do the same thing, now I can giggle like a schoolgirl on cue. I knew laughter was contagious, but I didn’t realize it was genetic too.”

Genetic? Somewhere deep in Ace’s brain, a nickel fell into its slot, and the pieces came together. ‘You have his laugh too.’

“You’re my sister, aren’t you?” He asked with an arched eyebrow.

She beamed. “Guilty as charged, one of them at least.” She offered her hand for a shake. “I’m Autumn, you’re Aesop, right?”

Ace grimaced, but still took her hand and gave it a limp shake. “I go by Ace. It’s nice to finally meet one of the other wild oats. How many was he up to? Eleven?”

Autumn smirked, then glanced at the shell that used to be their father. The smirk did not survive for long. “Thirteen, the last two were twins. They didn’t come. Most of the mothers didn’t.”

Mine didn’t. She had been dead for six years, but Ace knew she wouldn’t have come even if his father had croaked first.

“I wish I hadn’t,” Ace said. He caught a flash of disappointment in his half-sister’s eyes and scrambled to amend himself. “Not that it isn’t good to see everyone. I probably would have never met anyone here if it weren’t for the man of the hour. Besides…”

He trailed off, staring into the distance for what felt like an eternity. “… You didn’t have much of a choice,” Autumn finished for him. Ace snapped back to reality and looked at her, eyes narrowed.

“What?” He asked, still confused.

“He left you the farm, right? Kind of have to show up when you get that kind of parting gift. From what I hear, Dad could never make it grow anything but weeds, but the house is big and land is still land. What was it? Eleven acres?”

“Thirteen.” A smile started to creep across Aces’ face, “The last two acres were twins.”

Life tended to line up that way, a sort of balance. His father had left behind thirteen children and thirteen acres, and, at the very least, that merited a polite chuckle. The well-practiced hums that formed a semblance of a laugh, one that hadn't failed him yet. He was delighted to hear the schoolgirl giggle of his sister, as honed and measured as his own, a feminine reflection of himself.

A realization dawned on him, and he felt his face slip back into that neutral position it spent so much time in, the “laughter” abruptly cut off.

“Something wrong?” his sister looked genuinely concerned, an expression he could never quite manage.

“N-no,” he stammered, looking again at the husk they both called a father, “It just occurred to me that he might have had to learn how to laugh too. I'm not sure either of us will ever know how much like him we are.”

His sister smiled but shook her head. “He never faked his laugh, it was either the strangled goose or nothing. From what I've heard, the only consistently good thing about him was the unabashed way he lived. He was who he was and refused to be anyone else, even when it was to his detriment,” she looked at the corpse and arched an eyebrow, “especially then. He wasn't afraid of himself,” she smiled. It was the most honest smile Ace had ever seen. “I hope my kids say the same about me when my time comes.”

Ace’s smile didn't feel a fraction as honest as hers, but he meant every bit of it. “I hope so too.”