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Chapter 1

FOR ALL the death I’d seen, I’d been to very few funerals

This one was fraught, and I couldn’t sort outGrando, but the pneuht after had been the final culprit I kept thinking I should have been there I could have come to visit one more time if I hadn’t been so busy, if I’d just ht she’d always be here How selfish was it, to feel guilty at so were somehow ic, tired, shell-shocked

Mostly, I orried about h, his chin up, eyes dry Mom held her arm wrapped around his and kept a tissue close to her eyes He didn’t seeh Not the flower-drenched casket, not the dark-suited rassy laith its rows of modern, polished headstones I couldn’t tell what he was thinking I couldn’t ask

The service was graveside, the springtime Arizona weather was reasonable—sunny, but windy I kept squinting against dust in the air The crowd gathered was ss, and her husband had gone before her All that was left were her three kids, their families, and a couple of staff from her retirement home It had been a quiet ceremony

My husband Ben and I had driven all night to get here We stood a little apart froh to be coroups, even ones as small as this Especially ere off balance We stood side by side, our hands entwined Ben had never even met Grandma He was here to look out forthe scruff out of his light brown hair and wearing his best courtroom lawyer suit with a , convinced that all my clothes were inappropriate for the situation I’d settled on a black skirt and tailored cream blouse for the service, and pinned my blond hair up in a twist I looked like a waitress

The rest of the family had flown ahead of us My sister Cheryl’s husband, Mark, had stayed ho herself, Cheryl seemed small in her dress suit, which she probably hadn’t worn since before she was pregnant with Nicky, eight years ago now She was staring at the floith a wrinkled, worried frown

The minister, a nondenominational chaplain from the retirement home, spoke in a calm, inoffensive voice He’d started with a Bible verse, the one about walking in the valley of shadows and not fearing evil, and dispensed coht have co

What would the guy say if I told him that I’d had proof that people existed in some form after death? He’d probably say, of course He was a minister, after all I had proof of life after death But I couldn’t say I believed in heaven or hell I still didn’t knohat exactly happened to us after we died What had happened to randmother

When people at the funeral told one to a better place, did I believe them? I believed that part of her lived on But I couldn’t say where she was Was she here, watching us e to call out loud to her, just in case Was the cemetery filled with the shadows of the dead, all of the?

I’d ods Were they, or were they just powerful people who had existed for thousands of years and so built up a tangle of stories around theods?

When the minister called on his own God, did he really knoho he was praying to?

Inanymore I had my family who loved me,else—I saw the signs, but I didn’t knohat they meant All I could do was focus on the road in front of me

The chaplain said his amens, the rest of us echoed him, he closed his book, and that was that I decided Grand She’d have wanted soan music But this wasn’t for her, it was for the rest of us Funny hoe all seeood-bye at a funeral was any better than not having a chance to say good-bye, when the people you loved were snatched away in front of you without ceremony

We filed back to the cars parked along the curb, leaving the flowers and casket behind The earth that would fill in the grave had been discreetly hidden away during the cereht back after we’d all left I spotted the ceroo

I squeezed Ben’s hand before letting go and trotted forward to catch up to my dad

“Dad? You okay?”

He s his arive o and kept walking on with my mother

So what did that mean?

My aunt, Dad’s younger sister, was hosting a lunch—catered, I found out after discretely poking a over mountains of food as well I didn’t want to find out anyone had been cooking for everybody, but no one had A little less guilt there I slipped my cousins some money to help with the cost Wasn’t ot directions to their house; I’d never been there I was close to my immediate fas and funerals, and that was it Another cliché in a day filled with them

Before we reached the car, I took a last look

over the ce chairs and the rave Said a farewell, just in case she was hanging around, and just in case she could hear

Ben had stopped a few yards away froures, athere