The urn is small.Smaller than I expected.It doesn’t seem like enough to hold a man who took up as much room as Charles did.A man that big—that loud, that certain, that infuriatingly present—reduced to something I can carry with one hand.
I carry it with both.
Mrs.Mather catches me at the door.Takes my hand.Squeezes.
“You were such a good wife to him, Marin,” she says.“The Lord sees that.Don’t you ever doubt it.”
I look at the woman who killed my boyfriend and is now comforting me at his funeral and I say the only thing there is to say.
“Thank you, Helen.For everything.”
She pats my hand.Smiles.Goes back to the casserole table to rearrange the foil.
Luke follows me to his truck, opens the door.I get in.He gets in.The urn is in my lap.
We drive home in silence.The urn is warm from my hands.The road is quiet.The town is behind us.
The cover holds.
It was never going to not hold.Because the cover wasn’talllies.It was built on something stronger—a town that decided what was true and stuck with it.I mentioned Charles had a tumor.They ran with it.They decided I was brave.They decided Mrs.Mather was a saint.And now they’ve decided Charles is dead and it’s sad and the green bean casserole is a little dry but Helen always overcooks it and isn’t it a blessing he went peaceful.
That’s the thing about small towns.They don’t need evidence.They need a story.And the story I gave them was better than the truth.
The truth would have ruined everything.The story gave them something to talk about.
67
Luke
The Lamplighter looks the same in daylight.Smaller.The way bars always look when the neon’s off and the parking lot’s empty and the building is just a building.
I park out front.Walk in.Pine-Sol and last night’s beer.The jukebox is off.The stools are up except two at the end where a man I don’t know is nursing something brown.
Kate is behind the bar.She sees me before I sit down.Her face does what it always does—the smile first, then the read, then the decision.She used to decide yes.I can see her deciding something else now.Not no.Just different.The way you look at someone you used to know when you can tell they’ve become someone else’s.
“The usual?”she says.
“Coffee, please.”
Her brow lifts as she pours it.Sets it down.Doesn’t lean on the bar the way she used to.Doesn’t touch my hand when she slides the cup over.Just pours and steps back and that’s how we both know.
“You look different,” she says.
“New fence posts.”
She almost laughs.“Must be some fence.”
“It’s getting there.”
I drink the coffee.She wipes the bar.Refills the cup.We don’t talk about the last time I was here or the two men who followed me out or the nights I showed up at her place because her house had sound in it and mine didn’t.
“Your guy just arrived,” she says.“Booth in the far back.”
I take the coffee.Walk to the booth.He looks nervous.Mid-sixties, weathered hands, the kind of tired that doesn’t come from not sleeping.
“Luke?”he says.
“Yeah.”
