Sandra opened the folder. “She requested burial.”
“That’s fine,” I said, not trusting myself to say more.
Sandra nodded, flipping through a thin stack of forms. “She also left a note. The sheriff found it by her body and requested that I pass it over to you when you arrived. Would you like to read it now, or?—?”
“Later.”
Sandra seemed to expect that. She handed it to me, and I stuffed it into my bag.
The rest were forms: signatures and initials, legal codes and medical phrases in triplicate. Sandra narrated each line with gentleness, like she was reading from a children’s book about where people go when they disappear.
Organ donation: checked “no.” Headstone: plain, granite, no flourish. There were decisions about flowers, which felt obscene, like dressing up a corpse for Instagram.
I let Sandra suggest a budget arrangement that was subtle but dignified. It seemed wrong to let a stranger curate my mother’s afterlife, but I was too tired to pretend I cared about chrysanthemums over lilies.
Caiden listened in silence, his body angled toward the door, ready to ferry us out if I gave the signal. Only when Sandra pushed a new page across the desk did his gaze flicker: Casket Selection.
There was a glossy pamphlet with three tiers, like an ad for a hotel. The basic model: tan, cardboard, efficiency. The mid: pale wood, a hint of shine, comfort handles.
The last: a dark, lacquered thing that looked expensive enough to outlive the dead. For a moment, I almost laughed, imagining my mother’s shriveled body rattling around in a luxury box.
Sandra must have read my face. “Most people pick the Pine. It’s, ah, traditional for families who want something simple, but meaningful.”
“The Pine’s fine,” I said. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
Sandra smiled, but there was something relieved in the way she relaxed her hands against the desktop, as if she’d been bracing for a fight and now saw safe harbor ahead.
Just two ruined kids who would sign anything to get it over with.
She went over the schedule in gentle, colorless detail. There’d be a viewing, if I wanted, and a service. They could do Saturday, or, if I preferred, as soon as Thursday. “The sooner the better,” I said, and Sandra nodded.
I’d imagined funerals as thunderous things, but here it sounded more like an appointment for dental surgery. Caiden leaned closer, his knee brushing mine. He didn’t look at me, but I felt the question radiate off him:You sure?
I nodded, not trusting my mouth.
Sandra made a note. “I’ll post the announcement by tomorrow. I’ll arrange the paperwork and have the plot prepared.” She hesitated, voice lowering. “There’s no rush for you to leave town, if you want to say goodbye in your own time.”
I almost laughed at that. “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
She smiled in a way that suggested she disagreed.
The last page was signed, and the pen made a hollow sound when I set it on the glass. Sandra pressed her hands together like she was praying for us, then ushered us out.
Caiden fished his keys from his jeans and walked me to the car, as if I might lose my way on the twelve steps between the world of the grieving and the rest of the living.
Inside the car, I felt the weight in my lap: the note, sealed in a cheap envelope, with my name written in Judy’s blocky, anxious hand. My thumb traced the edge of it, pressed until the paper went soft. Caiden was staring at the windshield, jaw clenched like he was chewing glass.
“You want to talk about it?” he asked, after a minute. His words startled me; I didn’t realize we’d been sitting there in total silence, the funeral home a shadow in the rearview.
“What’s there to say?” My voice flickered, then died. I waited to feel the tears. Instead, nothing came. Just a deep, weird hum in my skull, like a radio tuned to dead air.
He reached over, gently, and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. It was a motion so uncharacteristically soft I almost laughed at how badly it fit him. I flinched before I could stop myself; he retreated.
My muscles screamed to run when he touched me, and I wished that they didn’t. I wanted so badly to lean into his touch, to let him save me from this grief, but the younger Amelia who still swam inside of me despised his company, his touch.
“You didn’t have to come,” I said.
He didn’t answer right away. He drummed a finger against the steering wheel, a near-sound, and the rhythm made me want to scream.
