I Faked My Death, and the Alpha at My Grave Has Lost His Wolf novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Empty Casket

From the choir loft Zora watches the Lodge bury an empty casket, her husband ask for her ring, and Frank Matula weep, until Frank's son lifts his head: 'She's here.'

I watched the county wrecker pull my Jeep out of the Lavaca on Tuesday morning through my grandfather's field glasses.

I was lying in his old deer blind on the Pospisil lease, half a mile off.

I had a thermos of cold coffee and a bruise from the door frame.

The Jeep came up the ramp streaming brown water, with the windows gone.

The deputy walked around it and wrote on a clipboard.

Frank Matula arrived in his white pickup before the deputy had finished, with his hat already in his hand.

He leaned into the open driver's door for a long moment.

When he stood up, he put something into his shirt pocket and buttoned the flap.

Then he turned to the deputy and wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist.

I put the field glasses down and stayed very still.

I did not know why Frank would take my husband's ring.

I knew he had done it where the deputy could not see.

The funeral was Saturday, at ten, at St. Mary's, with the painted ceiling my great-grandmother's family had paid for in 1912.

The Lodge buries its own, even when there is nothing to bury.

They had asked the river for me for three days and then called it done.

I was in the choir loft by six in the morning, behind the organ, with a hymnal over my knees in case anyone looked up.

Nobody does.

My grandmother, Ludmila Pospisil, sat in the first pew in her black church dress, with her handkerchief up her sleeve.

Babi did not cry once.

Two hundred people filled the nave, and the casket stood closed at the front under a white cloth.

On the cloth someone had laid my mail satchel, and my postal cap, and a loaf of salt bread.

I had never seen my own cap look so small.

Anton came up the aisle last.

He wore his funeral suit, which is the same suit he was married in.

He walked alone, and Frank walked half a step behind him on his right, as he always does.

He stopped at the casket and put his hand flat on the white cloth.

He stood like that all through the first reading.

I watched his hand.

It was shaking, a small steady tremor.

I had never once seen it shake, in all the nights I lay listening to him through the wall.

I told myself it was for show.

I told myself that three more times.

The priest said a few words about a young woman who delivered the Lodge its letters and who had always been on time.

When he finished, Frank stepped forward with the burial loaf and tore it in two.

By custom the widower eats the last bread, and the Lodge answers amen.

Frank held out the larger half.

Anton looked at it and did not take it.

The nave was quiet enough that I heard the candles.

"Anton," Frank said gently, in a voice meant to carry. "Eat, son. She'd want you to."

Anton said something I could not hear.

I leaned over the rail until I could.

"Did they find her ring, Frank?"

"The ring?" Frank said.

"She wore it Sunday," Anton said. "I saw it on the table. Was it in the Jeep?"

Frank's face softened into an expression I had seen him wear at twenty funerals.

"Gone to the river, son," he said, and put his free hand on Anton's shoulder. "Everything the river takes, it keeps."

Anton nodded slowly.

He took the bread and held it in his fist, and he did not eat it.

I had a hot, stupid wish that he would look up.

Down in the front pew my grandmother took her handkerchief out of her sleeve and pressed it to her mouth.

Then she lowered it and looked at the painted ceiling, directly over my head, for the length of one breath.

She looked back at the casket and folded her hands.

I had not thought she would know.

I would have liked to put my head down on the rail and weep, but I had a baby to think about.

A wolf's ears are good in a church, and so are a wolf's nostrils.

The pall bearers were Betas, six of them, and Rudy Matula was the one at the head, Frank's son, big and careful and quiet.

They lifted the empty casket.

Halfway down the aisle Rudy stopped.

He lifted his head, scenting the air slowly, and turned his eyes up to the choir loft.

I froze.

"She's here," he said, very low, to his father.

Frank did not look up.

His hand tightened on Anton's shoulder, and his voice was gentle and perfectly calm.

"I know," Frank said. "Get the truck."

Anton stood with his hand still on the empty space where the casket had been.

He never looked up at all.

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