Chapter 8: The Funeral

We buried Joan on a Friday, in the rain, in a cemetery her husband picked because it was cheap.

Eleven people came.

Her husband stood at the front with a black umbrella and his hands shaking, and he did not look at the coffin once.

I stood on the other side, with the voice memo in my pocket.

I had listened to it until I knew it by heart.

I had decided in the night what the memo was for.

The voice on it had a name, and it was not the name of the man I had slept next to.

It was the name of the girl he had put his coat around.

The minister said the last words.

I dropped a white rose onto the lid.

When I looked up, a black car had stopped on the gravel path.

Nolan got out with a large umbrella, and Polly got out of the other door in a gray dress and a black veil, holding a bunch of lilies.

They walked toward the grave together, and the mourners moved aside.

Polly knelt in the wet grass.

She laid the lilies down gently and wiped her eyes with a tissue.

"She was so kind to me," she said to nobody, to the whole row. "I only met her for a minute at the station, but she was kind."

She turned to me with her face wet.

"Kirsten, I'm so sorry. Those Tuesdays and Thursdays must have been so hard on her. She always looked so tired."

I felt the rain run down my neck.

Joan's husband was standing right beside me, and he had not told anyone which days the collectors called.

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