Chapter 6: White Roses

Hannah brought a thermos of coffee and a trowel to the cemetery.

"I weed it every Tuesday," she said.

"Today's Sunday, but I couldn't wait."

Brookfield Memorial sat on a hill above the lake, with old oaks and rows of grey stone.

We walked up the gravel path together, and she did not take my arm.

She walked a little ahead and let me follow.

The grave was near the top, under a maple.

It was small and plain.

The stone said ALEXIS ROSE KINSELLA, and under it, ELEVEN MONTHS, and under that, a date twenty-three years old.

Below the date, an inscription read:

OUR LITTLE WREN.

"That was Frank's," Hannah said.

"He called her his little wren, because she was always up before the sun."

My throat hurt.

I stood looking at my own name, and could not make any part of me believe it.

"The doctors said it was her heart," Hannah said.

"A defect nobody had caught.

She was perfect for eleven months, and then she was gone, in my arms, on the kitchen floor."

She smoothed her skirt and knelt, and began to pull weeds from the base of the stone with quick careful fingers.

"I kept thinking I'd done something wrong," she said.

"I counted every bottle and every night.

Frank said it wasn't anyone's fault, and he held me up at the funeral.

Then he went and sat in the truck, and I heard him crying through the door."

She did not look at me.

"I have never once told that to anybody."

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