The Name on the Broadcast novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Bringing Her Home

"Yes," I said.

I didn't have to think about it.

"Good," Frances said. "Because I already told the chapel you'd read."

We buried Annie on a Saturday, two weeks later, from the old stone chapel in the middle of campus.

It was Frances's idea.

"She was supposed to walk out of this place in a cap and gown," she said. "She can at least be carried out of it."

The chapel was full by ten.

Students I'd never met. Professors. The detective in a dark suit instead of his tan coat.

The two women from the orchard road, each with her mother on one side.

The girl from next door saw me and waved with her whole arm.

Then she remembered where she was and put her hand down, and her mother patted it.

Ben was at the back, running the little sound board the chapel kept in a closet.

"Are you going to be okay?"

"I'm going to be at the board," he said. "I'm always okay at the board."

He wasn't.

I saw him take his glasses off twice during the first hymn.

Rachel had been staying at Frances's house for thirteen days.

Frances had put her in the guest room with a toothbrush still in the package and a flannel nightgown.

She'd given her a key to the front door on a ring shaped like a fish.

The first night, Rachel hadn't slept in the bed.

Frances found her in the morning asleep on the floor beside it, with the key in her fist.

Frances didn't say a word about it.

She just put a pillow and a quilt on the floor that night too, and let Rachel choose.

On the eleventh night, Rachel chose the bed.

She sat beside me now in the front pew in a navy dress Frances had bought her, with her hair down.

I'd never seen her hair down.

It was long, and brown, and gray at the temples.

Frances sat on my other side.

Annie's brother sat on the end, in a suit that didn't fit his shoulders.

The casket was plain pine, with a spray of yellow leaves from the maple in Frances's yard on top.

The silver bracelet with the little book lay in the leaves.

When it was my turn, I walked up to the front with Annie's poetry anthology.

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