Chapter 19: The Small Grave

Rhonda left at six in the morning with one bag.

I came down the back stairs in my robe, and she was standing in the downstairs hall with a coffee in her hand.

"My flight's at nine," she said. "I don't do goodbyes."

"Then don't."

She hugged me hard and fast, and she smelled like the lemon soap in Greg's bathroom.

"Go with him today," she said into my hair. "I always wanted to, and he never let me."

"He's asked me."

"I know. I told him to." She let go and wiped her eye with her thumb. "I'll be back at Easter. Make him eat something."

She picked up her bag and was gone before the cab stopped at the curb.

My father stayed home with Tilly.

He sat in the rocking chair with a bottle and the baby on his arm, and he shooed us out the door with one hand.

"Go," he said. "I haven't held a baby since you. I'm going to get it wrong, and I'm going to do it slowly."

Greg drove us to a cemetery on the west side of the city.

It was a cold day and the sky was white.

He stopped at the gate, got out, and went around to the back of the truck.

He took out a small bag.

"What's that?" I said.

"A pair of socks." He did not look at me. "Every year on her birthday I buy a pair of baby socks. The size she'd wear."

"Where do they go?"

"I don't know. I've kept them all. They're in a box under my bed." He shut the tailgate. "I thought, this year, I'd bring them."

I took his hand.

We walked up the gravel path between rows of gray stones.

The grave was at the end of a row, under a bare maple.

The stone was small and plain.