Chapter 12: The Little Grave

We went on Sunday, all six of them and me, in two cars.

Brendan carried our mother's old green thermos.

The cemetery in Colma climbed a hillside above the highway, with fog lying in the low rows and cypress trees at the top.

Lawson's car came behind us at a respectful distance.

He parked at the gate, got out, and stood beside it with his hands in his coat pockets.

"Do you want him to leave?" the second brother asked me.

"No," I said, and was surprised by how fast it came out.

"He can wait there."

We walked up the gravel path in a line.

Nobody talked.

The stone stood near the top, in a row of Gallivans.

Our father's was a big gray block with an anchor cut into it.

Our mother's beside it was newer, plain white marble with her name in a simple hand.

The little one sat at the end of the row, low and square, hardly knee high.

NUALA GALLIVAN, it said.

Under that, the eleventh of October and the year.

Under that, in smaller letters, Our girl.

I stood and looked at it for a long time.

For twenty-five years six boys and then six men had come here once a year and talked to a stone.

They had told it about school, then about girlfriends, then about the tugboat and the Foundation.

They had told it about the funeral of their mother, who had come to this hill every year before them.

I had never seen it, and I knew all of them were thinking the same thing.

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