The Bride Ran, So I Wore Her Crown and Married the Valley's Don novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Stone

The cemetery was white with fog.

It lay on the hillside above Selma, row after row of gray granite, with the bare vines of the slope below it half hidden in the mist.

My husband parked at the gate and came around to help his mother out of the car.

She took his arm without a word.

She had the white carnations in one hand and a small cloth bag in the other, and she walked up the gravel path between the stones without looking at her feet.

She knew the way by heart.

I came behind them with a second bunch of flowers I had bought at the gas station.

The Kasparian plot stood at the top of the hill, under a cypress.

There were four stones.

My husband's father lay at the left end, with the Kasparian name carved plain.

Next to him was a woman, a grandmother.

At the right end was the newest stone, and I knew it already.

ARMEN KASPARIAN. Beloved Son and Brother.

A fresh pack of cigarettes sat on top of it, under its round river stone, and a smaller stone beside that.

He had been up here that morning before any of us were awake.

Shushan let go of her son's arm and went down on her knees on the cold ground in her good black coat.

She laid the carnations on the stone, one at a time.

She took a folded cloth out of the bag and wiped the lettering with it, slowly.

Then she began to speak.

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