Chapter 21: Next of Kin

Macy's POV

We buried Carly on a Saturday, in the third week of August, under a sky the color of dishwater.

The chapel on Reading Road held about ninety people.

I stood at the front beside a closed white casket and a photograph of her at twenty-five.

In the photo she was laughing with her hand over her mouth.

I had picked it because it was the most Carly thing I owned.

Greta stood on my left in a black dress she had bought that morning.

Burke stood at the back by the door, in a borrowed suit, with no badge and no weapon.

He had promised to stay out of the way.

He'd done it so well that half the room had not noticed him.

They noticed me.

I felt it as I turned.

The middle-school friends sat in the second row, and the women from the company Carly had worked for sat behind them.

Some of them smiled at me sadly.

Some of them looked away.

A few looked at me the way the waiting room had on Monday.

I had known the post would travel.

I had not known the woman who called in the welfare check would be here.

She sat in the third row with her jaw set.

She stood when I walked down the aisle after the opening hymn.

"I'm sorry to do this," she said, loudly enough for the chapel. "But somebody has to."

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