Chapter 5: In Front of the Casket

We buried my mother on Thursday, in a small church two blocks from the apartment where I grew up.

I paid for it with what was left of Kayla's envelope and a loan from my uncle.

Forty people came, and I knew thirty-eight of them from work.

The drivers wore their good jackets.

The night cleaners stood at the back with their caps in their hands.

Kayla sat in the front pew and held my arm through the whole service.

One woman I had never met sat alone near the aisle.

She was in her fifties, in a gray suit, with a leather briefcase on her knees.

When the service ended, she looked at me and nodded once.

I did not know why.

I was standing at the casket when the doors opened at the back.

Allison walked in, twenty minutes late, in a black dress and sunglasses.

Brody walked in beside her, with his hand on her back.

Every head in the church turned.

They sat in the last row, and Brody checked his phone.

I kept my eyes on my mother's photograph.

I kept them there through the hymn, and the reading, and the last prayer.

Afterward, the mourners filed past me.

Most of them said the same few words.

I will not forget a single one of them.

Then Brody stepped up to the casket with a smile ready.

"Russell," he said, in a warm voice that carried. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you for coming," I said, because my mother raised me to say it.

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