Nadine, four years on, could pass the funeral street without turning the wheel into a tax. She did not pass it on purpose. The city sometimes required the street. She required nothing of it. The building looked like a building. She looked at the light. She drove. Loretta, told, said that is a graduation. Nadine said it is a street. Streets were facts. Facts she could live in, the way Vera lived in hot tea. They would not compare. Comparison was a door. The door stayed shut. The locket photo stayed boxed. The chain was gone. Gone was a half. Half was enough. She worked. She walked. The dog caught or missed. She went home. The instruction held. Leave. She had. The holding was the rest of her story, and it did not need a casket to continue. It continued in a lot, in a apple, in a name that almost never rang. When it rang she washed a cup. Washing was a answer. She did not drive to a row. The row was finished. She slept on both sides of the bed. Both sides were hers. That was the ending she got. Not a blessing. A leaving that stuck. She kept it.
The parlor stayed in business. Other families used the aisle. Other guest books filled. Vera did not attend those. She attended a school song and a bad movie and a roof inspection that found nothing. Nothing was the report she liked best. Keisha attended a oil change in a driveway and a cereal spill. Nadine attended a desk. The three attendances did not meet. The one meeting had been enough. A coat. A locket. A daughter’s fury. A widow’s question. How long. Eleven years. A name at the door that did not save the wife. A sentence that did. Leave. Take the locket. Enough years. The years after were taken by no one. Vera locked them in by living them. Tuesday. Tea. A plant split in half. A boy with ambitious wheels. A phone that rang because someone decided to love her in daylight. She picked up. That was the opposite of waiting for a call that never came. She had said so in a room of lilies. Then she had gone home and made it true.