The parlor, which had been built for silence, held the sentence. The woman closed her hand around the locket. She did not argue with the casket. She walked the aisle the other way, past the guest book, past a name she had not signed. The door sighed. Vera stayed by the wood. Keisha stayed by her mother. Auntie’s chair was empty again. The lilies did not care. The question that mattered had been asked. The years were still in the room.
Her name was Nadine Price. Vera would not learn the last name until the guest book line that was blank and a cousin who worked at the county clerk’s window and knew a face. In the parlor she was a coat and a locket and eleven years. Eleven years was a marriage inside a marriage. Vera did the math with her hand still on the casket. She had been fifty-one when it started. Raymond had been fifty-four. Keisha had been twenty-four and out of the house and calling on Sundays because Sundays were when her father picked up. He had picked up. He had also left.
Auntie Ruth arrived late from the airport and saw the empty chair and Keisha’s face and did not ask in the aisle. She asked in the side room where the coffee was weak. Keisha said a woman. Ruth said, “In my chair.” Keisha said yes. Ruth put her bag down and went to Vera and did not hug her yet. Hugging could wait for a fact. Vera said eleven years and a toothbrush and Labor Day. Ruth said, “Then she does not come to the house.” Vera said she had already been told to leave. Ruth said good. Good was a small word. It held.