The headstone stood among hundreds just like it, precise and bright under the sun. The lilies June had brought still rested at the base. Eleanor’s peonies lay a few inches to the left where Michael had set them while he moved them away. The absurdity of separate bouquets suddenly embarrassed him. Without asking permission, he bent, picked up both arrangements, and placed them together in the center.
Neither woman objected.
Michael straightened and looked down at his father’s name. “I don’t know what the script is for this,” he said. “So I’m not doing a script.” He glanced at his mother first. “You were his wife for thirty-one years. Nobody gets to edit that out.” Then he looked at June. “And you were his wife when he died. Nobody gets to edit that out either.”
The words did not solve anything.
But they shifted the posture of the moment. Eleanor’s shoulders loosened slightly. June wiped once beneath one eye with a thumb knuckle. The bagpipes had begun again in the distance, and the sound came thinner now, farther away, as if leaving room for lesser, messier truths.
Michael was about to step back when June said, very softly, “There’s one more thing.”
She reached into her purse again, and for one awful heartbeat Michael thought the license was coming back out. Instead she withdrew a plain white envelope, creased from being handled. Michael recognized his father’s blocky handwriting before she even spoke.
“He asked me to give this to you if Memorial Day got hard,” June said.