If anything, the resistance in the air thickened. June’s mouth flattened. Eleanor’s shoulders stiffened under his hand. For one terrified second Michael thought they might both continue, might force him to stand there in the bright ordered rows of the dead while the two central women of his father’s life used a military cemetery to litigate what the man himself had failed to cleanly resolve.
Then a gust lifted the tiny flags along the row at once, and the sound of them flapping broke the spell just enough.
“Come with me,” Michael said, more firmly. “Both of you.”
June zipped the purse shut.
Eleanor did not move. Michael had to lower his voice and repeat, “Mom. Please.” This time the word had a destination. Eleanor looked at him for two long breaths, and because she had raised him to recognize the difference between stubbornness and humiliation, and because she was a woman who could still value appearances even while bleeding inside them, she stepped back from the stone.
Michael led them down the row and toward a shaded bench near the edge of the ceremonial lawn.
People watched only long enough to assure themselves the storm was moving elsewhere. Soon the ordinary murmur of Memorial Day returned around them. Someone laid roses at a nearby grave. An honor guard marched in careful steps toward a fresh ceremony. The world, Michael thought bitterly, always had a way of absorbing private catastrophe into public ritual.
He sat neither woman down until they reached the bench.