David closed his eyes. Three days before Claire died he had been at the hospital in the daytime and at home in the night, or he had been at the pharmacy, or he had been in the parking garage of the oncology building sitting in the car with his forehead on the steering wheel while a song he did not like finished because changing it required a decision. He had owned, then, a new phone. Claire's old one had been demoted to a thing in a drawer after the screen cracked and the upgrade came free with a plan he barely understood. He had meant to move the number. He had meant to do a great many things that living people mean to do in the weeks when dying is a schedule.
"We are not going to play it in this room with the church still full," he said. "Not because I'm hiding. Because your mother doesn't get played like a fire alarm. We'll go home. We'll sit at the kitchen table. Naomi can be there. Helen, if she wants. Lauren—" He looked up. "If you want to hear it when we hear it, you should. If you want to hear it after, you can. I won't make that choice for you, and I won't make it for Emma either. But I won't press play between a vacuum closet and a parking lot."
Lauren nodded. A strand of hair stuck to her lip and she peeled it away. "I'll come to the house. I'll change first. I can't walk into Claire's kitchen dressed like this."
"It's your kitchen too, some nights," Emma said, and then looked startled by her own accuracy.
"Some nights," Lauren agreed. "Not today."