"I can stand in the room," she said. "I couldn't at eleven. You shouldn't have asked me to, and you didn't, because I stopped you. I can now. But I don't want the same church if the church is going to be a crowd that wants a redo. I don't want the blue dress ghost. I want something small. Backyard. Grandma. Naomi. Reverend Bell if he still walks. No one who describes me as troubled. You say Mom's name out loud. Lauren says it too. I will say it. If anyone tries to make it pretty-tragic I will leave and take the cake."
David's eyes did the hot, unusable thing and then recovered. "You may take the cake regardless."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
Lauren came to the house on a Wednesday with her hands empty, no plant, no speech. Emma opened the door. They looked at each other across a threshold that had hosted casseroles and rage and permission slips. Emma said, "If you hurt him in the ordinary ways people hurt each other, you fix it in daylight. If you hurt him by erasing her, you don't get to fix it. Those are my terms. I'm not the priest. I'm the daughter."