His voice cracked.
“Please believe me.”
“There is nothing in that room for you.”
I pushed him.
I actually pushed him.
A sixty-eight-year-old man in a bathrobe.
He caught my wrists.
Gently.
Like I was the one who might break.
“Go home,” he whispered.
“Please.”
“I’m begging you.”
I went home.
I sat in the driveway until the sun came up.
The service was six days after the accident.
Family only.
Jason insisted.
He came in a wheelchair.
Mercer and Sons smelled like lilies and furniture polish.
There were maybe twenty people.
Jason’s mother.
Meredith.
Uncle Walt in a black suit.
Two women from my office.
Ruby’s art teacher, Mrs. Okafor, holding a drawing Ruby had never finished.
She pressed it into my hands.
“She drew you every week,” she said.
“Every single week.”
“She said you were her favorite thing to paint.”
Linda sat in the front row.
She cried so hard Meredith had to walk her out.
At the front of the room was a small white box.
Closed.
The lid was already sealed when I walked in.
There was a framed photo on top.
Ruby at the lake.
Front tooth missing.
Grinning.
I put my hand on the lid.
It was cold.
I waited to feel something.
Her.
Anything.
I felt wood.
That’s all.
Just wood.
Walt stood beside me.
He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“She’s at peace, Hannah,” he said.
His voice cracked in half.
He walked away fast.
I thought grief had cracked it.
Halfway through the service, I stepped outside for air.
The sky was gray.
The street was quiet.
Across the road, a pickup was parked at the curb.
Gray.
Old.
The front bumper was crumpled in.
The engine was running.
A man sat behind the wheel in a ball cap.
He was looking right at the fu.neral home.
Right at me.
Meredith came out behind me.
She saw the truck.
She took my elbow.
Hard.
“Come inside,” she said.
“Now.”
“Who is that?”
“Nobody.”
“Come inside, Hannah.”
When I looked back, the truck was pulling away.
Slowly.
Like it had all the time in the world.
