Madison
Tom picked me up at ten.
I was ready when he buzzed from downstairs, which meant I’d been ready for forty minutes, sitting on the couch in my coat with my bag in my lap. The apartment was spotless. I’d spent the previous night moving through the rooms with a cloth and a spray bottle at eleven o'clock because the smell of bleach was better than the weight of the dark.
He was wearing a dark suit I hadn’t seen before: charcoal, perfectly tailored. He didn't say anything when I came through the lobby doors. He just put his hand on the small of my back and guided me toward the car, and I was grateful for that—for the silence, for the steady pressure of his hand, for him being exactly what he was good at.
The drive took half an hour.
Neither of us said much as we left the city limits behind, the highway stretching out through the brown, dormant fields of early spring. Outside, the world moved past in the flat, grey March light. The kind of vast, indifferent landscape that makes you feel very small.
"You okay?" Tom asked as we hit the turn-off for Clear Creek.
"Yes," I said.
He nodded and didn't push it, and I went back to looking out the window.
The church was small and white, set back from the road behind a low fence. It looked exactly as it had twelve years ago, as if it had been waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. A board outside held Cassie’s name in white plastic letters, the dates underneath. I stared at those numbers for a second too long, the dash between them representing a whole life I’d barely touched, and had to look away.
The parking lot was fuller than I’d expected. Of course it was. Cassie had been the kind of person who filled rooms without trying, who accumulated people the way some people accumulated things—effortlessly, without keeping score.
I recognized a few faces from years ago, ghosts from a previous life: women I'd known vaguely when I was last here, a man who'd worked with Cassie's father before he died. But most of them were strangers to me. They were the evidence of the twelve years of Cassie's life I hadn't been part of, a living timeline of my absence.
Tom took my hand as we walked in.
* * *
We found seats near the back. The church was already overflowing; people were lined up along the side walls, a low murmur of voices that cut out abruptly as the organ started. Cassie would have had something to say about the organ. I could hear her saying it.
Jack and Lily were in the front pew. From this distance, I could only see the back of his head and the heavy slant of his shoulders under a dark jacket that looked a size too small. Lily was tucked against his side, a tiny silhouette clutching the rabbit in her lap. She didn't move much. Jack didn't either.
A woman from Cassie's office spoke first. She said the right things—warm, specific, a story about Cassie bringing homemade food to every work birthday without fail, never once forgetting, not in six years. People laughed softly at that, the laugh of recognition. I looked down at my hands. Every anecdote was a stone being added to a pile of things I didn't know about her.
Then a neighbor spoke. Then the pastor, who hadn't known Cassie personally but had done his homework, and it showed. He spoke of her "steadfast spirit," a phrase that felt too formal for a woman who used to drink wine out of coffee mugs, but I suppose that’s what funerals are for: polishing the edges of a life until it fits into a wooden box.
I didn't cry during any of it. I sat with Tom's arm against mine and watched the back of Jack's head, focusing on the way his neck muscles stayed corded and tight. I thought about a bottle of wine on my doorstep twelve years ago and the wide-open, unvetted smile of a woman who had just decided, apparently, that I was hers now. I hadn't deserved that kind of immediate, unearned loyalty. I hadn't been careful enough with it.
At some point, Lily leaned into Jack's side. He put his arm around her without looking down; an automatic, protective sweep of his hand, like he'd been doing it for years.
He hadn't. He'd been doing it for exactly one week.
The ease of it, the way he was sliding into the shape of the person she needed, made my chest ache in a way I didn't understand. I looked away, staring at a stained-glass window until the colors bled together.
Tom handed me a tissue. I hadn't realized I needed one.
* * *
The burial was at the cemetery behind the church. We followed in a loose procession, the grass wet underfoot, the sky low and grey. A small canopy over the grave, a handful of white flowers somebody had laid. The pastor said more words. The wind moved through the trees at the edge of the cemetery and that was the only sound besides his voice.
Lily stood at the graveside with Jack's hand in both of hers. She looked at the coffin the way children looked at things they were trying very hard to understand. She didn't cry, and neither did Jack. I thought about what that cost both of them, in different ways.
I cried. Quietly, into Tom's shoulder, and he held me without saying anything. I let myself do it because there was nobody left to hold it together for.
Afterward, the crowd drifted into the church hall next door. The space was filled with the smell of damp coats and lukewarm tea. Someone had put out sandwiches and a plate of Cassie's favorite cookies. It was Lily's doing, apparently; I overheard Jack telling a neighbor that she’d insisted. The room filled quickly with the low, steady hum of people remembering out loud, a collective effort to fill the silence Cassie had left behind.
I stood with Tom near the back and let the crowd move around us like a tide. From across the room, I watched Jack. He was receiving people the way you received people at these things—handshakes, embraces, the same words over and over. He took each one without flinching. Lily stayed at his side the entire time, her hand back in his, watching the adults talk with those serious dark eyes.
"Do you want to go over?" Tom asked quietly.