Chris and Carrie read a poem about slipping the surely bounds of earth together Carrie crying quietly and Chris staring fixedly out into the crowd counting somber black-clad neighbors to keep himself from breaking down It didn’t help much Carrie later suggested suggested that picturing everyone in his or her underwear might have been a better idea but Chris thought that that would have been disrespectful And he also came away confused by the number of people at the funeral that he didn’t recognize The funeral was held on an unfairly pleasant day with a cloudless blue sky beaming beaming down on the casket and a gentle breeze rustling the funeral flowers All sorts of people had known and loved Aunt Elsie so extended family colleagues from grad school and even the entire history department from the local college had come to pay their respects So it was silly for Chris to expect to know everyone at the funeral But a scattering of people in attendance were quite frankly sketchy looking There was a broad-shouldered man wearing sunglasses sunglasses and lurking in the back of the crowd wearing 8
gloves on a warm sunny day There was a dark-haired family clustered under a willow tree also all wearing sunglasses the daughter squashed between her parents She was clearly the same age as Chris but not someone he’d ever seen at school And when Chris walked back to the gravesite to fetch an aunt’s purse he found a tall man with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over a baseball cap standing in front of the very new grave His silhouette was just the tiniest bit familiar Chris actually called out to him but the man tucked a bouquet of lilies into the already overflowing offerings of flowers and walked away without responding head down and hands in his pockets His eyes were shaded by a pair of aviator sunglasses In fact Chris decided there were an awful lot of people wearing sunglasses at Elsie’s funeral Maybe because it’s a sunny day Carrie suggested when Chris pointed this out to her at the wake She was normally pretty pale a side effect of having inherited inherited the redhead gene from the Kingsolver side of the family but today she was translucent and there were 9
tear tracks on her cheeks She had not however turned red with crying the way her brown-haired but very freckly cousin had It was widely agreed that Elsie was Elsie had been particularly fond of Chris who shared her interests and her free spirit but Chris knew probably better than anyone else that Carrie had also had a special bond with their aunt Aunt Elsie had delighted in Carrie’s quick mind and undeniable skill at logic and puzzles if despairing at her niece’s stubborn stubborn refusal to be whimsical or suspend her disbelief for the fun of it There are an awful lot of people wearing sunglasses and acting sketchy at this funeral Chris said to clarify and wasn’t surprised when Carrie raised a skeptical eyebrow at him Grief makes people do weird things Chris she pointed out Since she normally didn’t like chocolate but was currently eating her way through an entire platter of brownies Chris couldn’t possibly dispute this but he did think Carrie was missing the point which was that 10
Don’t you dare tell me that the men in black are responsible for Aunt Elsie’s death Carrie said suddenly her voice hitching on their aunt’s name and Chris swallowed his words which had been to the effect that someone was behind Aunt Elsie’s death Possibly the Unabomber It’s bad enough that She put her brownie down and swallowed She shouldn’t have died Chris said miserably And she shouldn’t have been killed by some jerk who didn’t stop and we should have been able to figure out who did it Which was what hurt the worst True someone was responsible for the car crash but in the sense of having made a terrible mistake and then fleeing like a coward which left the Kingsolver family with no closure closure Not a fitting end to the life of a woman who had reasons for everything even one usually discovered later her sudden whims For example Aunt Elsie had once suddenly decided to take her niece and nephew to Mexico over spring break This had necessitated much rushing around in order to get Chris a passport and 11
