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
the trip was widely regarded as final proof that Elsie had completely lost her marbles But when Chris’s dad surprised his wife with a trip to her beloved Ireland later that summer he was able to keep it a secret up to the moment they got to the airport because the whole family including Chris had up-to-date passports Aunt Elsie was proven both right and psychic That someone who loved leaving clues wherever she went had left no clues as to how she died made it so very hard to lay her to rest It hurt but even worse it was out of character Chris didn’t think he was the only person who had somehow expected Aunt Elsie to either live forever or die in a way that was exceptionally well planned The letter arrived in the mail three days after the funeral Chris was supposed to sort the family mail when it came in but he did so irregularly which had occasionally occasionally resulted in overdue bills Once he had even racked up a library fine of fifty dollars and seventy-five cents by not noticing the mailed overdue notice It had been 12
a book on money management an irony that Carrie had never quite forgiven him for and intended never to let him forget Chris really spent more time in trouble for forgetting to sort the mail than he did actually sorting it But in the wake of the funeral his parents had been less inclined to scold and more inclined to let things slide and so it was five days after the funeral when he couldn’t deal with wondering why Aunt Elsie had died or who the people in sunglasses were at the funeral or what the girl he didn’t recognize was doing there that Chris decided he had to do something and so actually did his chores School was not a distraction School had ended the day after the funeral on a vaguely menacing note for Chris and Carrie both sixteen-year-old rising juniors the summer reading assignment had been three pages long and had been dispensed with strict instruction to skimp reading at your own peril Then there had been a class assembly in which the soon-to-be juniors were informed by the guidance counselor that they needed to start seriously thinking about their 13
