His wife is looking down at the rectangle of light cast on the floor by the transom and never lifts her eyes. “We’ve come here as Christians,” she says.

Asia had assumed they’d come to pay their respects. Her anger has always been a dark turbulence, quick to rise, slow to dissipate. She feels it taking hold of her and Mother must feel that happening, too, because she reaches over, takes Asia’s wrist in her hand, and tightens her grip. Asia is quietly being told to be quiet.

She tries. She shakes her mother off, steps away into the hall to look at the painting of Niagara. It’s a wilderness without people. The water is translucent, green with white foam; the trees are bright with autumn colors—red, gold, brown. When Asia was little, when she was upset (as she so often was, as she still so often is) she used to imagine herself into that painting, that cathedral of nature and peace. She tries to recover her gift of transportation now. She surrounds herself with nature’s beauty.

“Rejoice,” Mr. Browne says. He licks the corner of his mouth, his tongue flicking quickly out and back again. Maybe not a fly, after all. Maybe a snake. “God has given you a second chance. Renounce your sinful ways and beg His forgiveness.” Mrs. Browne takes a pamphlet out of her reticule and hands it to her husband. He passes it on. “There’s help here if you only open yourself to it. Repent. God loves a sinner.”

It’s a Methodist tract. Mother returns it. “We’re Episcopalians.”

Asia turns back. “We will never need your help,” she says, her voice sharp. Mr. Browne looks at her. Asia looks back, though she knows he’ll think her bold for doing so. If she had the power to match her feelings, he would burst into flame. He’s the one to first look aside.

In fact, courtesy of a few years at a convent school, Asia is leaning towards Catholicism. She finds God in the silver candlesticks, the light filtered through stained glass, the murmured hush of the Latin Mass. If she were Rosalie, she’d take the veil, marry Christ. None of this is any business of the Brownes. Nothing about her family is any business of the Brownes.

“You’ve said what you came to say,” Mother tells them. “You can go now.”

They leave the pamphlet behind. Asia burns it in the kitchen stove.

—

The funeral takes place on December 11th at the old Baltimore Cemetery. The burial will have to wait for warmer weather and softer ground. More than a thousand mourners, young and old, black and white, join the family and the coffin as they move through the icy streets. The size of the crowd is a relief to Asia. Father was so respected. A great man. How many people will come to Elisha Browne’s funeral?