At the funeral in a small church outside New Haven, he chose silence. He had nothing to share with this roomful of strangers. An elderly female relative from Ann Arbor he’d never met before gave a eulogy about his father’s early life and the Depression summers they’d spent together on a Kansas farm. That was where his dad had been “truly in his element,” as she put it—he’d once saved a brown calf from drowning in the creek. She twice alluded to his “genial, upbeat attitude to life” despite his having been “robbed of a childhood” due to two alcoholic parents and poverty in general. She then quoted a line from St. Augustine’s Confessions that brought a tear to Raymond’s eye: “The reason why that grief had penetrated me so easily and deeply was that I had poured out my soul on to the sand by loving a person sure to die as if he would never die.”

This cousin spoke with the authority and regret of a former sweetheart. But well aware that she was addressing a roomful of people who’d never known the man before he was old, she kept her speech to a brief ten minutes. When the whole room realized that no one else had been scheduled to speak, a couple of caregivers from Dartmoor threw in a few kind words just to extend the ceremony. Their contributions were heartfelt, but hazy—“he was a joy to be with,” “funny and warm,” “we’ll all miss him dearly.”

Raymond felt as if he’d walked into a memorial honoring somebody else. He was glad that he had the girls with him, even if he had ignored the paperwork from Social Services that would legally let him take them out of state. The girls weren’t going to rat him out. In the pew, Mira held on to his arm, massaging it to make sure his blood was still circulating because one might have doubted it from looking at his face.

“You’re shaking,” she whispered.

The elderly Ann Arbor relative avoided Raymond at the reception that followed—not recognizing him, he hoped. She spoke instead to residents from the retirement home who treated her as if she were the grieving widow. He watched her from across the room. He saw how she made a hasty exit after spilling a cup of coffee down her crocheted vest.

A middle-aged couple dressed like Midwestern academics came up to the table where Raymond and the girls were seated. They had a small Asian girl with them, about six years old. The man possessed an eager but awkward willingness to make friends.

“Are they from China, too?” were his first words to Raymond, his head nodding enthusiastically. “Our Lily’s from Sichuan Province, in the southwest. She’s got a natural taste for spicy food.”

“No, no.” Raymond smiled, tiredly. “Mine are from Southern California. No taste whatsoever.”