“Anyway, on this particular round, Lauren was the leader. The descriptor word was selfish. We all throw in our cards, and I announce that I’m definitely going to win. Our fellow players dispute this, thinking that they’ve played the card Lauren will select. The first card that Lauren turns over says ‘my daughter,’ and Lauren chuckles. The next one says ‘Kim Kardashian,’ and this time everyone laughs. The third card reads ‘millennials,’ and there are nods of approval. When she turns over the last card, Lauren breaks out laughing. Not a little guffaw either, but like she’s never seen anything so funny in her entire life. She can’t even read the card, she’s laughing so hard.

“One of the other players reads it for her. ‘Lobster,’ he says. He looks completely confused. Then he says, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t get it. The clue was selfish, right?’ The others also seemingly don’t understand. But Lauren finally stops laughing long enough to say, ‘That was Richard’s! I know it was Richard’s!’ Then another of our friends says something like, ‘Does someone want to let the rest of us in on the joke?’ And that’s when Lauren yelled out, ‘Don’t you get it? Lobsters are shellfish.’

“My point in sharing this story is that I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Lauren would get the pun instantly, and she’d know just as quickly that I was the only one who would have played that card. That’s the kind of connection we had.”

Richard smiles at the memory, looking a bit too happy to be there.

The graveside ceremony vividly reminds me of the day we laid Charlotte to rest. The coffin balancing on the bands over the grave, the ritualistic lowering of it into the ground, the tossing of fresh dirt on top of the casket until the wooden box vanishes.

I’m crying with the first shovelful. I don’t know if I would have reacted the same way if it hadn’t been for Charlotte, but I think that about a lot of things—maybe everything—in the aftermath of my sister’s murder. I’m not the same person now as I was before. Gabriel pulls me to him, and I muffle my sobs against his chest.

The minister concludes the service by saying that he took considerable time to select an appropriate final passage. He then announces that he will read from 1 Corinthians:

And when this which is corruptible

Clothes itself with incorruptibility

and this which is mortal

clothes itself with immortality,

then the word that is written shall come about:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.

Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.