Louise couldn’t bear up under the weight of all that would follow the death of her sister. She knew the family was preparing to gather for the wake, the long procession of aunties and uncles, cousins and distant relations. Charlie Kicking Woman had suggested they take Florence to Ferron’s Funeral Home in Mission to prepare her body for the wake. Grandma had resisted the idea. Grandma said she didn’t want to be apart from Florence, didn’t want Florence to be alone in the cold funeral home far from her. Charlie had listened to her grandmother with his hat in his hands, nodding carefully, the patter of river water dripping from his trousers. Finally Grandma released the body to Charlie’s care. And Louise wondered if her grandmother had only said yes to spare Charlie’s pride. But Louise recognized her grandmother was grief-weary. She had prepared too many of her loved ones for burial. She had grown old with death.

Louise watched as Charlie Kicking Woman placed the body of her sister in the back of his car and covered her with a blanket. She saw her sister’s brown hands, unmoving, and tried to imagine Florence stopped. Forever stopped. As Charlie closed the door on the image of her quiet sister she knew he was closing the door on one of the last memories she would hold of Florence, and without her forever, a rush of memories tapped at Louise, brief as summer rain. Florence smiling. Florence reaching toward the winter-blue sky. Florence in the August fields. Florence dressed in beaded buckskin, turning slowly. Ready to dance.

Charlie pulled onto the highway and Louise saw the sun for one brilliant moment glinting on his windshield, forever summer for her sister now. Florence had passed away. Passed away like a car going in the direction Louise was not going, geese across the dark night sky traveling to a safer place, wheels turning wind, and then the wake of silence.

Jules Bart stood tall beside her, handsome. She had not noticed before how his eyes were the mint-green color of summer. When she took his arm she smelled the sweet sweat of horse near his throat.