Natalie had asked Josie to explain herself, but to explain a piece would mean she would have to explain the whole. It was not enough to say she was probably the one who had stopped her mother’s heart long before it had given out, not enough to swear that if she could, she would tear out her own and place it on her mother’s coffin—an even exchange, a barter of body parts. If she told Natalie this, she would have to tell her what came before, and this was what she didn’t know. What she did know was that her mother had hated her, and the reason was sure to make the sky fall in thick jagged pieces and the earth open up and swallow Josie whole. And now her mother was dead. And now there was no chance for either discovery or contrition.

She got out of the car, walked slowly to the outskirts of the gravesite, and leaned against one of the cypress trees. If the crowd parted down the middle, she would see her mother’s grave and next to it the glint of Matthew’s brass memorial tablet. She knew that the casket was placed on a sort of pulley system, and that a funeral-home worker would turn a crank that would lower the casket into the ground. And the funeral-home worker would have a thick black mustache, and he would give her a mild smile, and she would turn her face into her father’s dark coat pocket not because she was shy but because he looked very much like one of the men who came to take Matthew’s body away. Her father had tried to keep her in her bedroom while the men rushed into Matthew’s room with a small gray box, but Josie sat in the hallway and listened to her mother cry, “My baby,” over and over and over. The cries were horrible, small animal wails, and then there was no sound, the world frozen around her. Josie tried to convince herself that this was a good thing, but she had already seen Matthew’s flaccid body, his arms and legs spread open like a limp teddy bear, and she had felt the heavy weight of something settle forever in her heart. Still, she concentrated on her father’s tan shorts and pale legs, and counted. There were four pictures on the wall and six lamps on the ceiling and her father had two feet, but when she began to count the flowers on her dress, her mother’s voice pierced the silence. This time she screamed. She screamed “No!” She screamed it over and over and over again. She screamed it even when Josie’s father entered the room and one of the men left. Her mother screamed and screamed, and Josie counted nineteen flowers on her dress and when she couldn’t count any higher, had forgotten what came after nineteen and started back at one and again reached nineteen, her mother’s screams once again turned to cries, and then there was only soft weeping. The man who left returned, and soon both men came out of Matthew’s room. The first man carried the small gray box, and the man with the mustache carried a soft white package. Josie knew what it was and looked at it hard because she knew she would want to remember. She tried to memorize the size and shape of the bag and how small it looked in the man’s huge hands. She memorized how the man held it close to his chest, how it glowed next to his dark blue shirt, and while she was memorizing the man’s face, how a small white scar ran the length of his chin, he looked straight at her, smiled the same mild smile the funeral-home worker would smile, and Josie thought—this man cannot see inside me.