Natalie grabbed her arm. “All right, all right, all right. Just stay here.”

If Devesh were here, Josie would have had him stand behind her and wrap his palms and fingers tightly around both her fists.

“I’m not staying.” Josie said it without conviction, and when she pulled gently away, Natalie tightened her grip, and Josie softened. If Natalie kept her hand firmly on her arm, she might make it through. And she could count things. The number of blonde heads, the white checks on Natalie’s dress, the hairs on her arms.

A gray-haired man stood next to the casket and rested a notebook on the lectern.

“Who is that?” Josie whispered.

“The reverend. Sh.”

“We don’t know any reverends.” She listened to the man talk about life and death and God, but when he started to speak about heaven, the marble in her chest began to throb and a small tornado began to circle in her belly. She felt it sweep its way around her insides, and she began to count. Seven windows in the room. Eighteen bouquets of flowers. Twenty-nine men with bald spots. And there were thirty-seven pews. She, in fact, had counted them when she was four, walked up and down the aisles tapping each one until the service had started and her aunt set her in the front pew and gave her a pen and a program to draw on. She tried to draw a baby on a cloud, but the letters on the program got in the way and instead she worked at covering the whole page in blue ink.

“Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?” Natalie asked.

Natalie’s mother stepped to the front, and Natalie let go of Josie’s arm.