She watched her father and her aunt stand beside the hearse, its back doors wide open like a gaping mouth. Then four men emerged from the back door of the chapel with the casket. They transferred it easily, the front carriers using only one hand, and Josie wondered if her mother was still inside. When Matthew died, she had watched the casket lock shut, heard the clicks of the brass brackets, and then followed the men outside. Now, Josie watched the men slide the casket into the hearse, watched her father blow his nose in a handkerchief, watched her aunt looking very much like her mother with her puffs of blonde hair and red painted fingernails, and imagined this was what would have played out if she had managed to drown herself the night of Matthew’s funeral. She would have joined Matthew in the soft ground, their skin drying up like old orange peels, their bones replicas of each other—brother and sister, sister and brother.

Natalie turned the ignition on.

“No,” Josie said.

“We can drive behind the other cars.”

“I don’t want to go up there.”

“You can stay in the car.”

Josie put her feet on the dashboard and leaned the seat back. As they drove, she could see the too-green slopes of endless grass from the corners of her eyes, and when they stopped, two tall cypress trees jutted up beside her.

“I’m getting out; are you coming or staying?”

“Staying,” Josie said. She felt the rush of cool air, heard the door slam shut, and immediately felt the complete stillness of the sealed car. She looked up. Natalie had parked far enough away that there were no cars behind, but close enough so that if Josie stretched out of her seat, she could just make out the crowd of dark bodies engulfing the gravesite. She watched Natalie walk quickly toward the crowd.

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.