I am fine. I am Carrie Manning. I am thirty-seven years old. And, okay, I'm a little tense this morning because my mother's … not alive anymore. But I'm not going to dwell on that. Not now. Now, I'm going to think about how I got through the memorial service yesterday without crying once. I was great at that service. I didn't even tear up when they sang the Panis Angelicus.

“Carrie?” Howie's voice on the phone brought her back to reality. “Honey, you're not still freaking out about the flowers, are you?”

Okay, so I didn't get through the memorial service quite as well as I might have.

“I didn't freak out. I was upset.”

“However you want to say it, Carrie …”

“I put it in the obituary—'No flowers’—that's what it said. It was right there in the New York Times. I listed all of Mother's charities so people could make donations.”

“Yes, I saw that.”

“I did it exactly the way she wanted it. The woman was once voted Humanitarian of the Year by Living Life magazine. That's what the plaque said: Rose Manning, Humanitarian of the Year, 1986…”

“I know, Carrie—”

“Her wishes for her own funeral should have been obeyed. And I got it right. I got it goddamned right!”

“Absolutely.”

“Everyone knows how Mother feels about flowers. Especially roses. Why would anyone send her a basket of white roses?”

“I guess there was someone who didn't know …”

“After the article she wrote about Guatemalan children? The one about the five-year-old kids who pick roses and wind up with respiratory diseases and blisters full of insecticides?”

“Sweetheart, calm down.”

“You know what Mother says every time she sees those cheap roses in the delis on the street. She carries her pamphlets in her purse so she can show the owners—”

“She carried them.”

“That's what I said.”

“No, you said she carries them. Wrong tense, Carrie.”

And suddenly it was real—in a way that it hadn't been at the memorial service, or at the funeral Mass, or at the mausoleum. Now there was no way not to think about it. Her mother was gone. And Carrie was an orphan. The room went cold. There was a lingering scent of hairspray in the air.

“Carrie? Would you like me to come into the city and stay with you until my first appointment?”

“No. Thank you.”

“I could bring you some coffee—from the diner on the corner, all black and bitter. None of that Starbucks-wannabe stuff.”

“You're the best ex on the planet—but I really am okay. And you need to get your sleep. You probably have a gazillion root canals today.”

“Only one.”

“Go back to sleep. You'll need steady hands.”

And I need to get through this without dramatics.