Glancing around, she notices that she is among the youngest of the mourners. While a few appear to be about her age, most are older, she guesses middle-aged or more.

A young man who is sitting at the end of her row draws her eye, maybe because he seems as out of place among the aged crowd as she does. He looks to be about Sunil’s age, thirty-something. His longish, dark hair is half-up in a ponytail, and she guesses, he probably shaves slightly more often than he goes in for a trim. His outfit looks as if it has been pulled from a mec catalogue: teal Gore-Tex jacket, cords, hiking boots. He is staring at a point on the floor, meditatively, with a gaze that is more inward than outward. She has an itchy sense that she knows him from somewhere, but she doesn’t recall from where.

Her eyes must have lingered for a moment too long. He turns to look at her. As he grins widely—disarmingly—the outer edges of his dark eyes wrinkle. He has the artless look of someone who is always open to conversation, the kind of relaxed person who can talk without expectation in the shampoo aisle, at the bus stop, in line at the bank.

She looks away without smiling back. Out of the curve of her eye, she sees him return to his original position, his unaffected yogic-like pose.

What does he have to smile about? she wonders. What do any of them? She thought this was supposed to be a bereavement group, full of people missing parts, like her. What was with all the laughing and smiling and let’s be friends pretence?

She takes a deep breath. Clearly, she isn’t prepared for the openness of the place. She has habituated to people shutting her down. To secrecy and silence and judgment. Dealing with things alone. Now, she feels like her cave might fracture at the slightest kind gesture—a laugh, a smile. Then everything she has been trying to hold together will instantly crumble. Everything she has been trying to hold in will flood the church basement. She wonders if bears feel the same way after spending months in their winter dens. Do they grunt hello to the first bear they encounter in the bush, or simply growl, suspiciously?

After several uneasy minutes, a slender, auburn-haired woman walks up to the podium. She is dressed in a brown leather skirt, a cream-coloured turtleneck, and black leather knee boots. Her hair is twisted up in a clip. By now, nearly every chair has been filled, about forty people in all.

Smiling, the woman welcomes them. Her name is Brenda. She is the lead program coordinator of the bereavement group.