There are a dozen of them: Asher, Justin (Shady sits at his feet, watching the house like he expects Bell to come out the front door), Evona, the pastor, his wife, a handful of folks that Bell has known ever since she came to the island. Most of them hadn’t seen her for years, back when she still went to the grocery store and to church. The last few years she had kept to herself more and more, mostly because she was sick, but also because she had tired of the world itself. She had cut herself off from the news or any kind of television. The world is too much with us, she’d told Asher the day she explained why she never left the house, never watched the evening news anymore.

The pastor looks different outside, in the sunlight, much younger. There is an elegant kindness about the way the pastor moves, and a kind of calmness about him. He wears a black cassock with a white frock, a white stole whose ends lift in the breeze, threatening to take flight. He holds the Book of Common Prayer out on his palm as if it is floating there.

Once the song ends the pastor clears his throat and reads Bell’s favorite scripture.

After a brief silence, the pastor speaks again: “Everyone the Father gives to me will come to me; I will never turn away anyone who believes in me.”

The pastor nods and Evona scoops her hand into the urn, gathering ashes, which look more like heavy sand. Asher has officiated at many funerals but nobody from his church had ever been cremated.

Bell had smelled of frangipani and had cooked big meals and played the piano but now she is ashes.

“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our sister Olivia Bell Williams,” the pastor reads, his voice becoming more solid, more real, “and we commit her body to the elements; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

Evona releases the ashes. They fall in a cloud around the frangipani tree.

“The Lord bless her and keep her, the Lord make His face to shine upon her and be gracious to her, the Lord lift up His countenance upon her and give her peace.”

Evona shakes the remaining ashes from the urn, moving backward around the tree. She has saved the Alabama ashes in a small wooden box.

“Join me in the Lord’s Prayer,” the pastor says, and everyone obeys, all of their voices lifting together. Although Asher’s head is bowed, he opens his eyes so he can look down at Justin. His son is watching the sky, not joining in for the prayer, although he knows it as well as Asher does.