This time, there wasn’t much to do. Polly loaded her brisket into the car, picked up Nora (potato salad) and Josie (beans, inevitably underdone). At Josie’s, they had a glass of wine and looked at the dress, wrapped in plastic on a hanger, that Ariel wouldn’t be wearing. This was not a day for sobriety. They talked about the fight between Graham and Vinnie, but Vinnie had told Nora he’d explain later, and Nora, annoyingly, hadn’t pushed. She was sorry she’d be missing the party, but it was good to get Vinnie out of town. Graham’s stay hadn’t been good for their marriage. She wished he’d head off into the sunset.

Nora always gripped the door handle when Polly was driving.

They stopped for other hot dishes in the ovens at the Elks Club and brought it all down to the park, where tables were laid out around a gazebo. Part of the mission was to keep people from eating immediately, before everyone arrived. Polly always underestimated the speed and gluttony of people avoiding thoughts of death.

The Delgados, having to survive the worst thing possible, didn’t care. They hugged people and thanked people and wept. Ariel’s stepfather picked up Helen and whirled her and told her that Ariel said she was the smartest girl on the planet, that she’d grow up and solve all the world’s problems.

“How can they talk?” said Ned. “I wouldn’t be able to talk. I can’t talk.”

Drake, who stayed close to them, barely opened his mouth. The phrase at a loss flitted through Polly’s brain. Ned had met her there with the kids and Maude, who had known generations of Ariel’s family. Jane and Merle felt they hadn’t known Ariel well, and they didn’t think it proper to show up. This diffidence didn’t seem to affect most of the people in the park, who were embracing mass mourning with fervor. Polly wondered how many of them had really known Ariel well enough to act this way, though that was an undercurrent for any death. People were possessive, people talked of closeness and remade and recast relationships. Your own version of Ariel mattered the most.

A string quartet played—Ariel had been a cellist—and people drank beer and wine and sodas. Polly and Nora and Josie refilled and combined trays of food and plucked out drunken bees and bits of leaves.

Vinnie and Graham arrived late. Vinnie was flushed, and at a distance it was hard to see Graham’s new layer of bruises. He stayed a half step behind his uncle and stopped twenty feet away from the family, marooned, while Vinnie and Nora greeted them. In the family group, everyone but Connie and Ariel’s grandfather looked away. The grandfather followed Vinnie back and spoke to Graham briefly before he turned away cold-faced, shaking his head to the family.