“Of course I remember!” Mrs. Simmons shook her head at Joy and reached for the shopping bag at her feet, in which Joy knew was a wreath made out of the same flowers she’d had in her wedding bouquet (roses and peonies). She had held her handbag on her lap like a pet the whole ride. “Thank you for the ride. I will be ready to go home in half an hour.”

Mrs. Simmons always needed half an hour, which seemed to Joy like quite a lot of time, but she didn’t question it. Perhaps Mrs. Simmons needed to catch Mr. Simmons up on the events of the year. Usually Joy walked across the street to Ball O’Brien Park to watch the children playing on the town playground or the skate punks doing their tricks in the skate park. Sometimes she brought a mug of coffee or a snack and sat at one of the picnic tables in the pavilion. She used to bring Maggie to this playground quite often, so she watched the young mothers pushing small children in the baby swings, and the older kids pumping their legs to make the big-kid swings go as high as they could, and she tried not to feel too nostalgic about the inevitable and soul-crushing passage of time, because after all, children couldn’t help that they grew up.

This year, Joy didn’t feel like sitting at Ball O’Brien Park and watching the children. She turned off the ignition and got out herself, took a look around the cemetery. Some of the graves had flags waving beside them. Some had freshly planted flowers or dying bouquets. Some (most) had nothing at all.

She watched Mrs. Simmons bob and weave her way through the graves, clutching her handbag in one hand and the shopping bag with the wreath in the other. Finally her bobbing head disappeared from view. Joy looked at the set of gravestones closest to where she stood: the Starr family. The father had lived from 1919 to 2010; the mother from 1923 to 1995. But the children! Two sons, one dead at age sixteen, one at age twenty-six. UNFINISHED WORDS AND MUSIC read the gravestone on the latter.

Imagine being those parents, outliving both sons. Imagine being the dad, outliving his wife too! Joy turned away and walked toward where she knew Mr. Simmons’s stone to be, just to make sure Mrs. Simmons had arrived safely. For a moment she couldn’t locate her. Then, as she drew closer, she saw that she was kneeling by the gravestone. No, more than kneeling, she had two hands on it and she was bowed over it. And she was sobbing. Joy turned away quickly. To mourn like that! After all these years! Joy couldn’t help but wonder, who would she mourn in such a manner? Only Maggie. And there was no way—no way in hell—she was letting Maggie die first. If Maggie died, Joy would Romeo-and-Juliet herself right next to her, no question.