Amel looked at his friend and colleague earnestly. “Alex, are you actually thinking there could be more to it?” He would have backed the young doctor, to anyone, against any charge of a fanciful imagination. A conspiracy theory would never be a child of Alex’s brain.

“I do wonder if another driver could have crowded him. A neighbor was first on the scene, gave him basic first aid, and got the emergency services. She told my father and the police that she thought she might have heard another vehicle—an engine. She couldn’t be sure. And I don’t want to upset my family. But I do think it’s possible that someone bumped him, then panicked and didn’t stop.”

Amel saw his friend and young colleague coping with all of this very well on the outside, just as he had when his mother had died earlier in the year; but he was sensitive to an unfamiliar note of strain in Alex’s voice. He knew better than to expect him to admit to it, however. “Leave it to the police, Alex.” Amel came over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Let yourself mourn your brother. I’m sorry I didn’t know him—everyone here who knew him speaks well of him, and they’re all in shock. But I will come to the funeral for you, if you will allow me.”

Alex, who always thought Amel the busiest human on the planet, was moved. It took him a moment to phrase his thanks. “That’s kind, Amel. It would be good to have you there, if you can get away. It’s Friday.” Alex looked at his hands. “I hardly seem to have time to think what Will would have wanted for it.”

“Funerals are for the living, Alex, not for the dead. It’s what you and your father and friends need from it that’s important. Try to satisfy that—the need formally to say goodbye.” Amel understood that Alex had no faith to speak of—actually was a nonbeliever. They had talked honestly about it before. “Did Will share your religious views? Or lack of them, perhaps I should ask?”

“I think Will would have been happier with a testament found in Shakespeare than any from the Bible. But he had some strange corners to his spirituality. Practically the last message he left me was about our mother’s Bible; and there was a postcard from Chartres, and a copy of the Song of Solomon, in French, inside his jacket. So, I don’t know really.”

“Shakespeare sounds good to me. Let others make their own contributions. But you know, I like Hamlet’s advice to Horatio, that there might be ‘more things in heaven and earth.’”