I found myself wanting to hear her speak again. Her voice was low, raspy, but in a nice way, like she’d spent the night talking over loud music. ‘I was there alone,’ she said. ‘And, man, I just didn’t want to be weird. And it felt weird. To hover. After you saw me I just, like, felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there. Didn’t want to draw any attention.’

Ha. She was worried about being weird. I went to address the elephant in the room. ‘Sorry, why were you even –’

She’d known the question was coming and interrupted: ‘I was seeing your dad.’

There it was. With my suspicions now proved correct, a pang of jealousy arrived. She had memories of Dad that I didn’t. I tried to imagine them sitting in his office together, June sprawled over the couch, Dad listening intently, but I couldn’t get the image to materialize. He was something to June that he never was to me. She didn’t just remind me of it all – she was a part of it all. ‘Yeah. I’d been seeing him. Wanted to pay my respects, I guess.’

But how could she have been? Why did June Copeland need Dad?

She could tell I was taking too long to respond. I apologized. ‘You’re just not his regular clientele, I guess.’ I didn’t know shit about his regular clientele.

June smirked. ‘No?’

‘They were usually, uh, older,’ I said, because I suspected it to be true; as far as I knew, he didn’t see many kids from the high school.

‘Mm,’ she said, slightly deflated. But she had this knowing look – the kind of knowing I guess you only saw if you looked straight into her eyes.

‘So, what,’ I said, nodding towards the headstone, ‘you couldn’t get enough of him, or …?’

That brought her back to life. ‘Like, basically that.’ We laughed. ‘So, he was really great. I’m sure you know that already, but he … yeah. He was so helpful when stuff was shitty, and, yeah, stuff has been shitty, so I thought I’d … stop by. God. Sorry. That feels stupid to say to you.’ I got the impression she was really considering her words; I wasn’t sure if I was grateful for that or not.

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘OK, wait, let me just get this out of the way. I want to say sorry, but that seems super-patronizing, but I also don’t want to say nothing because that seems really inconsiderate –’ a nervous laugh – ‘so I don’t really know what to … do right now.’