The sun had slipped behind the ridge, leaving the cemetery in a cold, grey shadow. Mama’s grave was still a mound of red clay, the sod they had laid down not yet knitted to the earth. A plastic pot of yellow chrysanthemums from the funeral had tipped over in the wind.
I stood by the granite marker of her first husband, my father, while Russell waited in the passenger seat of his truck with the heater running. The headlights were on, throwing long yellow beams across the gravel path.
I remembered the day Wayne sat on our porch, tossing a silver quarter up and catching it in his palm. I was eighteen, my leg still in a plaster cast, watching the school bus pass our road without me.
“The lawyers took it all, Linda,” Wayne had said, his booming voice full of easy sympathy. “The insurance company had three of their own doctors swear you’d walk fine by winter.”
He had jingled the coins in his pocket, then gone inside to watch the ball game.
