"I won't."
Camille stood. At the door she paused.
"The wooden box is gone," she said. "I threw it out years ago because I could not look at it. That does not mean the theft is gone. It means I learned how to live around a missing piece. Do not ask me to clap for your year like it replaces my pieces."
"I won't ask."
She left. In the parking lot she sat in her car with both hands on the wheel and cried until the crying emptied into a headache. Then she drove home through traffic that did not care about her family, which was somehow stabilizing.
***
The funeral returned to her in pieces that week, sharper now that she knew it had been a ceremony for a living man.
She remembered the church pews polished to a dull shine. She remembered cousin Andre singing off-key on purpose because Isaiah used to tease him for being too proud of his voice. She remembered the program with Isaiah's senior photo, the one where he grinned like the future was a dare. She remembered her own hands shaking as she unfolded the paper with her remarks. She had spoken about the bike on Harcourt Street. She had spoken about the way Isaiah stole fries off her plate and then denied it with crumbs on his mouth. She had not spoken about the wooden box. She had ended with a sentence she now wanted to take back and also keep forever: "My brother taught me that love is not the same thing as rescue, and I am still learning the difference."
People had nodded. People had hugged her. People had said he was in a better place. Camille had wanted to scream that a better place should have included staying alive long enough to pay her back and grow old enough to be boring.
Julian had driven her home in silence. In their bedroom she had taken off the black dress and sat in her slip on the edge of the bed until he wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. She had said, "I meant what I told him once. I could not bury him twice." Julian had said, "You won't have to." The sentence, in hindsight, was a prophecy with the wrong calendar.
Now Camille stood in the cemetery again with Evelyn, two days after the park. Evelyn laid a single white rose on the stone and whispered, "You complicated boy." Camille did not correct the tense. Grammar had not caught up with their facts yet.
"We will need a new kind of memorial," Evelyn said suddenly. "Not for death. For the years we lost while he was busy not being dead."
Camille almost smiled. "Mama, that is the most Evelyn sentence I have heard all week."
"I am allowed inventiveness. My child came back from the ground. The rules are soft."
They walked back to the car. Evelyn asked if Camille was going to leave Julian. Camille said she did not know. Evelyn asked if Camille was going to let Isaiah into Sunday dinners. Camille said not until Sunday dinners stopped feeling like auditions for forgiveness. Evelyn accepted both answers with the grim practicality of a woman who had buried and unburied in the same lifetime.
Julian had made dinner. He set a plate for her and one for himself and did not set a third, which she noticed and filed under small mercies. They ate mostly in silence. When he started to apologize again, she lifted a hand.
"Not during food," she said. "Apologies can wait for empty plates. Grief gets indigestion."