None of us had slept well in the two months since our kitchen was taken from us. And this, God forgive the strangeness of grief, felt almost like relief.
We didn’t have time to bake a sheet cake.
But what every one of us had, every single week for thirty years without fail, was a tin of bars sitting in our kitchen at home.
A woman who’s cooked funeral lunches that long keeps a standing stock of lemon bars and rhubarb crisp the way a farmer keeps diesel in the tank. Ready before anybody asks.
Marge’s granddaughter drove the two miles to Marge’s house and back in eleven minutes flat with every tin in the pantry.
At eleven-fifteen, Pastor Shay came down the basement stairs.
He was looking for Tamra. He said she was up in the sanctuary trying to figure out what in the world to tell seventy mourners who’d be walking down to an empty table in fifteen minutes.
