I sat in the backseat, a thousand miles away, clutching a sleeve of tissues. My head felt wrapped in cotton. I could barely hear Agnes’s sobbing or John’s attempts at conversation.The sun was unnaturally bright, glinting off the metal of car after car lining the neat lanes and perfect grass of the cemetery. The pain of its sharp glare hardly registered as I stared at the people, so many of them clustered around that awful hole. I recognized Nan’s charity friends, her yoga partners, neighbors, a ton of old people I knew vaguely or not at all. Tina and Dr. Wentworth were there too. I could feel Tina’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look at her. We had already spoken the day after Nan died.I had been sitting in a hallway at the hospital, filling out endless, incomprehensible paperwork, when I saw motion at the periphery of my vision—Tina, probably making the sign of the cross. I could tell from the look on her face that she was scared.“Cassie,” she whispered, coming hesitantly toward me.
