epilogue

Elijah’s funeral was nice, as far as funerals went. It was a day of breathing lilies and gazing at them—so many white blooms, wreaths of them ringed with green, and bouquets laid in pretty contrast on his dark blue casket. I’d never seen so many flowers in my life.

It seemed like half the parish showed up, out of curiosity or respect. It was strange to see a sea of so much black under such a bright summer sky. I held my daddy’s hand the whole time, pretending not to notice when he wiped away tears. Uncle Lee stood silent and serious, his hand on the back of Daddy’s neck, like he had to hold him up. My eyes stayed dry. I didn’t have any tears left for Elijah, not anymore.

But Miss Nan did enough crying for both of us. Clutching her tissue, she smeared her mascara around beneath a black widow’s veil. There was all kinds of talk about that later.

Still swearing that Elijah was a saint, Old Mrs. Landry refused to come to the burial. She told anybody who’d listen that the Prince of Lies put a pile of bones down in that crypt, to blind us to the coming end of days. She stopped going to church; she bought no more prayers with hard candy.

The mysterious Mr. Landry came. He flew in all the way from Phoenix. He stood stiff and straight until the end, when he leaned down to kiss the casket and whisper private words to his son.

Then he looked past Daddy but shook my hand and thanked me for coming. His eyes were brown, just like Elijah’s.

For a while after that, I’d slip down to the cemetery to sit next to Elijah’s stone, mostly just to reassure myself he was still there. I don’t know who chose the marker, but it was perfect: smooth gray granite, with his name and dates etched next to a carved river. I liked to run my fingers across the waves and dig into the letters; it just felt good, the way the stone soaked up the sun.

When summer turned to fall, I went less, and then only once in the winter, to wish him a Merry Christmas. I kept planning to go all through spring, but when summer came, I gave that up, too.

That stone was just a place for the living to remember him; there was nothing left of him to miss me. There was no more Incident with the Landry Boy. There was just a sad story that ended with Elijah finally home.

It was proof that nothing ever happened in Ondine, and finally, that was just fine by me.