here,” she said.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Harriet Ellsworth is president of Reenie’s board of directors. She had agreed to speak at the service, but her husband ended up in the hospital this morning. She called just now to say she can’t come. Dad is having a fit. I told him I’d ask if you could possibly fill in. I know it’s the last minute, but nobody knew Reenie as well as you do.”
“Of course I’ll do it,” Ali said. “Let me go sit somewhere quiet so I can pull my thoughts together.”
“There’s a library off Pastor Bronson’s study,” Bree suggested. “Maybe you could you use that.”
Pastor Bronson was a round, balding, and disconcertingly jolly little man who directed Ali to a small book- lined room to the right of the pulpit. While Bree went to tell Ed and Diane that the difficulty had been handled, Ali scrounged through her purse in search of pen and paper.
Only one paper item came readily to hand-the envelope containing the friendship card Reenie had sent. Somehow, that seemed to be a fitting place to compose Misty Irene Holzer Turpin Bernard’s eulogy. So Ali removed the card and wrote her notes on the back of the card itself.
Years earlier, Miss Abel, a speech instructor at NAU, had suggested Ali avail herself of Toastmasters to gain more experience in public speaking. Now, twenty years after spending a year attending weekly Toastmaster meetings, Ali found it unnecessary to write out everything she intended to say. Instead, she jotted down a few key words of reminder:1. greeting cards; 2. high school; 3. makeup; 4. missing years; and 5. greeting cards again. Ali knew that, in order to be structurally sound, a good speech ends where it begins-that’s how to make sure the speech has a point.
When it was time for the service to start, Ali entered the sanctuary from the front. She was happy to see that the church was crammed wall to wall. That was a tribute to Reenie, of course, but it also spoke well of Ed and Diane Holzer’s standing in the community. Most funerals come with a pervading sense of sadness. In this congregation, however, Ali sensed an almost electric tension.
Howie, the two children, and an elderly couple Ali assumed to be Howie’s parents sat in the front pew on one side of the church. Ed Holzer, arms folded on his chest, sat stone-faced directly across the aisle from him. Diane, already weeping, sat next to her husband with Bree and Jack Cowan seated next to her. It reminded Ali of a bad wedding where the bride and groom’s feuding families line up on either side of the church. In that tradition, Ali chose a seat in the second row, directly behind Jack Cowan.
Throughout the proceedings, nothing at all was said about the manner of Reenie’s death. It was as though, by mutual consent and diplomacy, everyone simply skipped over that part. In the program, however, there was a discreet announcement to the effect that remembrances in Reenie’s name should be made to the church building fund or else to the ALS Research Foundation.
Ali’s turn to speak came at the end of the service. It was only when she walked to the pulpit and prepared to make her remarks that she spotted Jasmine Wright seated on the aisle in the next to last pew.
Seeing her there was almost enough to derail Ali’s concentration, but she pulled herself together. This is for the kids, she told herself fiercely. With her hands shaking from outrage rather than nerves, Ali smiled as believably as possible at Matt and Julie and held up the card.
“If you knew Reenie Bernard,” she said, “you know who sent this. Reenie loved cards. She loved sending them and receiving them. She sent them at Christmas and Valentine’s Day and Easter and the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. Sometimes she sent them for no reason at all. This one happens to be a friendship card. You see, Reenie and I were friends.
“We met and became friends on our first day of high school, when we showed up in Mrs. Toone’s algebra class and figured out that we were both scared to death.”
Back in the fourth row, behind the Holzers, Dave Holman smiled and nodded knowingly as did several other people in the room. Some of them Ali recognized as classmates or schoolmates. Some she didn’t, but clearly lots of the people in the room were familiar with the teacher in question. Mrs. Toone had been a daunting creature who took the position her students would learn algebra properly or else.
“We were both scared to be going to school with kids from all those other places. I was from sophisticated Sedona and imagined that kids from Cottonwood would be a bunch of country bumpkins. As for the kids from Verde Valley? Forget it.”
A few chuckles rippled through the room.
“But then we got there and it turned out it was fine because we were all just kids. It seems unlikely now that a girl who grew up living in an apartment out behind a diner would become friends with a banker’s daughter, but that’s exactly what happened.”
She talked about the things she and Reenie had done together-about school plays and pranks and organizations. And she talked about the missing years, when their friendship went dormant for a time but didn’t disappear.
“We went our separate ways and lost each other for a long time after high school, but then I came home for our tenth high school reunion and there she was, the same old Reenie. We picked up our friendship again as easily as if we’d never been apart. We called each other often and wrote letters back and forth. That’s when she started sending me cards again, an amazing collection of cards. My only regret is that I didn’t keep all of them.
“If you’ve seen the YW’s vibrant new facility up in Flagstaff, you’ve seen the works of Reenie Bernard’s heart, hands, and mind. When other people said it was impossible to have a new building, Reenie ignored all the naysayers. She wasn’t afraid to reach for the stars, and she built it anyway.
“I went to Reenie’s office in Flagstaff yesterday,” Ali continued. “One whole wall is covered, floor to ceiling, with greeting cards-the ones people had sent to her.” Ali had to pause for a moment and compose herself before continuing. “It says in the Bible, ‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap.’ Reenie Bernard sowed greeting cards wherever she went, and she definitely reaped the same.
“Last night I heard from a woman named Louise Malkin who lives in Lubbock, Texas. Her sister, Lisa Kingsley, recently died of ALS. Lisa and Reenie met in an ALS chat room before doctors confirmed that Reenie, too, had been stricken with the disease. They became friends. I know that because last night, while sorting through her sister’s belongings, Louise found a lovely greeting card. I don’t think I have to tell you who sent it.
“Thanks for all the cards, Reenie. Thanks for giving all of us something to remember you by.”
Ali resumed her seat then. As the organ began the introduction to “Morning Has Broken,” she heard sounds of sniffling as people reached for handkerchiefs and tissues.
Miss Abel would be proud, she thought.
Outside, after the service, two black limos were lined up behind the hearse. Howie, his parents, and Matt and Julie rode in one. The Holzers along with Jack and Bree rode in the other while everyone else walked the three short blocks to Cottonwood Cemetery. If Jasmine came along to the cemetery, Ali didn’t spot her. There was no exchange of greetings or pleasantries between the two opposing sets of family members, not at the church or during the brief graveside service, either.
When it was time to return to the limos, Julie slipped away from Howie’s mother and ran over to Ed and Diane. She was crying and clinging to Diane’s waist when Howie stepped forward and drew her away to the limo for the ride back to Flagstaff.
So that’s how it’s going to be, Ali thought. They’ve lost their mother and now they’re losing their grandparents as well.
Back in the church’s basement parish hall, the tenor of the gathering seemed to have changed for the better. Yes, it was still sad. People were still grieving, but with Howie and his parents no longer present, most of the uneasy tension seemed to have drained away.
Ali was standing near the punch bowl when Dave Holman made his way over to her, coffee cup in one hand and a plate of sandwiches in another. “Good job,” he said. “Especially for a last-minute pinch hitter.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“Do you have plans for later?” he asked.
Her first thought was that Dave Holman had a hell of a lot of nerve. How dare he try to pick her up at Reenie’s funeral? But then he continued.
“I’m working at the moment,” he added. “But I’ve been going over the phone records you were interested in. I’ve been tracking down some of those names and numbers. It occurred to me that you might be able to tell me about some of them.”
“About the bank…” Ali began.
