Cassie reaches for the door. “Well, I think he’s cool. I like all the tattoos. I like that he broke free from this family. I wish I could.”
“I don’t think I’d call what Ray did ‘breaking free,’” I say.
“You’re not in charge of everyone else’s perception,” she says.
She gets out of the car and closes the door. I roll my eyes, but only to counteract a very mature observation that frightens me a little.
Mom, Lola, and Ray are already at the gravesite. Mom looks perfectly presentable, apart from the men’s tie she’s draped around her neck like a scarf and the urn she holds in the crook of her arm like a cradled baby.
“This is weird,” Cassie says, loudly enough to be heard. “Do I have to be here?”
“If I have to, you do too, kiddo,” Ray says and folds his arms in front of him. He winks at her to let her know he’s just joking.
Cassie bites at her lip and steps closer to Ray. She doesn’t know him, not really. She hasn’t seen him since she was about seven years old. All she knew then was that her uncle had been in jail, and then he’d disappeared and now he was back. She was right—she deserved more of an explanation.
“Hey, Cass,” Lola says and pulls Cassie into a side-by-side hug.
“Hey, Aunt Lola.” Cassie nuzzles into her side.
The May sky has given way to spring full stop, growing a deeper shade of blue each day as if it’s remembering what it once was and could be again.
“Why are we doing this?” I ask, deep in a corner of the cemetery, far from the living sounds of traffic and car radios, deep in the world of the dead and gone away.
“This is your father’s burial plot.” Mom sweeps one hand around like she’s showing off some fabulous gift on a game show. And what do we have for Nate? That’s right; it’s a hole in the ground. In her other hand she holds Dad’s ashes in a copper urn.
“Dad was cremated,” Ray says matter-of-factly.
“I know that,” Mom says, placing her free hand on her hip. “It’s just that we have these plots. Mine’s over there.”
She points to the grass to the side of where we’re standing. There’s a large tombstone that bears both of their names, each of their birth dates, a dash, and then nothing.
“I don’t like that,” Lola says. “You don’t have one for us out here somewhere do you?”
“Be reasonable,” Mom says and sighs.
I look at the burial crew waiting nonchalantly off to the side.
Ray looks uncomfortable—his arms folded in front of him, tattoos washing down his arm like a waterfall that trickles off his fingers. He’s shifting his weight back and forth, as if ready to sprint into the distance as soon as no one is looking.
“Anyway,” Mom says with a weird permasmile across her face. “I was thinking we should bury the ashes here. That way everyone gets what they want.”
Ray shoves his hands deep into his pockets. “Let’s get this nightmare started.”
Thankfully it’s just us at the cemetery—just us and the grave digging crew, of course, and a couple of other folks who must have something to do with this sort of thing. The guy with the shovel jabs it into the grass by his feet, probably eager to get this over with as well.
Dad always loved this time of year. The time when the world decided to start again. He looked forward to turning the earth over and sowing seeds. This was not going to be like that. This is not what Dad would want. He didn’t want to be trapped in a body that didn’t work, and he wouldn’t want to be trapped in a plot in this place of never after.
“Are you taking anything?” I ask Mom, not really sure how to ask such a question in a tactful way and wondering if I should be on something myself.
“Of course not, silly.” She bends down to pull a stray weed. “You know how I feel about drugs.”
“I didn’t mean are you on something,” I say and sigh and wonder if her slipups in the days leading to the funeral have not come to an end. “I meant like— Never mind. I don’t like the idea of burying the ashes. It seems redundant at best and weird at worst.”
“Nina,” Mom says, sounding perky, but looking a little off the deep end. “You’re too opinionated for your own good. Besides, it’s a lot less digging this way.”
“Grandma,” Cassie says, sounding appalled.
I reach out to comfort her but Ray has already put his arm around her. For a moment, I think about Ray and Lola and the tight little unit they made back then. The unit I wasn’t a part of. I try to make myself angry at Ray for trying to steal Cassie, but I can’t. She needs something that neither Jack nor I can offer her at the moment. Stability. If she finds it in the thought of Ray, then I suppose that’s good for both of them.
“Well, poo,” Mom says, still cradling Dad’s urn in her arms. “I didn’t think about having Reverend Mason out to say a few words.”
“I’ve got a few words I could say,” Ray says.
I suspect he might have stopped by the local brewery before meeting us here. I can’t fault him.
“Nina,” Lola says, innocent and devious at the same time, “why don’t you say something?”
“Yeah, Nina,” Ray says and winks at Cassie. “Let’s hear what you have to say.”
I step forward, nodding at the cemetery crew who are both amused and uncomfortable. Ray whispers something into Cassie’s ear and she smiles. She looks at me and wipes the emotion off her face.
“Here we are,” I say, frustrated. “At Dad’s hole in the ground. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. A little redundant, but good and disposed of nonetheless.”
“Nina,” Mom scolds like I’ve said a curse word during a Christmas prayer.
Ray laughs,
