So what with one thing and another, his visit hadn’t settled much. None of the family knew what to expect when he rose to stand at the lectern, finally, and the piano fell silent.
“Let us pray,” he told the congregation. He held up both arms and everyone rose; pews creaked all through the room. He closed his eyes, but the Whitshanks kept theirs open—all but Nora. “Heavenly Father,” he intoned in a hollow-sounding voice, “we ask you this morning to comfort us in our bereavement. We ask you to …”
“That Atta woman’s here,” Jeannie whispered to her husband.
“Who?”
“The orphan who came to lunch last month, remember?”
Apparently, in the process of rising for the prayer, Jeannie had contrived to cast a backward glance at the congregation. Now she glanced again and said, “Oh! And there’s the driver of the car. She’s got somebody with her; could be her husband.”
“Poor gal,” Hugh said.
The driver of the car that killed Abby had paid a visit to the house the day after the accident, all upset, and apologized a dozen times even though it was common knowledge that it hadn’t been her fault. She kept saying that she would see that sweet dog till her dying day.
“There are a lot of people here,” Jeannie whispered, but then a look from Amanda hushed her.
Abby had not specified a Bible reading, but Reverend Alban provided one anyhow—a long passage from Proverbs about a virtuous woman. It was okay. At least, the family found nothing offensive in it. Then they were asked to sing a hymn called “Here I Am, Lord” that none of them was familiar with. Evidently Reverend Alban had felt the need of more musical selections than Abby had suggested. But that was okay too. Jeannie said later that it made her envision Abby arriving in heaven all brisk and bustly and social-worky: “Here I am, Lord; what needs doing?”
Abby had specified a poem. An Emily Dickinson poem, “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking,” which Amanda read aloud at the lectern, after first welcoming everybody and thanking them for coming. She was the only one of Red and Abby’s children who had wanted to speak. Denny claimed he wasn’t good at such things; Jeannie had worried she would break down; Stem had simply said no without giving any reason.
However, Merrick had volunteered. Merrick! That was unexpected. She had flown in from Florida as soon as she heard the news and come directly to the house, prepared to roll up her sleeves and take over. Amanda had managed to fend her off, but no one could deny her when she begged to say a few words at the service. “I knew Abby longer than anyone did,” she had said. “Longer even than Red!” And that was how she began her speech, standing not behind the lectern but beside it, as if to give the congregation the full benefit of her stark black dress with the asymmetrical hemline. “I knew Abby Dalton since she was twelve years old,” she said. “Since she was a scrappy little Hampden girl whose father owned one of those hardware stores where you walk in off the street and say, ‘Oh, my God! I’m so sorry! I seem to be in somebody’s basement!’ Shovels and rakes and wheelbarrows crowded up close together, coils of rope and lengths of chain hanging down from this really low ceiling you could practically bump your head on, and a tabby cat sound asleep on a sack of grass seed. But you know what? Abby turned out to be the livest wire in our whole school. She wasn’t held back by her origins! She was a firecracker, and I’m proud to say she was my closest, dearest friend.” Then her chin began to quiver, and she pressed her fingertips to her lips and shook her head and hurried back to her seat, which happened to be next to her mother-in-law. All the other Whitshanks looked at each other with their eyes wide—even Red.
Next came Ree Bascomb, bless her heart, tiny and sprite-like in her cap of bouncy white curls. She started talking while she was still walking up the aisle. “I was actually at a hardware store once with Abby,” she said. “Not her father’s, of course. I didn’t know her back then. I got to know her when we were young mothers going stir-crazy at home, and sometimes we’d just take off together, hop into one or the other’s car and throw the kids in the backseat and drive somewhere just to be driving. So one day we were at Topps Home and Garden because Abby wanted a kitchen fire extinguisher, and while the man was ringing it up she said, ‘Do you mind hurrying? It’s kind of an emergency.’ Just being silly, you know; she meant it as a joke. Well, he didn’t get it. He said, ‘I have to follow procedures, ma’am,’ and she and I just doubled up laughing. We were crying with laughter! Oh, I don’t think I’ll ever again laugh as hard as I laughed with Abby. I’m going to miss her so much!”
She stepped away from the lectern dry-eyed, smiling at the Whitshanks as she passed them, but hers was the speech that made Jeannie and Amanda grow teary all over again.