The day I asked Mum to teach me how to flip the coin like she did, she’d instead taught me how to palm the coin and make it disappear. It took two more days for me to learn to walk the coin between my fingers and flip it to my palm first, and when I’d mastered that, she gave me the coin to keep.
“Keep it in a secret place, Mori,” she’d said. “This is just between you and me, yeah?”
“A secret?” I had whispered.
Mum had smiled and looked around us before leaning close to whisper back. “People who share a secret are bound together forever, but only if they keep it.”
I’d nodded and smiled and felt very grown up, to have a secret with my mum against the world. And she’d said forever, not just for life, so I supposed we were still bonded. I swiped my eyes and slumped down onto the steps of our front stoop. I’d never told anyone about the coin—never even showed it to the boys. I heard them thunder through the house, one of them screaming at the other, a sure sign Dad was at work. Another wave of pain swept over me, and I stared out at the cars surging past to distract me from it.
Soon, the white noise of traffic blurred things enough for me to go back in. I dressed quickly and escaped once more to the streets. Sherlock waited for me on the sidewalk, greeting me with only a nod. I didn’t feel like being around him just then, but I’d promised to take him to the memorial, and I would. Still, I didn’t talk during our walk to the Tube, and he seemed okay with that. Sherlock appeared lost in thoughts of his own, really.
“Is everything all right?”
Sherlock forced a grin. “What could be wrong?”
And that was the extent of our conversation for the whole of the trip to Mr. Patel’s memorial.
The parish was a drab yellowish brick on the outside, but the chapel was beautiful. Giant white columns stood ominously in all four corners of the room. A chandelier hung low enough to create a spiderweb shadow across the parquet floor of the main aisle, the sparkle of the glass ornamentation competing with the various stained-glass windows to welcome in the afternoon sun.
But despite all the formality of the decor, the service itself was quite casual, an odd mix of Mr. Patel’s Hindu tradition and their family’s Protestant beliefs. All the people on the left side of the chapel were dressed in white, and took turns draping the stage and urn with garlands of flowers. A man in white linen robes called speakers up by name, each of whom shared an anecdote that either caused their own tears to spill or earned a sobbed laugh from Mrs. Patel, Lily’s mother. We were seated with the rest of Lily’s school friends, on the opposite side of the chapel in the second row, so I had a direct line of sight to Lily—her mother on one side, her Watson on the other. Lily sat still, her eyes glued to the large printed photo of her father that stood in the corner.
I remembered that stillness.
Lily’s mom cried freely, her gaze only rising to the photo twice through the whole service, each time with a slight wince, like someone had pricked her with a pin. There was something completely familiar in her mannerisms. She would rest her tissue-clad hands in her lap, and then scoot them up to her knees. Down at her sides, crossing her chest, then remembering herself and letting them fall to her lap once again. She was lost. She didn’t even know what to do with her own body anymore.
It had been the same with my dad. He couldn’t sit still at our mom’s memorial either. But not all spouses acted that way.
I’d spent an entire month of Saturdays after my mom passed attending various advertised memorials, just to study the mourners—to figure out how I was supposed to be feeling, or maybe acting. Because all I felt was numb—a numbness I knew showed on my face and in my every movement.
I’d seen loads of women who sat with a quiet strength, the tears in their eyes never falling throughout the service. Some seemed disconnected from the service entirely, as if wandering through the secret rooms of their mind, thinking things we’d never discover. I even saw one woman who whimpered through the entire service, held up on all sides by grand-children. I watched as she reached out and petted each of their ginger heads in turn, and how they snuggled closer to her at the contact. I remembered thinking I would have been the one grandchild to scoot away from them all, separate myself, not wanting to be touched. Not that my grandmother would have dared touch me.