According to the minister, we’re lucky to have found you, although I think you’d have liked it better up there, where the grass isn’t golf course green and the mourners are nonexistent. I wanted to scream when he said that but momma was leaning hard against me and her breath was coming in harsh against my ear and I stood there with making fists until I couldn’t feel the cold. Dad was holding on to her hard and his mouth was a straight colorless line and his breath came out his nostrils in big measured puffs like the steam train in the railroad museum back in Lincoln. I didn’t cry at all, just stood there feeling sick to my stomach and bracing myself against momma’s leaning. In the back of the group of mourners I saw David and his eyes were down and he avoided my gaze.
The minister was the young one from Partridge who you once told me gave you eyes, back when you came to church. He looked sad like an actor looks sad on one of those TV commercials for antidepressants. He paused too much. When he spoke, he fumbled over the words and sounded them out like a third grader—sa-salvay-salvashin-salvation. It was like Aunt Stu’s funeral, with the same fake-looking flowers and the same ugly black pinafores, only hers was open casket and yours wasn’t.
The tables were loaded with wedding-style lilies even though your obit said in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the River’s Edge Animal Rescue Center. Each tablecloth had a neat stack of Thomas Mortuary Services’ business cards in a holder and they served bland finger sandwiches with diluted instant coffee afterward. It was the kind of thing that youd’ve laughed at and blamed the church for.
I think the hardest part is that all the dozens of versions of you I created in my head died, too. I made an Amy who went to college and got her degree in veterinary sciences and started an ASPCA. I imagined an Amy who grew her hair out and cut the blue tips off and wore flowery loose blouses and played guitar. There was the Amy who trained service dogs for wounded veterans and the Amy who fell in love with a kind young man who picked her up on the I-5 and drove her to Vancouver. There was an Amy who lived recklessly and pierced her ears with safety pins in truck stop bathrooms on the way to see Less Than Jake in San Fran. I made up Amys with tanned arms and Amys with tattoos and Amys living in Carmel as an accountant. Every one of those versions died when we found you.
I haven’t been up there yet. They say you were up there for three months until that guy found you. They say it was painless. They say that they’re looking for the driver that did it. I don’t think they’ll find him, and I’m almost glad. I don’t know what I think about that.
I wish we could have gotten you in across the street. The stones there are all soft from rain and there’s no lawnmowers or fluorescent turf. The only disturbances are when the horticulturists plant new roses. After it rains the clay soil sticks to your boots. Plots up there are hard to dig in to because of all the old growth trees, and I imagine the old coffins have roots wrapped around them, like the pictures of veins going around the heart in that Biology book I returned to the textbook room a month after you slipped out our window the last time.