Part One: The Casket

My father threw my grandmother’s bank book onto her casket in front of twenty-three people and then told us all it was nothing.

It was the fourteenth of October and it had rained in the night and the ground around the grave was the colour of coffee grounds.

Richard had carried the book out of the house that morning tucked under his arm with a folder of insurance papers, and at some point between the car and the graveside the corner of it had gone into the mud.

The minister had closed his folder.

People were starting to shift their weight.

And Richard looked at the book in his hand, and then at the casket, and said:

“Look here, it’s an old notebook.”

And he tossed it underhand, about four feet, onto the lid.

It slid and stopped against the spray of white carnations that Margaret had chosen and paid for herself in 2019 and had been annoyed about the price of ever since.

Susan put her hair behind both ears, which is a thing she does, and said, “Sweetheart, there’s no need to make a scene.”

And my father said, “I’m not making a scene.

I’m clearing up a family matter,” and tapped the face of his watch with one finger.

He has worn the same heavy gold watch since 2011 and he taps it when he wants a conversation over.

I have been watching him do it my whole life and I did not understand until the following February that it is not impatience.

It is a tell.

He does it when he has said something he does not want asked about.

My brother Tyler was standing a few feet off, turning his car keys around his index finger.