At noon I put the bucket back in the mop closet, walked straight to my Buick and drove six blocks down Elm Street to the Methodist church.

I took a fifty-gallon black plastic trash bag out of my trunk and shook it open in the still air of the parking lot.

The memorial garden behind the sanctuary was totally quiet, shaded by the big crepe myrtle near the back fence.

I walked along the gravel path until I was standing right over the flat gray stone in the dirt.

The three-dollar plastic carnations I’d pushed into the ground three days earlier were still standing straight up in their green foil wrapping.