“Your mother always talked about the soft pine with the pink velvet lining when she came in for your father’s arrangements.”

“Mother changed her mind about a lot of things toward the end, I suppose.”

He made a little check mark in the margin of his paper ledger and didn’t argue.

“Now, for the back page of the memorial folder,” he said, turning to a yellow printed grid.

“I need a list of surviving family for the obituary.”

I rubbed my left thumb across my right knuckles until the skin went pale.

“It’s only me,” I said.