“The total for the casket and the embalming comes to four thousand two hundred dollars, due Monday afternoon.”

I folded the page into quarters and tucked it into my coat pocket beside the sealed bank draft from Tyler.

The flower stand inside the Piggly Wiggly was squeezed between the cold melon case and the bread racks.

The plastic buckets held rows of yellow mums and red roses under a buzzing fluorescent tube.

I chose three pink carnations wrapped in cheap clear plastic that crackled under my fingers.

The white paper tag hanging on the green stem read three dollars.