“We can turn the soil this afternoon.”

At five that evening I drove out to Memorial Park Cemetery on the east side of Tulsa.

My sister Margaret had been buried under a broad oak near the north fence six months before.

The grass had grown back thick over the plot, hiding the dark seam where the ground had been opened in the late autumn cold.

I laid a fresh bunch of yellow roses against her granite headstone.

The air smelled of damp earth and fresh-cut grass from the groundskeeper’s mower down the hill.