He couldn’t leave his bedroom.

He was stuck in that house for weeks.

The sickness took his legs first.”

I looked back toward the wrought-iron cemetery gates.

“Brenda told me it was a sudden illness.”

“Nothing about it was sudden,” Elias said.

“He knew exactly what was coming.”

Elias leaned his weight onto the rusty shears and stared at the muddy ground between my boots.