The brown paper grocery bag split along its bottom seam as I hoisted it out of the truck bed.

A heavy can of crushed tomatoes rolled across the gravel driveway and came to rest against my father’s polished leather oxfords.

Arthur Vance didn’t bend to pick it up.

He pushed the can aside with the toe of his shoe, his dark winter coat buttoned up tight against the cold Virginia wind.

“The traffic coming out of the cemetery was a complete disaster,” Arthur said, his booming voice carrying easily across the driveway to the neighbor’s porch.

“Three miles of cars stacked up at the highway turnpike ramp, because nobody in this county knows how to merge properly.”

I picked up the stray can, pushed it back in through the tear, and carried the sagging paper bag up the three wooden steps into the kitchen.

My mother was sitting in the maple dining nook, her wool coat still buttoned up to her chin.

Martha Vance held a thin silver spoon in her right hand and kept moving it in quiet, unbroken circles inside a blue porcelain mug.

“You should’ve let your father drive the truck home from the service, Eleanor,” Martha said gently, in that light, passive-aggressive voice of hers.

“A woman five months along has no business lugging heavy paper sacks up the back stairs.”

“I’m thirty-four years old, Mother,” I said.

“And the truck is mine.”

I set the groceries on the counter next to my green canvas travel pack.

When I unzipped the side pocket to fish out my ring of house keys, my fingers grazed a thick manila envelope closed with heavy red wax.

The envelope carried the printed return address of Department of the Army Headquarters at Fort Belvoir.

It hadn’t come through the local mail carrier, which meant a military courier had slipped it into my travel pack while I was standing beside David’s casket at the cemetery.

I shoved the envelope back down under the canvas lining before Arthur pulled open the screen door behind me.