Days, they said.

A week at the most.

His nephew Christopher had already begun to plan the funeral.

I had overheard him do it, more than once, speaking of caskets and services and which relatives would need to be called in the same light, easy tone a man might use to book a table at a restaurant he liked.

There was no grief in it.

There was only logistics, and beneath the logistics, poorly hidden, a kind of impatience, as though his uncle were a long meeting that had run over and Christopher were checking his watch.