The Funeral

This story contains themes of death and murder.

Adair Grayson opened the funeral home on Dorothy Street at twenty-two with a business loan and a used embalming table. His father had thought he was out of his mind, though Steven Grayson kept this to himself, the way a man who charges a hundred and forty dollars an hour to do exactly that. Eight years on, the loan was paid, the table replaced twice, and Adair had buried sixty-one North Haven residents. He knew which widows needed to talk and which needed to be introspective. He knew which fathers went rigid and which came apart.

He stood near the door with his hands folded and watched the room fill.

Thirty-five, Sawyer Campbell was only thirty-five.

Sawyer was in the casket in the gray suit his mother had brought in a paper grocery bag. Adair had hung the suit, steamed the shoulders, and done the work on Sawyer's face that it required. He didn’t think about it any further than that.

By six o'clock, the room was filled. Sawyer had been thirty-five, born on the island, run a construction company, and his murder was unsolved. People had reasons to come and say their last goodbye.

Todd Campbell stood at the casket without moving. That's not him. Sawyer had never been still, even sleeping — one arm over his face, one foot off the mattress. And here he was, not moving, silent and still.

He knew people were watching him. His face looked like his brother's face. He had already seen the double takes at the door, the woman near the back wall who put her hand to her mouth when he walked in. Thirty-five years of looking like Sawyer. Most of the island knew the twins.

She's here. He hadn't looked. He’d known before she was through the door.

Twelve years since she broke the engagement. Twelve years of seeing her at Carnell's and the gas station and Judd's Tavern, waitressing three nights a week, when she didn't need the money. Brenda needed a room to work. She needed the watching. She needed the way a man's eyes followed her from the door to the bar and back. And that never struck you as a problem when you were twenty-three and thought she was picking you. You knew who she was, what she was. You loved her anyway. Look where it got you. He looked at Sawyer's folded hands. I sat across from you at Gordon's three weeks before the wedding and told you who she was, and you said I was jealous. Maybe I was. That doesn't mean I was wrong.

Eli stood at the refreshment table holding a cookie he wasn't eating, still in the way a boy gets when he is holding himself together. Ten years old and holding it together for as long as he could remember. Olivia was pressed into her mother's side, her eyes moving over everyone. She sees more than anyone thinks she does. Todd had already decided he would make sure those children were taken care of.

Brenda Campbell stood with her back to the casket and received condolences. She touched forearms. She remembered names. When Betsy Maxwell took her hand and said, " Those poor babies." Brenda's eyes filled on cue.

Two million dollars. Just like that. Whole life policy. Sawyer took it out when he started the construction business. The divorce wasn't finalized. None of it was finalized. Not the custody. Not the asset division. Not the company. She accepted an embrace, giving the perfect response of grief. Nothing was finalized. Everything is mine.

The company is worth three or four times that on paper. Todd owned half — always had been the wrinkle. Her lawyers had been working on Sawyer's portion. Todd's half is Todd's. But Sawyer's half was mine to argue for before. Now I don't have to argue at all.

There's Todd. She did not look at him directly. Todd looked back — flat and straight, reading whatever ran behind her eyes. She had loved Todd once, well, loved what he represented. Then she saw Sawyer standing next to him at Judd's one evening and understood that Sawyer was going to build something larger. She made her calculations and never went back to it. You always knew what I was. You just didn't think it applied to you.

And there's Dean. Lysander stood near the west wall with his coat on, looking at Adair's harbor photograph. Two years and no one on the island had a clue. You're worried. She read it in his shoulders from across the room. You've been worried since Tuesday, and you need to stop. Worried men make mistakes. She was in Tampa. She had the receipts, her mother, her children, the perfect airtight alibi. She knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it.

Boyd Smith stood near the back wall with a cup of coffee that had gone cold and watched the room.

Running on four hours of sleep. Cassie had been up at two, not from pain but from her body doing what it was doing, and he had sat with her until four. He had talked to Dr. Gideon Albrecht yesterday morning. Gideon and Mary had built their clinic on the island straight out of the University of Michigan. Smitty trusted Gideon as Cassie’s doctor. She's stable, Gideon had said. We're managing carefully, Boyd. He quickly reminded himself, You're here to work.

Chief Lysander hadn’t moved from the west wall in twelve minutes. Dean had been chief for five years. Dean worked rooms — names, handshakes, the full effort of a man who knew that public trust didn't come free. So why are you standing in a corner staring at a photograph?

Something was absent in Brenda Campbell; he had never found the right word for. Not cruelty. A gap where a certain kind of feeling should have been. You don't waitress at Judd's three nights a week because you need the money or like pouring beer. You might’ve been in Tampa, but being somewhere else doesn’t mean you didn’t have something to do with it.

Alisha and Elmer Woodard had gone into 105 Arbor Court using the key code that Bobbi Carnell gave out. They were looking for a larger house with a yard, since Alisha was pregnant with their first. They were supposed to call Bobbi after looking at the house. Instead, they called her after they found him in his bed with blood splatter dried on the wall. Three feet of snow had buried whatever the shooter left on the way out. He never heard anyone coming. No forced entry. Someone knew which house Sawyer was sleeping in. That information came from somewhere, and that somewhere is probably standing in this room right now.

Daryl Whitecloud came in and stood near the door.

His grandmother had told him you could read a community at its funerals — who stood where, who avoided who, what showed on people's faces. She said it in Ojibwemowin, and his translation lost something, but the sense of it had stayed.

He found Smitty and followed Smitty’s line of sight. Lysander. The harbor photograph. The distance Lysander kept from the widow. You see it, just like I do.

No forced entry. No tracks. Start with that. Work back. The Campbell mainland crew wintered at Bill Mason's motel on the east end of the village. Workers heard things. He would go back to that tomorrow.

Linda was across the room talking to Janet Channing.

You're a detective. You sit across from people who have done bad things and ask calm questions until they tell you what you need. You cannot manage one sentence to one woman. The problem was that if she said no, he would know, and right now, he didn’t know, and not knowing was something he could live with.

He went and stood next to Smitty, and they watched the room.

Linda Asher arrived at six. She was crossing toward Janet Channing when Daryl came through the door, and they nearly walked into each other, both stepping in the same direction and then the other, and she laughed a little, and so did he, and then she went left, and he went right, and she got to Janet with her face in order.

She thought about Daryl at the dispatch desk in the morning, setting her coffee down without being asked. Black, one sugar. He had known for two years, and one day, he simply started getting it for her. She thought about him talking to her for an hour about things that had nothing to do with work. Last October at Barrett's Hardware, his jacket on her shoulders, and when she returned it washed and folded, he had looked at her half a second too long. Neither of them said anything, at least out loud.

She found him across the room, standing next to Smitty, not looking her way. She looked back at Janet, who was still talking. She nodded.

Dozer stood near the refreshment table with a plate he had filled without thinking.

Barry had called on Tuesday morning. Dozer said okay and hung up, then sat in his kitchen for forty minutes trying to let the news settle in his head. Six years with Campbell Construction, since back when he had two DUIs on his record and most outfits looked at the paperwork and said they'd call. Sawyer asked if he could run a dozer. That was the whole interview.

Todd owns the company now. Always had half of it, now all of it. Something in Dozer's chest had come loose when Barry told him yesterday. He looked at Brenda Campbell. She thinks she knows how it’s going to go. She doesn’t know it yet, but she can’t touch any of it. Sawyer had taken care of that. Now Todd owns the company, all of it.

He looked at the casket. You deserved better than what she gave you. He was not entirely sure which brother he meant.

Lurch stood beside Dozer. Every suit he owned was short in the sleeve. He watched Todd come away from the casket and started to think about what it would mean to lose his own brother, and stopped before he got there.

Sawyer had hired him and never once made a comment or a look. Not in six years. Other foremen could not help themselves. Sawyer asked if he could run a skid steer. Lurch said yes, Sawyer said Monday at seven o'clock. Lurch had worked enough jobs to know the difference between a man who genuinely did not notice and a man who decided it was none of his business.

Shorty came through the door and stood on Lurch's other side, dreads pinned up, tie slightly off. The three of them — Dozer, Lurch, Shorty — stood in a row, and Lurch thought Sawyer would have had something dry to say about that. He almost smiled at that, but didn't.

Shorty went straight to the casket without stopping to speak to anyone. He stood and looked at Sawyer's face. Adair did a good job.

Two men on the mainland crew had made their feelings known the day Shorty was hired. Sawyer looked at them both and said to Shorty: I hear you run a skid steer better than these two combined. Shorty said he did. Sawyer said then we're done talking about it and walked off.

Who did this to you?

He looked over his shoulder at Brenda Campbell, taking an embrace, eyes closed, arms doing the right thing at the right moment. Real composed for a woman whose husband was shot in the head in his sleep during a snowstorm.

He stood for a few more minutes and went to stand with Lurch and Dozer.

Barry had put himself against the wall where he could see the whole room. Tonight, every path led to a conversation he didn't want to have.

Todd owned half from the beginning and now owns all of it. He looked at Todd against the wall with his arm around Eli. You'll keep it running.

The last real conversation he'd had with Sawyer was in the site trailer on the Willow Drive job. She's going to take everything I built, Sawyer had said in the quiet that meant he was past making noise. Half the company, half the equipment, and I built that from nothing. Then Sawyer looked straight at him. But don't worry. I changed my will. Put everything in a trust for the kids when they turn eighteen. I've made sure she gets nothing!

He had not let it go since Tuesday. He looked at Smitty near the back wall. Tonight. Before this goes any further,

Smitty needs to know about that will.

Brenda and Lysander had come together along the west wall. Talking quietly, Brenda's body turned toward him. Barry had been pushing that observation down since he first had it. It kept surfacing.

Eli Campbell was ten years old and holding a cookie that he wasn't eating.

Dad's in that box. He had gone up to it once and looked at his dad's face; it was wrong, it wasn’t his dad’s face. He wanted the other face. He wanted the one when his dad came home from work and greeted him and Olivia. He's not in there anyway.

Uncle Todd looked like it was costing him just to stand there. Eli set the cookie on the table, crossed the room, and sat down next to him without saying anything. After a moment, Uncle Todd put his arm around him.

Olivia Campbell was eight years old, and she was watching everything.

Everyone here is sad except Mom. She tried to put the thought back because it felt wrong. But she knew the difference. Her mom was doing the thing — the warmth, the full attention, the way she made whoever she was talking to feel like the only person in the room. Olivia had watched this her whole life. She was confused by it. She saw it when no one else could.

She had not gone to the casket. Nobody made her go, and she was glad.

She watched Eli and Uncle Todd against the wall, Uncle Todd's arm around Eli, Eli letting it stay.

Uncle Todd was the saddest person in the room. Not loud sad. The kind that didn’t go away. He loved Daddy as much as Elia and I did.

She leaned into her mother's side, and her mother's hand came down on her hair, and Olivia let herself be held.

Adair refilled the coffee urn at seven. He straightened two chairs and picked up a plate someone had left on a windowsill. He still knew every name. Harold Merton had been first, eighty-one, heart failure. His wife had cried in a way that changed how Adair understood the whole business. He had kept every name since.

He watched Todd with his arm around Eli. He had buried one set of twins in eight years, the Mäkinen grandparents, four months apart. The one left behind had come to the second funeral with a look Adair had not forgotten. Todd had it now.

He watched Eli sitting straight under his uncle's arm, holding himself still on purpose.

He watched Daryl standing six feet from Linda, both of them talking to different people, both knowing exactly where the other one was. One conversation. That is all it would take. Not my business.

He watched Smitty watching Lysander, who had not moved from the west wall in over thirty minutes.

He watched Brenda put her hand on her daughter's head. Her face was showing no emotion. Only a mother with her hand on her child. Adair looked at it and looked away.

He went back to the door and stood with his hands folded.

Outside, snow was still coming down on Dorothy Street, adding to the three feet already on the ground. The room held sixty people and one casket, and everything nobody was saying, and Sawyer Campbell lay in his gray suit while the island stood around him, and somewhere in that room was the answer to what happened to him on Arbor Court last Tuesday night.