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out-of-state Deckers, pulled out a handkerchief and mopped the back of his neck. The sun felt warm on the backs of my hands, but they were the only parts of my body that did feel warm. I just couldn’t get rid of the chill I’d woken up with that morning.
    I’d been under the impression that only family members were going to speak at Raymond’s funeral, but such was not the case. As soon as Rob sat down, there began a parade of other speakers, Raymond’s friends and business associates, a few local politicians. Fortunately, they all kept their speeches short; no one spoke more than three or four minutes. One man said the head of the Decker family had been a man of strength, dignity, and the highest ethical standards. I wondered if Raymond would have been embarrassed by that. Probably not; he’d had a way of letting hyperbole roll right off him.
    The last eulogizer was the state’s lieutenant-governor, I later found out. He said we’d lost a man who had demonstrated repeatedly in his life that the family was the bedrock on which this country rested; he must have used the same speechwriter as Uncle Oscar. Then the minister moved to the head of the grave and we were all on our feet. I didn’t hear one word of the prayer the man uttered, and I wondered if anyone else did either; I for one was all too conscious of that casket waiting to be lowered into the ground. The minister finished; the casket was lowered; the funeral was over.
    And everyone in the Decker family took off in a different direction.
    I was left standing in front of my folding chair with my mouth open; even young Joel Kurland had bolted. The minister and the mourners on the other side of the grave were exchanging puzzled glances; they’d probably expected to move along a waiting line of Deckers while murmuring sympathetic words over and over again. But with everyone scattered like that …
    Then they started coming back. Annette spoke to the minister; Oscar and Michelle moved among the mourners, accepting their condolences. They’d all just needed a moment alone, that was all. Eventually a sort of line did form, which I joined. But there was no eye contact among the Deckers, no sharing of grief; every Decker was isolated from every other Decker, each one an island of his or her own personal sorrow. After great pain, Emily Dickinson said, a formal feeling comes; the remoteness would disappear in time and there’d be a closing of ranks later. God, how I wished this day were over.
    But we still had the postceremony gathering at the house to get through. This time I barely noticed the reporters at the cemetery gate because of something Connie had just said. “Those people on the other side of the grave,” she ventured tentatively, “do you suppose it was one of them who killed Raymond?”
    Annette made a sound of exasperation which she quickly suppressed. “ No , Connie, none of those people would want to hurt Raymond. You really must put that idea out of your mind.” All during the ride home Annette worked on her sister-in-law, reasoning with her and calming her, until she had Connie actually apologizing for her suspicions. What Annette didn’t know was that I was harboring those same suspicions myself.
    People like the Deckers are always objects of envy, and sometimes that envy can become obsessive and turn dangerous. The Deckers lived well, they were a prominent family, they belonged . Someone outside their circle of privilege could very easily be so soured with jealousy that he’d go right over the edge and start killing the symbols of what he couldn’t have for himself. The Deckers knew that; they’d suffered from it once before, when someone had kidnapped Raymond and Connie’s son Theo and ended up killing him even though the ransom had been paid. So there was just no way the rest of the Deckers could dismiss the four deaths in the family as coincidence, accidents,