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an accident, wasn’t it?”
    Michael nodded, but his eyes were uncertain.
    “Then it wasn’t your fault.” Suddenly both boys sensed a presence nearby, and looked up to see their grandfather looming over them. They scrambled to their feet, selfconsciously brushing the dust and grass from their clothes.
    “That’ll make your mothers real thrilled with you,” Amos Hall commented. “What’s going on out here?”
    “We were just talking,” Ryan told him.
    “About what?”
    The two boys glanced at each other. “Things,” Michael replied.
    “Things,” Amos repeated. He fixed his eyes on Ryan. “You know what I was just saying to your grandma a couple of minutes ago? I was saying that I’ll bet those two boys are sitting out there discussing ‘things.’ And do you know what she said?”
    Ryan regarded his grandfather suspiciously, sure he was about to fall into a trap, but in the end his curiosity got the best of him. “What?” he asked.
    Amos grinned at the boy. “Well, why don’t you just go find her and ask her yourself? And while she tells you, you can help her with the dishes.” Then, when Ryan had disappeared through the back door of the house, he lowered himself to the ground and gestured for Michael to sit down beside him. “Everybody’s gone home,” he said, “so you can go back in without having to worry about them all poking at you and telling you how cute you are, and how much you look like your father, or your mother, or your Uncle Harry, if you have one. It’s all over.” He paused, then: “Do you understand?”
    Michael hesitated, then nodded unhappily. “The funeral’s over.”
    Amos Hall’s head bobbed once. “That’s right. The funeral’s over, and now we all have to get on with life. Your mother’s still in bed—”
    “Is she all right?” Michael broke in.
    “She’s probably just tired. It was hot as blazes in there, so we put her to bed. When you go inside I want you to be quiet so you don’t wake her up. Go on in and change your clothes, and then come out to the barn. There’s still a lot to be done, and we only have a couple of hours of light left.” He stood up, then offered Michael a hand. For a moment, he thought the boy was going to refuse it, but then Michael slipped his small hand into Amos’s much larger one, and pulled himself to his feet. Still, instead of heading for the house, Michael hesitated. Amos waited for him to speak, then prompted him.
    “What is it, boy?” he asked, his voice gruff, but not unkind.
    Michael looked up at his grandfather, his eyes wide. “What—what’s going to happen now, Grandpa?”
    Amos Hall slipped an arm around his grandson, and started walking him toward the house. “Life goes on,” he said, and then in a tone meant to be reassuring, “We’ll just take it one step at a time, all right?”
    But Michael frowned. “I guess so,” he said at last. “But I wish dad were here.”
    “So do I,” Amos Hall replied, but the gentleness had gone out of his voice. “So do I.”
    Janet awoke to the setting sun, and for the first time since she had been married, did not reach out to touch her husband. The funeral, then, had accomplished that much. Never again, she was sure, would she awaken and reach out for Mark. He was truly gone, and she was truly on her own now.
    She sat up and began tentatively to get out of bed. The nausea was gone, and the flushed feeling with it, so she put her feet into a pair of slippers and went into the bathroom, where she splashed her face with cold water. Then she went back to her bedroom, took off the clothes she had been sleeping in, and put on a robe. At the top of the stairs, she listened for a moment.
    There was a murmuring of voices from the kitchen but only silence from the living room. Running a hand through her hair, she started down the stairs.
    The family was gathered around the kitchen table, and as she came upon them she stopped, startled. It was as if they belonged together, the