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stitched, plates with the wildflowers painted on them that she had loved, the flat basket she used to collect the dried heads from the roses, the corn dolly she had bought at the Madingley fair. The smell of food brought back memories of crumpets and lardy cakes, and hot, savory onion clangers with suet crust.
    Alys had liked to buy the blue-veined Double Cottenham cheese and butter by the yard, instead of the modern weights. It was the smallest things that hurt Hannah the most, perhaps because they caught her unaware: Lettie arranging flowers in the wrong jug (one Alys would never have chosen); Horatio the cat sitting in the scullery, where Alys would not have permitted him; the fish delivery boy being cheeky and answering back where he would not have dared to before. All of these were the first marks of irrevocable change.
    Matthew walked with Judith a few steps behind, both of them stiff and staring straight ahead. Judith, too, had a veiled hat and a new black dress with sleeves right down to the backs of her hands, and a skirt so slender it obliged her to walk daintily. She did not like it, but it was actually dramatically becoming to her.
    Inside the church the air was cooler, musty with the smell of old books and stone and the heavy scent of flowers. Joseph noticed them immediately with a gulp of surprise. The women of the village must have stripped their gardens of every white bloom: roses, phlox, old-fashioned pinks, and bowers of daisies of every size, single and double. They were like a pale foam breaking over the ancient carved woodwork toward the altar, gleaming where the sunlight came in through the stained-glass windows. He knew they were for Alys. She had been all the village wanted her to be: modest, loyal, quick to smile, able to keep a secret, proud of her home and pleased to care for it. She was willing to exchange recipes with Mrs. Worth, garden cuttings with Tucky Spence even though she never stopped talking, patient with Miss Anthony’s endless stories about her niece in South Africa.
    John had been more difficult for them to understand: a man of intellect who had studied deeply and often traveled abroad. But when he was here his pleasures had been simple enough: his family and his garden, old artifacts, watercolor pictures from the last century that he enjoyed cleaning and reframing. He had delighted in a bargain and searched through antique and curio shops, happy to listen to tales of quaint, ordinary people, and always ready to hear or pass on a joke—the longer and shaggier, the more he relished it.
    Joseph’s recollections continued as the service began, and he stared at all the long, familiar faces, sad and confused now in their hasty black. He found his throat too tight to sing the hymns.
    Then it was time for him to speak, just briefly, as representative of the family. He did not wish to preach; it was not the time. Let someone else do that—Hallam Kerr, if he had a mind to. Joseph was here as a son to remember his parents. This was not about praise, but about love.
    It was not easy to keep his voice from breaking, his thoughts in order, and his words clear and simple. But this, after all, was his skill. He knew bereavement intimately, and he had explored it over and over in his mind until it had no more black corners for him.
    “We are met together in the heart of the village, perhaps the soul of it, to say goodbye for the moment to two of our number who were your friends, our parents—I speak for myself, and for my brother, Matthew, and my sisters, Hannah and Judith.”
    He hesitated, struggling to maintain his composure. There was no movement or rustle of whispering among the upturned faces staring at him.
    “You all knew them. You met in the street day by day, at the post office, at the shops, over the garden wall. And most of all you met here. They were good people, and we are hurt and diminished by their going.”
    He stopped for a moment, then began again. “We shall miss my