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growing any older. Susan had started to wonder if she would outlive everyone.
    But right now, this minute, Susan’s brother Stewart was at Huber’s Funeral Home waiting for the arrival of Aunt Edyth’s body. It appeared Aunt Edyth was mortal after all. She had gone from a determined, opinionated, cranky old woman to a mere body.
    If a body meet a body …That weird song began to run through her head. When she was a child, she thought it a very scary song about dead bodies meeting in a field. If a body kiss a body …Ugh!
    She remembered when her mother died. It had been explained to her that a dead body turned into a piece of property. So now that Aunt Edyth was dead, her body didn’t belong to her anymore. Mortal remains belonged to the next of kin—as if anyone could think of doing anything with a dead body but burying it as quickly and decently as possible! But Aunt Edyth, bless her, was still maintaining control, having previously selected Huber’s in Excelsior to handle “the arrangements”—an odd term. She had also set out the order of her funeral and sent copies to everyone last spring after a bad cold had turned into a mild case of pneumonia and frightened her. In that same letter, she had reiterated the terms of her peculiar will, which had reignited Stewart’s old campaign to make her change it.
    Even so, Stewart, to Susan’s surprise, had proved surprisingly amenable to driving to Huber’s Funeral Home to sign papers and get that process started. Susan would have done it herself but had found herself caught up in a sad weakness over all this. She’d been relieved when her brother—usually not one to step up to the plate—said he would handle it. Perhaps he understood that Susan had been genuinely fond of Aunt Edyth, even though she could be exasperating.
    Only a couple of weeks ago, Aunt Edyth had complained to Susan that Stewart was trying, again, to make her think he was fond of her, too. He had come over several times, ostensibly to run errands, but in fact to hint ever so heavily that he had four daughters, and since Aunt Edyth liked girls so much, how come she wasn’t willing to remember them in her will?
    But Aunt Edyth wasn’t to be swayed by the arguments of a male, particularly this one. She was sure he only wanted his daughters to be given some of her property so he could wrest control of it from them, and sell it. She had filled Susan’s ears with her angry complaints and had threatened to sell off some of the items herself to stop his annoying hints.
    The sad thing was, Susan mused, Aunt Edyth was undoubtedly right, both about his motive and his clumsiness in acting on it. Stew certainly would have guilted his daughters into sharing any property or money they came into possession of—and just as certainly have wasted it on improbable schemes.
    He had the attention span of a housefly, and the work habits of a dead possum.
    So Stewart’s efforts were unavailing—and now there could be no more of them.
    She looked down at the notepad beside her coffee. A lifelong list maker, she had started this one as soon as she finished talking with Jan. It was a to-do list, of course. It started with “phone Stewart” and “phone Jason.” There were check marks after each. Stewart hadn’t been home when she called, but Katie was there. She had been shocked and was in tears before they hung up, which rather surprised Susan. She hadn’t realized that Katie actually had been fond of Aunt Edyth. Jason’s reaction had been, “Oh, really? Man, I thought she’d never die! I’m sorry, Mom, but seriously, didn’t she seem, like, immortal?” Susan had been both shocked and amused that his reaction was so much like her own, if more boldly expressed.
    Next on the list, “Funeral.” That was pretty much taken care of. St. Luke’s Lutheran—whoops, she’d better call Pastor