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dismissively toward the ground. “Old hoof divot,” she said. “I thought maybe I’d rolled my ankle in it, but I’m fine.” She held one foot up and rotated it for proof.
    Maya eyed her, unconvinced. Elise tried a tight laugh.
    “Goodness, you girls are all watching me way too closely. It’s your father who died, not me.” Instantly, she felt guilty for saying it, but Maya looked unfazed. Elise picked up the bucket and tromped toward the tree line, Maya tripping after her in those ridiculous boots and a creamy white ski jacket. “Go back to the house. You’re going to get that jacket dirty.”
    “It’s last year’s anyway,” Maya responded, her breathing labored as she tried to keep up with her mother’s stride. “It’s the boots that are a problem. Why did I wear heels to the farm?”
    “I was wondering the same thing. Really, you can go back now. I’m just going to see if any of your old feeders are still here. Give the birds some seed.”
    Maya’s hand grazed Elise’s arm lightly. “No, I want to spend time with you, Mom. Make sure you’re okay. You are okay, right? You didn’t look okay back there.”
    Elise stopped, put down the bucket again. “Well, of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”
    Maya rolled her eyes. “You found him.
After
. He couldn’t have looked good.”
    Elise’s heart threatened to skip a beat again. If only Maya knew the truth. But she pushed the thought away. What was done was done and there was no need to upset everyone. “He looked like himself,” she said. “It wasn’t gruesome, if that’s what you’re worried about. He might as well have been watching one of those silly college football games on TV. In fact, he had been, so that’s exactly what it looked like.” She picked up the bucket again and strode to the first feeder, filling it with fistfuls of seed.
    “But he wasn’t watching football, Mom. He was dead. Dead is dead. He couldn’t have looked good.”
    “He looked . . .”
shocked, angry
, “peaceful.”
    Maya huffed impatiently, as if she was displeased at Elise’s lack of proper grief. “You were married to the man for forty-seven years. You found him dead in his recliner. That can’t have been the most peaceful experience of your life.”
    Elise whirled around, doing her best to look steady. In her mind she begged her daughter to stop talking about this. To stop making her see Robert’s dead face behind her closed eyelids. To stop reminding her of that night, of what really happened. She pasted on a smile. “Maya. He’s gone. It’s okay. We were prepared to one day say good-bye. Nothing lasts forever. You grew up on a farm. You know this. Things die.”
    Maya’s shoulders slumped. “He wasn’t a sick goose, for God’s sake.”
    “I know that. You think I don’t know that?” Elise ducked under a low-lying branch and found the second feeder. It was missing the pegs for the birds to stand on, so she just scattered some seed on the ground underneath instead, the seed rattling as it hit the layer of dead leaves below the tree. “I know you and your sisters are worried. But I’m fine. Really, I am. You make a life with someone, you prepare for this day. You’ll see. Someday you and Bradley will be old and you’ll start to prepare yourself for the possibility of his death.” She tapped her finger on her temple. “Mentally.”
    Maya made a short snorting sound. “If we make it that long,” she mumbled. “Which is doubtful.”
    Together, they wandered along the tree line, Elise peering into the thicket for the third feeder, which seemed to be gone. She felt better, almost as if she’d talked herself into feeling better by assuring Maya that she was much finer than she really was. The shaking in her knees was gone, and her lungs seemed to have opened up. She let her body go on outdoor autopilot, the tip of her nose numb from the wind, her hands red and chapped and gritty from running them through the seed, the crow’s-feet