The service was held the next morning, at the Congregational Church on Harbor Street, at the hour the minister had set, which was nine o'clock, because my grandmother had believed that a person who had earned a long life had earned a short service. The service was, by the standards of the Marble Cove church calendar, a small one. The minister had printed a single program, on a single sheet of cream card stock, and the program contained a single hymn, a single reading, and a single sentence about my grandmother, which was the sentence the minister had decided to put in. The sentence was Margaret Sokolov asked more of the truth than most of us were prepared to ask of ourselves. The minister had not, in his twenty-three years in Marble Cove, ever put a sentence in a program that he had not been asked to put in. He had put this sentence in. I did not, on the morning of the service, know that he had put it in. I was to learn it later, from a woman who had kept her program.
I had dressed for the service in the clothes I had brought for the burial, because I had only brought the clothes I had brought for the burial. I had not, in the haste of the week before, thought to bring a second set of clothes for a second event. The clothes were the dark wool dress and the black coat and the small black leather shoes that had been, until that morning, the most dressed-up clothes I had packed for the trip. I had not, in the haste of the week before, thought to ask anyone what one wore to one's grandmother's funeral in a town one had not been to in twelve years. I stood in front of the small mirror in the back hall of the cottage and looked at the woman in the mirror and decided that the woman in the mirror would have to do.
The cottage had given me, that morning, no further instructions. The drawer with the folded paper that said my name was still closed. The kettle was on. The cup was upside down on the drainboard, where I had left it the day before. The radio dial in the kitchen, the small battery radio my grandmother had kept on the windowsill, was set, as it had been set for years, to the classical station, and the station was playing, very softly, the hymn the choir had sung the day before. The hymn was over by the time I turned off the stove. I turned off the stove. I left the cup where it was. I went out.
I walked to the church because the church was three blocks from the cottage, and because walking to a funeral was, in Marble Cove, what a person did when the funeral was the funeral of someone whose funeral she wanted to walk to. The walk took seven minutes. The walk went past the library, past the post office, past the small park with the single bandstand and the single bronze plaque about the harbor pilots of 1812. The walk went past the only coffee shop in Marble Cove that was open in October, which was not The Driftwood. The Driftwood, as I have said, was closed in October. The shop that was open was a shop I had not been in for twelve years, a shop that sold coffee and used paperbacks and had a hand-lettered sign in the window that read We Are Sorry For Your Loss. The sign had been put up that morning. The woman who had put it up was, I knew, the woman who had cut the lavender for my grandmother's grave.
I did not go into the coffee shop. I did not stop. I had decided, before I had dressed, that I would not stop anywhere on the way to the church, because stopping would have meant being seen by people who were also on their way to the church, and being seen would have meant being spoken to, and being spoken to would have meant answering, and answering would have meant beginning, and I was not yet ready to begin. I walked the seven minutes. I arrived at the church at five minutes to nine.
The church was, as the church had been for as long as I had known it, a small white clapboard church with a single steeple and a single bell and a single door. The door was closed when I arrived. I had to put my hand on the iron latch to open it. The latch was cold. The door was heavy in the way that New England church doors are heavy, the way a door is heavy when it has been hung to outlast the people who will hang it. I pushed. The door opened. The vestibule was warm. The vestibule smelled of lemon oil and of the slightly sweet, slightly melancholy smell of old hymnals kept in wooden racks. I had been in this vestibule twice in my life: once for the funeral of a great-aunt I did not remember well, and once, in the summer I was fifteen, for the wedding of a woman I did remember well and who had since moved to Portland. I had not been in it since. The vestibule had not changed. The hymnals had not been reordered. The little wooden box for the prayer cards had not been repainted. The minister, who had come up behind me from the vestry, said my name.
Ms. Sokolov, he said. He was a small man in a black cassock. He had been the minister of the church for twenty-three years. He had known my grandmother for thirty. He had buried my grandfather in this church. He had married my parents in this church. He had, on the morning of the day I had arrived at the cemetery in the rain, been the man at the graveside who had said the few sentences about a long life and a held faith. He said, We are very glad you have come. We will begin when you are ready.
I said, Thank you. I am ready now.
He opened the inner door for me. I went in. The church was already half full, in the way a Marble Cove church is half full for the funeral of a woman who has lived in Marble Cove for eighty years, which is to say that every pew on the left had at least one person in it, and every pew on the right had at least two, and the back four pews were, as the back four pews of every Marble Cove funeral are, occupied by the people who had come to pay their respects without being asked to commit to the service. I did not, at first, recognize anyone. I had not been in this town in twelve years. The faces I had known as the faces of the people who had taught me and the people who had mended my bike and the people who had nodded to my grandmother at the post office had become, in twelve years, the faces of their grown children, and their grown children had, in some cases, become the faces of people my age, and the people my age had, in some cases, become the faces of people with gray in their hair. The town had aged me into it without my noticing.
The minister went to the front. I sat in the second pew from the front, on the left, in the place the minister had pointed me to, which was the place the family of the deceased was expected to sit. I sat alone. I had not invited anyone to sit with me. I had not been in this town in twelve years. The pew was hard. The pew smelled of lemon oil and of the slightly sweet, slightly melancholy smell of old hymnals. The pew had been the pew my grandmother had sat in every Sunday she had been in town, and on the Sundays she had been out of town, it had been the pew my grandfather had sat in alone, and on the Sundays he had been gone, it had been the pew the minister had asked me to sit in, when I had been small, while the choir sang the psalm.
The minister said the opening sentence. The congregation stood. The hymn was sung. The hymn was the hymn the radio had been playing the day before, the hymn my grandmother had sung at the bedside of every person she had ever sat with at the end. The choir sang it from the back of the church. I did not sing. I did not know, in that moment, whether I knew the words. I had been singing the hymn since I was six. I did not, in that moment, know whether I knew the words. The congregation sang it around me. The hymn was over in ninety seconds. The congregation sat.
The minister gave the reading. The reading was from the book of Ruth, the part where Ruth says to Naomi, Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. The minister read it slowly, without looking up from the book, and the voice he read in was the voice of a man who had buried forty people in this town and who had decided, each time, to mean it.
Then the minister called on Lester.
Lester was an old man. Lester had been, as long as I had known him, the oldest person in Marble Cove, and had been, as long as I had known him, the postmaster. He had retired from the postmaster's job in 1998. He had come to every funeral in Marble Cove since 1962. He had, on the morning of the funeral of any person he had known for more than thirty years, been asked by the minister to stand at the front of the church and say a few words. He had said a few words. He had said them in the voice of a man who had spent his life putting other people's letters in other people's boxes and who had decided, on the morning of every funeral, that the last letter he would put in the box would be a few words about the deceased. He stood at the front of the church. He did not have notes. He did not have a Bible. He had a hat in his hands. He said:
Margaret Sokolov walked into the post office and the post office felt, for a moment, as if it had been waiting. I do not have more to say than that. She knew how to wait, and she knew how to make the thing she was waiting for feel as if it had arrived at the right time. I am sorry she has gone. I am sorry for her granddaughter, who is here today, and who I have not seen in twelve years, and who has her grandmother's walk. I am sorry for the rest of us, who will miss her. Amen.
He sat down. The congregation was quiet for a moment, the way a room is quiet after something true has been said in it. I sat in the pew and I did not move. The minister closed the service. The congregation stood. The choir sang a final sentence of the hymn, only the last four lines. The benediction was given. The service was over. It had lasted, from the opening sentence to the benediction, twenty-two minutes. My grandmother would have approved.
The congregation began to file out into the vestibule. I did not file out. I sat in the pew for a moment and I looked at the back of the church. The man in the gray coat was there.
He was in the very last pew. He was sitting alone. He was sitting in the way a man sits when he has been sitting in churches for a long time, which was the way a man sits in a pew when he has been given permission to sit in any pew in any church in any town he has ever been in, and has decided to sit in the back pew. He was not, as he had been at the cemetery, leaning on a cane. He was sitting upright. His hat was on his lap. His hands were folded over the hat. He was not, I thought, listening to the service. He was, I thought, listening to the room.
I looked at him for a long time. The light in the back of a Marble Cove church in October comes in low, through the small clear windows set in the upper half of the clapboard wall. The light was coming in low. The light fell across the face of the man in the gray coat at an angle that was not the angle at which the porch light had fallen across his face, but at an angle that was, I thought, the angle at which the porch light had refused to fall across his face. The light crossed his face from the chin up, and the light crossed his eyes, and the eyes, in that light, were not the color of any eyes I had ever seen on a man of his age. The eyes were a very dark gray, almost blue, almost green, almost the color of the harbor on a morning when the wind had been blowing for a long time. The eyes did not reflect the light the way eyes reflect light. The eyes held the light. The light did not come out of them again. I looked away. I did not look back. I had the strong impression, in the way a person has a strong impression about a thing she is choosing not to verify, that the man had been looking at me since the service had begun.
I stood. I walked to the vestibule. The door of the church, the heavy door, the door I had pushed open with my hand on the iron latch, was, when I came to it, no longer open. The door was closed. The door had been closed, I thought, since I had come in. I put my hand on the iron latch. The latch was no longer cold. The latch was warm. The latch was warm the way a latch is warm when it has been held, for a long time, by a hand. I opened the door. The door opened, and the vestibule was empty, and the church door, behind me, made a single, small sound as it settled into its frame.
The sound was the sound a door makes when a hand has just let it go.
The reception was held in the church hall, which was, in October, the warmest room in Marble Cove, because the church had a furnace that the minister had been told, for twenty years, was going to explode, and which the minister had refused to replace, because the minister did not believe that a furnace that had outlived his predecessor and his predecessor's predecessor should be retired before it had decided to retire itself. The reception was small. The reception was coffee in a silver urn and small sandwiches on a silver tray and a small cake my grandmother had liked, which had been ordered by the woman who had cut the lavender for the grave, and which had been paid for, the woman told me, by a man who had not given his name. The man who had not given his name was, I thought, the man in the gray coat. The man in the gray coat was not at the reception.
The woman who had cut the lavender came up to me at the reception. Her name was Helen. Helen had been, in my childhood, the postmaster's wife, and had been, in her widowhood, the woman who kept the books for the harbor pilots' cooperative. Helen said, Margaret spoke of you every week of the last twelve years. She did not say much. She said, when she said anything at all, that her granddaughter in Boston was doing well, and that her granddaughter in Boston would come home when her granddaughter in Boston was ready. Helen said, She did not say what she would be ready for. She only said that she would be ready. Helen said, She was right, in the end.
I thanked Helen. Helen went away. I stood in the reception with a cup of coffee in my hand, the kind of coffee that is served at Marble Cove receptions, which is the kind of coffee that has been on the burner for an hour and that tastes the way a person's hand tastes after she has been holding it for an hour. I drank it. I did not know anyone else in the room. I had, in twelve years, lost the names of every person I had once known in this town. I was, in this room, the woman whose grandmother had died, and the woman whose grandmother had left a debt, and the woman whose grandmother had been a kind of person this town had decided to be proud of and not to talk about.
Then a man I had not seen at the cemetery, a man I had not seen at the service, came up to me. He was tall. He was broad in the shoulders. He was wearing a dark suit and a dark tie and he was standing, I noticed, in the way a man stands when he has been standing in doorways of church halls for a long time and has decided to come in. He was holding, in his left hand, a small leather folder. He said, Ms. Sokolov. He did not say, I am sorry for your loss. He said, Ms. Sokolov. He said it the way my grandmother had said the names of people she had known for a long time, which is to say he said it as if he had been given permission to say it.
He did not introduce himself. He did not, in the first minute, say anything more than my name. He stood and he looked at me. I looked at him. I had, in the second before he had come up to me, been about to put my cup down. I did not put my cup down. I held it and I looked at him and he looked at me and the reception went on around us in the way a reception goes on around two people who are not yet talking.
He said, My name is Lucas Marsh. My grandfather was George Marsh. Your grandmother was kind to my grandfather, when my grandfather did not deserve kindness. He said it in a single sentence. He did not say any more. He did not, in the first minute, say any more. He had, in his left hand, the leather folder, and the leather folder was closed, and he was holding it the way a man holds a folder when the folder has been given to him by a person who has asked him to give it to me, and he was holding it at his side, and he was not offering it.
I said, Thank you, Mr. Marsh.
He said, Marsh is fine.
I said, Marsh, then.
He said, Marsh is what my grandfather was called. I am what my grandfather was called when he was not being called Marsh, which was, in your grandmother's phrase, "the boy who lost his nerve."
He said it without smiling. He said it without not smiling. He said it in the voice of a man who had been told something by a woman he had never met, and who had believed what he had been told. I had not, until that moment, known that my grandmother had called George Marsh by a name. I did not, in that moment, ask what the name had been. I did not, in that moment, ask why my grandmother had been kind to George Marsh. I did not, in that moment, ask what the leather folder contained. I said, She was kind to many people who did not deserve kindness.
He said, Yes. She was.
He did not say any more. He stood for a moment longer. He looked at the door. The door of the church hall was, I noticed, slightly ajar, in the way the chapel door had been slightly ajar the day before, although the church hall door had been, as far as I knew, latched when I had come in. The man in the gray coat was not on the other side of the door. The door was simply slightly ajar. He looked at the door. He said, I will not take more of your morning. He said, If you would like to call the office, the number is on the card in the folder. He said, The folder is for whenever you would like to open it. It is not for today.
He gave me the folder. He did not shake my hand. He nodded. He turned. He walked to the door. He went out. The door, as he went out, made a single, small sound, the way the church door had made a single, small sound, the way a door makes a sound when the person who has just gone through it has decided, for reasons of his own, not to close it behind him.
I held the folder. I did not open it. I put it, with my cup of coffee, on the table beside the silver urn. I stood in the reception for a few more minutes. I said goodbye to Helen. I said goodbye to the minister. I walked back to the cottage.
The cottage was, when I came back to it, exactly as I had left it. The kettle was on. The cup was upside down on the drainboard. The radio dial was set to the classical station, and the station was playing, very softly, a piece I did not know the name of, in a key I did not know the name of. The drawer with the folded paper that said my name was still closed.
I went to the drawer. I stood in front of the drawer for a long time. I had, in the walk home, decided what I would do when I got to the drawer. I would open the drawer. I would take out the folded paper. I would unfold the paper. I would read what my grandmother had written on the inside of the paper. I would read it before I opened the leather folder Lucas Marsh had given me. I would read it before I went to see the lawyer. I would read it in the order my grandmother had taught me to read things, which was the order of the kitchen, which was the order of the kettle, which was the order of the woman who had decided, before she died, to put the words she had put on the inside of the paper.
I opened the drawer. The paper was where I had left it. I picked it up. I unfolded it. I read it.
I read it twice. I did not, in the first reading, understand it. I did not, in the second reading, understand it. I understood only that the words on the inside of the paper were not, as I had expected, instructions. The words were a list. The list was a list of three names. The first name was my name. The second name was a name I did not recognize. The third name was a name I did not recognize. Beneath the three names, in a hand that was my grandmother's hand but that was, in places, smaller and more careful than her usual hand, she had written a single sentence. The sentence was: They will come when the cottage has been heard.
I set the paper down on the kitchen table, beside the kettle. I did not pick up the leather folder. I did not pick up the lawyer's letter. I did not pick up the company's letter. I stood in the kitchen and I listened to the cottage, and the cottage, for the first time since I had come home, was not quiet, and was not making a sound, and was, in the way a person is when she is being asked to do something she has been asked to do for a long time, waiting.
