Chapter 1
Alice
Susan’s posthumous instructions had been as forceful as her ones in life. No one ever argued with Susan, not even if they’d received an email like the one Alice had the week before.
Alice, if you’re reading this, it means I’m dead. Excuse the melodrama. I would like you to speak at the funeral – you’ll know what to say.
Alice didn’t want to argue with a ghost. If she could argue with a ghost, though, she’d have some choice words for her.
Primarily, Actually, I don’t know what to say.
She wouldn’t have known what passage to choose to represent Susan’s life or death under the best of circumstances, and the circumstances weren’t the best. The circumstances were possibly the worst.
Alice stood behind a podium 3,665.36 miles from her London flat in front of a sea of mourners she didn’t want to look at, either because she loved them too much, didn’t know them, or was actively estranged from them.
In the first row, left side, Susan’s children sat with Alice’s ex and his new fiancée.
She leaned forward, fixing her eyes on the ends of her friend Freddie’s head of floppy hair and reminded herself to tell him to get a haircut later.
‘The reading I’ve chosen is from The British Scientific Journal of Plants, a publication Susan cited liberally in my time with her at Camp Lakeside.
You may recall her favorite passages the way that I do.
This was one of them: “Within the continuum of earth’s perfect systems, death is not just death.
Through death, nutrients are conserved, often relocated, and may aid in the creation of new resources.
”’ She chanced a glance down at Freddie’s eyes, saw they were welling with tears, and quickly looked away.
‘“Furthermore, scientists have developed evidence to support a hypothesis that some processes of decay are the result of a dynamic cross-kingdom functional succession.”’ Freddie looked more confused than sad now, which couldn’t be a good thing.
When she talked about decomposition, Alice was known to digress in ways that most people had trouble following.
So she ditched the last part of what she’d spent her red-eye flight writing – honestly, the bit about the distinction between invertebrate and vertebrate species was arcane even for her – and spoke from the heart, something that was never easy for her.
‘To conclude, whether you believe death has a meaning, or is simply a necessary part of the creation of new life, we can take from this passage that nothing after death can be done alone. Genesis can only be achieved through the creation of a community. You all are that community for Susan, so thank you for being here today.’
She walked back to her row, sliding past the line of former campers she was sitting with and arriving at her seat between Freddie and Sierra.
If they felt like she’d intruded on their group after nearly a decade away, they certainly didn’t show it, and Freddie had insisted she sit with them when he’d run into her, disoriented and anxious, in front of the funeral home.
‘Nice one,’ he muttered now, surreptitiously wiping at his cheeks with the back of his hand. His Welsh accent seemed to only intensify in his grief.
‘You really had to remind everyone about decomposition?’ Sierra whispered. ‘That’s morbid, even for me.’
‘Quiet,’ Alice said. Having been their camp counselor for five years, the line had a nostalgic quality. ‘It’s Briar’s turn. And, anyway, Susan’s been cremated.’
‘Next we’ll hear from Briar Elwood, Susan’s eldest,’ the funeral director announced.
Briar stood, and Alice allowed herself a first real look at her old best friend.
As she walked up to the podium, Alice was struck by the familiarity of her strides, the slightly uneven gait she’d had since childhood.
The walk was comforting, because it was the only thing that appeared the same about Briar on the surface.
It was the hair that was most different, Alice reflected, as Briar turned and tucked her overgrown bangs behind her ears.
Briar had always had the most beautiful, long strawberry-blonde hair.
Alice had run her hands through it and braided it so many times that she could recognize it by touch.
She wondered if it still felt the same, even though it was cut into a bob slightly below her ears now.
‘She looks good for her mother’s funeral,’ Sierra mumbled, and Alice cut her eyes sideways in an approximation of a glare. ‘Okay, okay, not appropriate.’
Not appropriate, even if everyone in the room was thinking the same thing. Alice certainly was.
Briar rolled her shoulders back slowly, letting out a breath before speaking.
‘We’re all here because we agree that my mother was an incredible woman.
It feels silly to list her accomplishments, the lives she touched, or describe her in simple adjectives.
She was not… describable.’ She spoke in a low voice.
Briar had never been a natural public speaker, but seemed more self-assured than Alice had known her to be.
She found herself analyzing Briar’s confident posture, wondering how she could be so brave in the face of tragedy.
Then again, Briar’s whole look screamed brave, from the short hair to the stack of ear piercings and the tattoos scattered down her right arm.
Alice had been there for her first tattoo, but somehow, even though she’d catalogued the changes through the years on social media, she hadn’t expected them to be real.
It was like studying the characteristics of a mushroom in a book only to encounter it in the wild and be stunned by the life of it.
‘I won’t tell you the story of my mother’s life, because I assume she held you hostage at some point and told you everything, from her birth in Northumberland to her home in the mountains of Virginia where she passed, and all the places in between.
She will have told you about her brief stint in the circus – that one was a hit in our house growing up – and probably also the names she had given to every tree at Camp Lakeside.
I won’t tell you the story of her life, because I already had to write the obituary and, honestly, I’m tired.
’ She glanced up, her eyes sweeping across the room, and Alice quickly looked at her hands. ‘That was a joke, you can laugh.’
A low rumble of laughter came from the first row, and Alice’s eyes bore into the back of her ex’s head.
Of course, when Briar said to laugh, he laughed.
Noah was the type of friend who would persist through the most awkward situation, the type of person who never felt awkward anyway.
He always had the right reaction, something Alice had at first admired and then come to resent by the end of their relationship.
‘Instead, I’ll tell you a story about her you probably haven’t heard before, because I was the only one who was there. When I was ten years old, I woke up in the middle of the night to a terrible storm. My brother was six and my sisters were four, all of them sleeping soundly.’
She looked at where they sat in the front row, smiling slightly.
‘So, I went and woke my mom, even though I was too old to need comforting at that point. When she was up and understood the situation, she ran around her room like a headless chicken, getting ready, for reasons I didn’t understand, to go out in the middle of a storm.
It was a distracting enough sight – my mom not calm and collected, but in crisis – that it immediately made me less afraid of what was going on outside. ’ Briar paused, clearing her throat.
‘You might be wondering why she was having a conniption over some rain. Well, it turned out she’d left some of her favorite plants outside of the greenhouse at camp.
So in the middle of the night, in the middle of what was basically a hurricane, she got into her truck and took off to save the plants from overwatering. ’
There were a few chuckles from the audience, and some nods.
Alice watched Briar’s siblings, who appeared just as wrapped up in the story as everyone else.
It had been a long time since Alice had seen them together, and she was struck by how easily Briar seemed to replace Susan as the matriarch of the family.
‘And, of course, that is exactly who my mom was. She was someone who would do anything to help those who couldn’t help themselves, who advocated fiercely for trees and plants and campers alike.
She wasn’t just a mother to me, River John – RJ – Hazel and Laurel.
She was a mother to every living being she encountered.
If you’re here because she touched your life’ – Briar looked around the room again – ‘you’re lucky, because you know she would’ve dropped anything to help you.
Even in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm. ’
Briar resumed her seat in the front row, and Alice watched as Harper, Noah’s fiancée, reached over to put a tissue in her lap. Harper would do something that was intended to be kind but was actually cruel – the worst thing you could imply about Briar was that she didn’t have her act together.
The feeling of being an outsider, the one she’d been suppressing for the past hour, came back in full force.
She loved Freddie and Sierra, they were good kids.
But there had been a time when she wouldn’t have been on the other side of the aisle at this funeral, but in that front row.
A time, nearly ten years ago now, when she would have belonged there.
Freddie turned to her. ‘How’re you holding up?’
‘I’ve been better.’
Sierra nodded. ‘It’s fucked.’
The funeral director was back at the podium. Alice was getting tired of looking at the sad face of someone who had never met Susan, and she wondered how Briar felt about it.
‘The wake will be across the hall. Please give your best wishes to the family on your way out.’