Instead of her usual sweater and high-waisted skirt, Tía Lora wore a black dress, the cut plain and straight. It showed enough of her figure that she looked her age instead of Abuela’s. Her usual skirts started at the bottom of her rib cage and ended in the middle of her calves, making her seem the eldest among her sisters-in-law even when she was the youngest.
Her everyday braid showed mostly the silver. Now her hair was loose to her waist, the black streaks free. She wore no lipstick or mascara, but a layer of powder evened her color. Blush warmed her cheeks.
Though she had no children, Lora Paloma had always looked, to Lace, like a grandmother. But not now, not in this dress and this light. Now she was a woman retired men might wink at. They would take her out for early dinners and almost-late dancing. Twice a year—Valentine’s Day and her birthday—they would bring her twelve red roses, perfect and identical as folded napkins.
The sun made her glow like she was made of scales. Her skin shimmered with something a little like that pale iridescence.
Lace remembered Cluck telling her that iridescence was a dangerous thing. When birds or dragonflies grew into the glint of their own wings, they were weak, more open to damage than creatures that were plain colors. Lace wondered if Tía Lora had spent the last few days alone in her motel room, fragile and still, so she could emerge beautiful and made of light.
“Mijita?” her great-aunt asked. “What are you doing here?”
“Me?” Lace’s laugh was soft as the color on Tía Lora’s cheeks. “What are you doing here?”
Behind the veil of blush, her great-aunt’s color drained. She turned and walked into the woods.
“Tía Lora.” Lace went after her, her heart tight and raw.
Now her great-aunt knew where she’d been hiding. She’d picked up the oak and earth smell of the Corbeau boy’s feathers.
Lace caught up and stopped her. “Why are you here?”
Her great-aunt looked past her. Her eyes fell on the funeral. The wooden casket. The boy who stood by the gravesite. Even in corduroys and a plain shirt, instead of those passed-down suits, he looked like a young copy of the old man they were laying in the ground. A print left behind.
“Tía Lora,” Lace said. “Tell me.”
À bois noueux, hache affilée.
Meet roughness with roughness.
The priest from Linden spoke, but Cluck didn’t hear the words. He watched a crow pecking at the grass, feathers shining like slices of water. It kept his eyes from the varnished coffin, a burst of carnations and filler fern splayed over the top.
His aunts must have told the florist nothing but that they needed a funeral spray. Pépère never would have wanted the fuss of baby’s breath and these ruffled, bloodless flowers. If there had to be flowers, his family should have covered the wood with the kind of wild periwinkles Mémère let take over their back garden.
His family’s scorn whipped against him like wind-thrown branches. He didn’t care. They could think what they wanted. He’d burned as many of his grandfather’s things as he had the right and the stomach to. His family would have sold Pépère’s clothes, or let them wrinkle and yellow at the bottom of a wooden trunk.
Eugenie stood at his side, her small, set face daring her mother and father and older brother to say anything.
The crow beat its wings and lifted off. Cluck looked over his shoulder and watched it fly.
A shape at the tree line moved like a shadow. For that second, he thought he saw her, Lace Paloma in a black dress so short his mother would not have let her cross a church nave. Then she vanished.
This shadow of her was haunting him, reminding him that his grandfather would not have died if Cluck had not been so caught up in her. All he could do now was what he’d done, given her up, just like his grandfather wanted. Cluck wouldn’t be with the same kind of woman who had told lies about Pépère, and he wouldn’t trap Lace in this family.
He turned back toward the service, wanting to shake off that glimpse of her shape. He squeezed his eyes shut so tight that when he opened them, flecks of blue light swam in the air.
Clémentine’s eyes flashed toward Eugenie. Her Is he alright? face. It was the same for her cousins, for children, for a stray cat they fed that always held its head tilted to the side.
Eugenie squeezed his hand. “Ça va?”
He forced a nod, his tongue pressed against the back of his teeth.
After the service, most of the family did not speak to him. Those who did—an uncle, a few cousins—all told him how much he looked like his grandfather. A great-aunt made him bend down so she could kiss his forehead, and told him, “You are a picture of him.” A second cousin said, “I bet you’ll be just like him when you’re that old.”
What did they want him to take from these words? That if he missed Pépère, he could just check a mirror? That the more he aged, the closer he’d get to him? Like getting older would seal up the empty place.
Cluck knelt next to the grave, damp earth cooling the knees of his pants. He reached down a hand—the right, he made sure of it—and gathered a fistful of earth. It smelled of new roots and week-old rain. He would keep it with him until he could throw it in a well, the way his grandfather’s family had done for their dead since long before la République française existed. Another small thing to help Pépère flee this world. Cluck prayed, and told Pépère he would do this for him.
He finished praying, and walked away from the gravesite.
The sight of a man who was not one of them stopped him. He wore a navy suit, like he had in the hospital, one too nice for anyone who lived here. A suit not made for mourning.
A risk manager, Eugenie had called him. A man here to disperse the few protestors left as though they were rabbits. To take this town’s silence not as fear for their jobs, but as assent. He would ignore the families who depended on the plant workers. He would ignore the town’s unease that if too many of them protested, if they got too loud about safety standards, the plant would just pull out of Almendro. He’d ignore their dread about how it would gut the town, a worry so sharp it made the air hum.
The risk manager didn’t see any of that. His job existed because Pépère’s did not.
The man shook Dax’s hand with both hands, gripping with the right, patting with the left. A business handshake.
Cluck stood in the man’s path, blocking the way to his mother and aunts and uncles.
“What are you doing here?” Cluck said in a low voice.
“You’re Alain Corbeau’s grandson,” the risk manager said.
Cluck held the handful of dirt tighter. A few grains slipped between his fingers. “Don’t say his name.”
The man put on his best condolence face. He must have rehearsed it. The mouth was too tight, the eyes too pinched. “Alain was a great man.”
Cluck packed the earth against his palm, perspiration turning the outer layer to mud. First his full name, and now just the first. Worse than speaking his grandfather’s name, this man spoke as though he knew him. He wasn’t even old enough to have seen him checking gauges and managing cleaning procedures.
“Please,” Cluck said. “Don’t say his name.”
But the man didn’t understand, and went on with his speech about how vital Alain Corbeau was to the plant “back then,” how Alain’s dedication to his work inspired those around him, that Alain Corbeau would be remembered fondly as part of the Almendro community.