about the adultery. The eulogies were brief as well. Percy O’Keefe talked about how Bridget liked to make him meatloaf because he took care of her yard. Maggie Webster told a story about Bridget teaching her to crochet when she was a little girl, and Dmitri told a very engaging, if somewhat off-color, story of how Bridget once caught him hanging laundry out to dry when he was wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. The stories were sweet but lacked substance, and I began to realize that, since most of her peers had long since preceded her to that great big Fudge Shoppe in the sky, those of us who were left didn’t remember that much about her. It made me sad to think she’d left so shallow a mark, but with no family there was no one to claim her legacy.
Gloria sniffled loudly, and it was oddly comforting. Some reassurance that there was someone who seemed to be taking this hard. In fact, judging from the noise, Gloria appeared to be quite distraught. I’d known they were friends, and that it was often Gloria who’d brought Bridget to Sunday services, so her grief made sense. Even so, she was pretty damned emotional. Then again, Gloria never did anything halfway. She was all in, all the time.
Delores Crenshaw seemed to be taking it hard, too, clutching a lace handkerchief to her red nose. “I tried to offer her a macaroon,” she told Gigi and me as the service ended and we all filed out into the churchyard. “I thought she was just being passive-aggressive. You know, ignoring me because everyone knows my macaroons are tastier than hers, so I gave her a tough little nudge on the shoulder. Damned if the poor woman didn’t tip right over and fall to the floor. Now I feel terrible. I’d just had that rug cleaned.”
Technically it wasn’t Delores’s fault, but maybe she should have felt terrible. I mean, it’s bad enough to have someone keel over in your house without anyone noticing, but to be the person who knocked the body to the floor? Yeah, that’s awkward.
“There, there, Delores,” Gigi responded with a consoling pat on the back. “We all know it’s Midge Clairmont who makes the tastiest macaroons. Yours are very gummy.” This, of course, only sent Delores into another fit of tears.
“Nice going, Gigi,” I whispered as we stepped away to make room for the pallbearers. They looked somber in their dark suits. Dmitri, with his hair pulled back into a ponytail; Harvey Murdock, who owned several fudge shops; Brian Murphy, our local judge and frequent drinking pal of my father’s; and enormous Tiny Kloosterman, who, in all honesty, could have hoisted the pine box onto his shoulder all by himself and jogged with it all the way to the burial site. Instead, they walked slowly and deliberately from the front of the church, gently loading the casket onto the funeral carriage.
The weather was appropriately gloomy and overcast, but the carriage still gleamed. I stared at it, noting that in some ways it was beautiful, all glossy black with gold accents, but of course, I could never see that thing without remembering the day I’d walked behind it, holding hands with ten-year-old Emily and five-year-old Lilly as it carried our mother away. She’d died very unexpectedly from a heart defect that no knew she had until it was too late. Our father had walked ahead of us that day, head down, never once looking back to see if we were okay. That kind of set the stage for the next twenty years: me taking care of my sisters, and my father assuming we’d handle things without his intervention. It wasn’t that he meant to be neglectful. Even at fourteen, I understood that he was lost without my mother, and clueless about raising daughters. Gigi was around, of course, but I decided pretty early on that I’d rather just take care of things myself.
With Bridget O’Malley loaded into the back, the carriage driver clucked at the horses, and the processional slowly wended its way along Lake Shore Avenue, down Big Pine Lane, past the newly remodeled Clairmont Hotel, and on to Croton Hill, where the Wenniway Island Cemetery was located. Gravestones from as far back as 1764 dotted the landscape, some so old and weathered that the names and dates had long since worn away. As the casket was lowered into the ground, Stan MacPherson and his two sons played “Amazing