Chapter 26
Riley arrived at the parlor in Georgetown shortly before Marie’s service was scheduled to begin. She dreaded funerals. To her, they were worse than arriving at a crime scene with a freshly murdered body. They always got inside her gut in some terrible way. Yet Riley felt she still owed something—she wasn’t sure what—to Marie.
The funeral parlor had a facade of prefab brick panels and white columns on the front portico. She entered a carpeted, air-conditioned foyer that led into a hallway wallpapered in muted pastel colors gauged to be neither depressing nor cheery. The effect backfired on Riley, adding to her feeling of despair. She wondered why funeral homes couldn’t just be the gloomy and uninviting places they really ought to be, like mausoleums or morgues, with none of thi
