‘What about the coroner’s report?’ she asked Sunita.
Sunita took my mother’s hand. ‘She drowned, Margaret. She wasn’t interfered with. The autopsy confirmed it. The river took her.’
When Sunita bent over to kiss her goodbye, my mother whispered that there’d be certain things she’d take with her to her grave. Let’s not talk about that now, Sunita told her.
I was stunned to hear that my mother would be going to Elise’s funeral; it somehow didn’t seem right. I knew that Sarah had insisted on it, but I didn’t think it would actually happen. Deep down, I felt that it was my mother’s fault; her fault for being distracted while distracting her was my fault. Mother and daughter, bound together in negligence.
The day of Elise’s funeral was a blur. I knew how difficult it was for my grandmother,
