9
PALM SPRINGS, 2013
Clara had bought a black silk dress months before so she would have something to wear to her mother’s funeral. Jessica had been cremated in the early morning, and now Clara stood looking out over the desert behind her house, listening as a priest intoned a blessing on a body that wasn’t there. Darren held the urn that contained her mother’s ashes. At the appropriate time, Darren opened it and released her mother to the wind. The ashes scattered on the lifting breeze, swirling away towards the mountains in the distance. Clara didn’t weep, but kept her face hidden under the veil of her hat.
None of her mother’s tennis friends were there, only a couple of the members of house staff and Dr. Matthews. They all stood in a long moment of silence that was meant to be a time
