“Thanks,” she said, taking a deep drag.
“When?” Maggie asked.
“Early tonight,” Annabelle said. “Police came by around midnight.”
“It was an accident?” John asked.
“An accident,” Clarabelle said.
Sarah blew her nose. “The cop said that it looked like she must have hit a fallen tree. Must have hit it and flipped.” She drew in a ragged breath. “The car flipped.” She couldn’t speak for a moment. “Then it caught on fire.”
Maggie tried not to picture a car engulfed in flames, Paige inside, trying to get out.
“I know,” Chuck said, as if reading her thoughts. Her usually booming voice was uncharacteristically small and tight.
They all sat on the steps in silence for a long time. The morning faded in and out as time stopped and started in bursts.
Paige is dead, Maggie thought over and over again. It just wasn’t sinking in.
Paige would come walking up the street or waltz through the door at any minute, scolding them for being late, asking about their day, showing off her newly made-over dress. Paige giggling over tea in the kitchen, Paige dancing, Paige in Latin class, at the dining hall at Claflin.
It was impossible that she was dead.
“Her mother—”
“Said we’d call her. We just couldn’t, though,” Annabelle said, looking over at Chuck, who shook her head.
“Besides, it’s only, what, one in the morning in Virginia?” Clarabelle added.
“We can call her in a few hours,” Maggie said. “Let her sleep. It’s going to be the last night of rest she’ll have for a while.”
“Yeah.” Chuck took a long drag on her cigarette. Maggie struggled to piece together practical details.
“What about her body?” John asked.
Sarah blinked. Hard. “No body. Nothing recovered.”
“Oh my God,” Maggie said. “Oh, please, no.”
“Maggie …” John said, sitting down on the step beside her.
But it was true: Paige was gone. And there was nothing left of her. And nothing for the three of them to do except wait for dawn in Virginia to make the phone call.
Just before they left for the service, Maggie stood at the doorway of Paige’s room. They’d packed all of her belongings in a domed wooden steamer trunk to send back to her mother in Virginia. She told the girls they could keep what they wanted. Maggie had decided to keep Paige’s heavy, square glass bottle of Joy with the golden cap, nearly empty. Just a whiff of the sweet rose-and-jasmine fragrance would conjure up memories. Sarah kept one of Paige’s blue-satin hair ribbons.
“Come on, Maggie.” She could hear Sarah calling her from the front hall as well as the twins’ subdued murmurings. It was time to go.
“Coming,” she called. Chuck looked in. “Chuck!” Maggie exclaimed, taking in her friend’s changed appearance. “You’re—you’re wearing a dress. And lipstick.”
“Well,” Chuck said, smoothing down the skirt with gloved hands, “Paige would’ve liked it, now, wouldn’t she?” Paige was always trying to get Chuck to wear skirts and dresses and lipstick and perfume. All of the things she thought were life’s necessities.
“Yes. Yes, she would.” And when Maggie left, she closed the door softly.
The memorial was held in a small, dimly lit church in the neighborhood. The altar was decorated with fall flowers: late-blooming red roses, yellow-and-white chrysanthemums, bittersweet.
In the long, dark pews, they stood with their heads bowed. Maggie bit the inside of her lower lip until it bled, and thought about the possibilities for code in the ad, in a desperate attempt not to scream. Glancing around, she could see everyone was beaten down by grief. When did we all start to look so old?
Maggie glanced at John, standing so stiffly upright in his best black suit, wishing she could reach out and take his hand. The fine lines around his eyes were more pronounced, and his face was even more angular, if possible. As the priest led them in prayer, he swayed the slightest bit.
It was time. It took forever for Maggie to reach the podium, her footsteps an endless series of clicks on the hard, unforgiving floor.
“I—I decided to read a poem by Henry Scott Holland.” Her voice was uneven, and she took a breath and tried to steady it. “I think Paige would have liked this. And I think she would want us to think of her in this way.
“Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other,
That we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name,
Speak to me in the easy way you always used
Put no difference into your tone,