Tin Lily Read Online Free PDF Page B

to rest, Lily.”
    She touches my arm, keeping me here. “She wanted to be cremated. Did you know that?”
    “No,” I say. “But it makes sense.” Mom didn’t like it when people were tricked out of their money—a funeral, her biggest example.
    “It ’ s ridiculous—an expensive box to rot in the ground. Money should be spent on the living. The dead don ’ t care.”
    We decide to spread Mom’s ashes in a hidden meadow where she and I spent most of every weekend last summer. Not this summer, though. This summer isn’t quite here. Next weekend was supposed to be our first trip up. Five miles in the car, another two on foot. It’s quiet there. Peaceful.
    “When?” I say.
    Margie squints at me. I have to ask in more words so she understands. “When can we take Mom up?”
    “It’ll be a few days yet. I know you want to get this all put behind you. I know that. I wish I could make it go faster.”
    Margie doesn’t understand. When you want to put things behind, you usually have something in front. There is no front for me. No future.
    Pretty soon the tears will start. Pretty soon there’ll be a crack and then a flood.
    Pretty soon I’ll dissolve, disappear, vanish into the ether like the life we had at the dog food house.

 
     
Ten
     
    “Would you like to say a few words?” Margie’s asking. We’re standing in the middle of Mom’s meadow with wildflowers blooming right up around us, going about their business like Mom didn’t die. Purple fades to pink. Yellow into red. Dew on our sneakers. The earth sinking, soft with spring, the sky blue and cloudless.
    I’m standing in Mom’s meadow. I’m holding the urn that holds her.
    “Lily?”
    “I love her,” I say. I look at the urn. “I love you.”
    There’s a hot tightness in my stomach. Aching behind my eyes. Hollow in my chest where my heart’s supposed to be. Thump-crack, thump-crack.
    “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer the phone.” It’s all I can say because the heat and the ache and the hollow want to come out, to dissolve me. There are worse places to become nothing, but I’m weak, not brave like Mom. After Hank’s light went out, when he let in Grandpa Henry’s poison, he made sure I knew.
    “You're so pathetic, Lily. A weak-willed, mewling little brat.”
    Margie says a few words too, letting the heat and ache out. She stays Margie, though, and doesn’t dissolve. She tells Mom she’s sorry for what her brother did, for how things turned out.
    We take the lid off the urn, walk around the meadow and spread Mom’s ashes. A little for the black-eyed Susans. A lot for the honeysuckle growing up the side of a tree—her favorite. A little more for the dogwood and the bluebells and the cosmos.
    Glass into sand. Mom into ashes. Ashes into earth. The earth is small enough. My focus: the earth.
    Me and Margie, we sit next to each other in the softness and dew, in the warm sun. We sit down with our living bodies and watch the breeze carry Mom to every corner of her hidden meadow.
    “Lilybeans, pull one of those black-eyed-Susans for your hair. Tuck it behind your ear. That ’ s it!” Click. Snap.
    “This is a beautiful spot,” Margie says.
    “Lil, lean against that tree, will you? Grab a honeysuckle flower, hold it under your nose. Good girl.” Click. Snap.
    “I can see why you and your mom spent so much time here.”
    “Lily! Did you see the rabbit? We have to get a picture!” Click. Snap.
    Margie scoots close, puts her arm around me. “I thought we’d leave for Seattle on Friday. What do you think?”
    “What about Hank?”
    Margie doesn’t say anything for a minute. We listen to the crows complaining in their scratchy voices. We watch the Susans bend their miniature sunflower heads. We feel a soft breeze come through, rustle the long grass. So much quiet.
    “Do you hear that, Lily?”
    “What?”
    “Nothing. It ’ s so silent, so peaceful here. Can you feel it?”
    “Sure, Mom, whatever you