It was hard to imagine Grandma being too polite to say anything. Maybe she’d gotten lucky.
I did okay. I think I did okay. Father Aguirre agreed to take me to Aunt Amelia’s grave tomorrow.
Copper groaned and stretched out against her legs. Selena grimaced. She knew that she was going to spend tomorrow trying to think of every possible thing that he could say, and what the proper response was to it.
He’s a priest. Priests have to forgive you if you apologize, don’t they?
Oh, probably. But it would be better not to say anything horrible in the first place ...
She adjusted her feet, much to Copper’s dismay. What did you say at your aunt’s grave?
Why was she even going?
Because it’s normal to go to your aunt’s grave. It would be strange not to go.
She had handled her mother’s funeral arrangements just a few weeks ago. It had been strangely easy. Nobody knew what to say and everybody was following a script, so Selena didn’t feel strange. They said, “I’m so sorry,” and you said, “Thank you. I know she would have appreciated everyone coming.” And it all played out like that, with only a few variations, and you just had to say the same thing over and over againand it was okay.
She missed that.
Walter would say that it was totally unnatural to miss making your own mother’s funeral arrangements and that it just proved how broken she was.
He’s wrong about some things, but probably not about that.
She sighed. If visiting her aunt’s grave was like attending her mother’s funeral, it would be easy.
How different can it be? I’ll just say, “It’s pretty” and “I’m sure she would have liked it here.” And “Thank you so much, it’s good to knowshe was taken care of.” Treat Father Aguirre like the man who ran the funeral home.
“It’s pretty,” she said, under her breath, trying to commit the words to muscle memory. “I’m sure she would have liked it here.”
Copper, who was used to her human muttering to herself, sighed in her sleep.
Chapter 8
Itwaspretty, as it turned out—a hard, rocky beauty, on the hillside, with a great saguaro rising a few yards away. There was no gravestone, only a wooden cross lashed together with wire.
“We’d have put her under the saguaro, but you have to be careful of the roots,” said Father Aguirre. The sun was starting to set over the hillside and the hard blue of the sky had softened. “The saguaros are tough as nails in some ways, and very fragile in others.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Selena. “I’m sure she would have liked it here.”
Father Aguirre nodded. “She chose it specifically. This was one of her favorite places to come. She’d sit on the rock there.”
It had been a long walk from the church, but they were only about ten minutes from Jackrabbit Hole House. There was a path of sorts, although it was hard to tell what was a path and what wasn’t, the way so many of the scrubby bushes grew without quite touching each other. You could get lost strangely easily for a place with no trees.
Selena sat down on the rock. It seemed like the proper thing to do. The stone surface was a few degrees cooler than she’d expected it to be.
It was hard to place the Aunt Amelia she remembered in this strange, stony place ... but perhaps not so hard to place the owner of Jackrabbit Hole House.
“She named the saguaro,” said Father Aguirre, sitting down next to her. “She told me that.”
“What was its name?”
“Nowthatshe never told me. Only that it had a name.” He leaned back, studying the saguaro’s many arms. “Names are important. I suppose she didn’t want to invoke one lightly.”
Selena had no prepared script for this, so she ran the words through her head a few times, hoping that the silence was not too awkward. “Speaking of names—”Yes, that’s a good opener, and we were speaking of it, it’s not weird.“—can you tell me why all the houses here have names? Like Jackrabbit Hole House and Blue Horned Toad House?”
Father Aguirre smiled, but not as if she’d said something stupid. “It’s a good question. I could answer, but I’m not sure the answer will make much sense to someone who—ah—hasn’t lived here for a while.”
Selena kept her eyes on the saguaro. It was harder when there was only one other person. She was never sure if she was making enough eye contact or not enough.
