The Stranger at the Back of the Funeral
A Shop Sign in Indiana
Renata called at 7:02 the next morning. A woman answered on the second ring, cheerful and slightly out of breath, with the hum of an air compressor behind her.
“Henshaw Fleet, this is Tess.”
Renata opened her mouth and found she had not planned a single word. “Hi,” she managed. “My name is Renata Pruett. I’m calling from Marlow Bend, Ohio. I think your husband was at my father’s funeral yesterday.”
There was a silence on the line so long that Renata checked to see if the call had dropped. When Tess spoke again, the cheerfulness was gone, replaced with something softer and more careful.
“He was,” Tess said. “He hasn’t come home yet. He’s still out there. He said he wasn’t ready to leave.” A pause. “Is everything all right? He was afraid he shouldn’t have gone.”
“Everything’s all right,” Renata said, and then, because it felt important to say, “I’m glad he came. I just want to talk to him. Could you give him my number?”
Twenty minutes later, her phone rang. The voice on the other end was low and slightly hoarse, the voice of a man who had not slept well.
“Ms. Pruett. This is Lyle Henshaw. Tess said you called.” He cleared his throat. “I want to say first, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come in like that and left like that. I promised your father a long time ago I wouldn’t ever make things hard for his family, and I think maybe I did.”
“You didn’t,” Renata said. “I found the coffee can.”
Another silence. Then a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been something else entirely.
“He kept them,” Lyle said quietly. “I always wondered.”
“Every one. And a key on a red string.”
She heard him breathe in and out. “I’m at the motel out by the interstate,” he said. “I was going to go by the cemetery once more before I drove home. I couldn’t stand there yesterday with everybody around. Would you want to meet me there?”
They met at Fairview Cemetery a little after nine. The rain had cleared overnight, and the morning was sharp and bright, the maples along the cemetery road gone deep orange and red. The grave was still a raw mound of clay heaped with wilting flowers. Lyle Henshaw stood beside it with his cap in his hands, exactly the way he had stood at the back of the chapel, wearing the same canvas coat, now dry. A dark blue pickup with Indiana plates was parked on the gravel lane behind him, a magnetic sign on its door reading Henshaw Fleet & Diesel.
Up close, he looked older than she had thought. There were deep lines around his eyes, and his knuckles were scarred in the particular way of a man who had spent thirty years reaching into engines. But when he turned to face her, she recognized something in his expression she couldn’t immediately place. Then she realized what it was. It was the boy in the photograph, all grown up, and still not quite sure he was allowed to be where he was standing.
“You look like him,” Lyle said. “Around the eyes.”
“People used to tell me that,” Renata said. “I never liked hearing it.”
He nodded as if that made sense to him. Then he looked down at the fresh clay for a long time.
“I should explain,” he said finally. “I’ve owed your family an explanation for thirty-seven years. I just didn’t think it was mine to give until he was gone.” He turned the cap in his hands. “Your father saved my life, Ms. Pruett. And I made him promise not to tell a soul. I was twelve and scared, and I didn’t understand what I was asking.”
He looked up at her, and his eyes were wet.
“I think it cost him more than it ever cost me.”
