I set it beside the soldering iron.
"Be blessed, tío." I said it in Romani, low enough that it belonged just to him and nobody else in this church.
Then I crossed myself and turned away.
Danior got to the casket before I made it back to my pew. He stood over Emilio with his head bowed and both hands on the rail and held the position long enough for the room to register him holding it, long enough for everyone to see him being the good nephew, the present family member, the one who showed up. Then he stood, kissed Valentina's forehead, and said something quiet that didn't carry past her ears. Valentina gave him nothing but stone. He moved to Amparo with the same performance and got the same reception, then rejoined his brothers by the far wall looking like a man who'd just made an important deposit and kept the receipt for his records.
Father Gomes started the service the same way he’d started every funeral. He was a good priest who knew how to give a goodhomily, but I tuned it all out and floated somewhere outside my body.
Until the women in the back started to sing.
It was an old song, the one that lived in the walls of every Romani home that had ever held a death. It came up from the back pews and punched me below the sternum, and everything I'd been holding shut since Spain tore open all at once. I pressed my back into the pew and put my head down, trying to remember how to breathe.
When the priest called the pallbearers. I stood. Danior and two cousins from the row behind us, Beni and Rafa, stood as well. We met at the front without speaking because the choreography lived in our blood, every funeral we'd ever attended since we were old enough to carry weight.
I took the left front. Danior took the right.
The casket settled onto my shoulder and the weight drove straight through me, not just pounds but the fact of it. Emilio reduced to something we could carry. Emilio, who'd carried me on his shoulders when I was five, who'd taught me to fix engines and pick locks and tell the difference between a lie and a hard truth. But Emilio wasn’t in a box on my shoulder. The box held a body, not the man. My tío Emilio was too big to fit in any box.
We carried the casket out into the sun.
Jasper was where I'd left him, sitting on the low wall by the cemetery gate with a cigarette in his hand, staring at the sky like it owed him money. He stood when the doors opened and put the cigarette out under his boot. He dropped his chin and brought his shoulders down from that permanent guard position, and swallowed once, hard, and held it there until we passed.
I kept my eyes forward and kept walking.
We put Emilio’s body in the ground beside his father and his father's father, where the headstones leaned together like oldmen sharing a bench. The dirt was red, and it always surprised me, that red, like the mountain bled where you opened it. Father Gomes said the words, and the dirt went in, and the women sang, and I stood there with soil on my hands and my uncle in the earth, and the sun already sliding west.
The house was fullwhen we got back from the cemetery. My grandmother's courtyard had filled with tables I didn't remember her owning and enough food to feed half of Sevilla. Cocido and arroz con pollo hung thick in the air, cut through with cigarette smoke and something sweet that couldn't compete with too many bodies pressed into too small a space.
My cousin Marcos already had a guitar out. Give it another hour and someone would start with the palmas and then we'd be here until dawn, whether anyone wanted to be or not. He was playing something low and slow, a rumba compás underneath the conversation. From the kitchen, my tía Rosario's voice rose over it, arguing with someone about the pisto.
I stepped into the courtyard and the tiles warmed through my boots. The fountain in the center hadn't run in five years, but my grandmother refused to admit it was broken, which meant it sat there looking decorative and doing absolutely nothing, which was very on brand for half the men in this family.
Emilio's youngest came tearing around the corner and grabbed Eight by the wrist, hauling her toward the back where kids were yelling about a lizard they’d found. She looked confused, but went with them, and I smiled to myself. It was good to see her getting to be a kid for once.
Jasper had wedged himself in the doorway between the kitchen and the back hall. Someone's tía had clearly shoved a plate of croquetas into his hands and he held it like he wasn't sure what it was for. “Is it always like this?” he asked.
He'd pushed his sleeves up past his forearms. I tried not to stare and failed spectacularly. “No. Usually, there are more people. Not everyone’s made it. More of my cousins are coming up the mountain before the end of the night, though.” I looked over at him. “How is everyone treating you?”
Jasper shrugged. “Mostly, they’re ignoring me. Which is fine with me.”
I frowned but didn’t say anything about it. Jasper was an outsider, a gadjo and worse, a Russian. It was courtesy alone that kept them from kicking him out. If they found out who he really was, that he’d once been part of the Pantheon, things might get ugly. Quick.
“I’m going to ask them for sanctuary,” I said quietly. “For you, Eight, and Lorenzo.”
“Will they give it?”
Once I’d been sure. But I’d been away for so long that I barely knew these people anymore, which stung. They were my blood, my family. “I don’t know,” I said and pushed off the wall.
I walked back out into the main room, and the condolence line had formed in front of Valentina's chair. She sat straight-backed with her daughters on either side and Amparo posted at her right hand like a guard who'd shoot you for looking at the queen wrong. The chair was the good one from the front room, with the carved arms that Emilio had spent three months restoring.Someone had draped it with Lucenio blue fabric, and it looked like a throne.
Danior was already on his knees in front of her.
He had both her hands in his and his head bowed, and he held the position, making sure everyone in the room registered the dutiful nephew. Then he stood and kissed her forehead and said something I couldn't hear over the guitar. Valentina's face didn't move.
He moved to Amparo next with the same performance and got the same result. Then he rejoined his brothers against the far wall and leaned back with his arms crossed.
The line moved forward, and it was my turn.
