“No.” The dock worker shook his head. “But everyone knows everyone around here. I thought it felt right to go. Right to show my respect. I don’t know.”
Hannah nodded and adjusted her hands on the steering wheel. The dock worker smelled like salt, like air, like soil. Sheconsidered asking him if he knew how Thomas had died, but then decided it was too forward of her.
“I’m Hannah, by the way,” she said.
“Julien,” he returned.
Hannah felt a tightening in her gut, one that she told herself had nothing to do with her obsession with the name Julien when she was a kid. She might have named a kid that, if she’d had a boy. But after Minnie, she and Kendall had never even discussed having a second.
8
Julien guided Hannah to a restaurant a block from the funeral home, behind which were ten parking spots, hidden from view. It was a goldmine. Only three were taken. Hannah slid into a free space and breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought leaving Miami would mean parking wasn’t a nightmare anymore.”
Julien laughed. “It’s not even tourist season yet. In the summer, it’s even worse.”
Hannah and Julien walked through the warm sunshine toward the funeral home. There was a line to enter, with guests standing cross-armed and looking at one another. Hannah could just barely make out Natalie and her husband, speaking conspiratorially with another guest. She would have given anything to know what they were talking about. When she glanced back at Julien, she saw that he looked awkward in his body, keeping a stoic face, his eyes straight ahead. They had no reason to talk to one another, although Hannah ached to interview him for more information about Nantucket and its residents.
She reminded herself that she was grieving, that Thomas was supposed to be her second cousin.
It took nearly fifteen minutes to enter the funeral home. Once there, it was clear the funeral home was full, so most guests didn’t have seats. A few people came up to Julien to say a quiet hello, some of them gently touching his upper arm. Hannah thought it was strange and sort of beautiful that people were so soft with one another at funerals. Of course, that softness went away as soon as people entered the real world.
Without anyone else at the funeral, Hannah kept close to Julien, praying that he wouldn’t mind. He felt sort of like a human shield, one that kept her from the prying eyes of other Nantucket residents—and Natalie. She didn’t want to see Natalie’s volatile gaze, nor answer any of Natalie’s questions about why Hannah had decided to be a voyeur. She imagined Natalie telling her that what she was doing was wrong. It was obscene.
Now that Hannah thought about it, she couldn’t remember what she and Natalie had had in common to begin with. Why had they ever been friends?
It was then Hannah realized the casket was closed. This was intriguing, especially since nobody would talk about the cause of death, save for the fact that it was, apparently, an accident. But what sort of accident had it been? And why was it so hush-hush? Hannah’s ears rang.
A pastor came to the front of the funeral home to read scripture and talk about Thomas Bard and his so-called “remarkable life of service.” The pastor was probably around Thomas’s age, with dark gray hair and curly eyebrows. “I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Thomas since the eighth grade,” the pastor said morosely. “I can honestly say that I’ve never met a more honest, more God-fearing, more considerate Nantucketer in my life. Everything he did was for this community, until his dying day.”
Again, Hannah’s ears rang with alarm. Something felt amiss, although she couldn’t put her finger on it. As the pastor continued to speak, she scanned the crowd. It was incredible how different everyone here looked from people in Miami. Miami was all suntans and tight waists and facial reconstruction surgery. Everyone looked like they could model. Everyone looked young, even if they weren’t. By contrast, Nantucketers looked like real people. After years and years of harsh New England winters on the ocean, they were hardy and stubborn and wise. Hannah found her heart softening to them almost immediately.
She felt that there was history on Nantucket, stories of hundreds of years of community. Maybe Miami had had that, too. But it had been blotted out by the modern age, by social media models and the desire for something glittery and more.
Eventually, she scanned all the way to the aisle off to the right, where a formidable group of older women sat together, wearing wide-brim black hats. They were maybe in their seventies. Hannah sensed a heaviness around them, as though they had wisdom that everyone else in the room couldn’t fathom. Because her mother had died many years ago, Hannah didn’t have many interactions with older women. She itched to interview them, if only to hear what they would say about Thomas Bard. Surely, they’d known him for years.
The funeral lasted a little less than an hour. Several people got up to speak, including Thomas Bard’s widow and two of his children. His granddaughter, a blond girl who had to be around Minnie’s age, got up to play the piano while her brother sang. They weren’t very good, but everyone applauded anyway.
Hannah wondered if Minnie had met the blond girl; she hoped she was making friends at school. A glance at her phone told her that Minnie still hadn’t responded to her text, although she was definitely out of class.
After the final prayer, when it was over, Hannah turned to look at Julien. He seemed just as stoic as he had when they’d come in, as though nothing of the ceremony had affected him. Around them, people began to mill out, speaking to one another about their plans afterward. One of them mentioned the wake, and Hannah’s ears rang again. Could she discover more about Thomas Bard and his death at the wake? Could she keep her lie going a little while longer?
The idea that Natalie would point her out and try to destroy her, at this point, sort of thrilled her. Natalie probably wouldn’t have it in her to cause a scene anyway.
But then, the three seventy-something women she’d seen in the crowd appeared before Julien, touching his shoulder and saying hello. The one in the center, the tallest one, seemed like the proudest and scariest woman Hannah had ever seen. She was the kind of woman who’d once been very beautiful and now maintained a sense of self that demanded respect from anyone who encountered her. They looked at Julien fondly, as though they were his aunts. Their eyes found Hannah, too. She braced herself for Julien to introduce her as Thomas’s “second cousin,” but Julien didn’t seem to want to talk to them for very long. This intrigued her, too.
“Are you going to the wake, Julien?” one of the women asked.
“It’s the right thing to do,” another said.
Julien grimaced and then looked at Hannah. Hannah nodded. “I’ll be there,” she said.
“I guess I’ll stop by for a bit,” Julien said. “But I have to get back to the docks.”
“Our harbor master never takes any time off,” one of the women said, mostly to Hannah.
Although she wasn’t versed in oceanic language, “harbor master” still seemed like a term worthy of respect. Hannah felt her heart fill with curiosity for this gruff, strong, silent man. Shecouldn’t believe he’d gotten into the passenger seat of her car and let her take the wheel.
Julien saidgoodbye to the older woman, hanging back to let them walk. Hannah kept by his side, scouting for Natalie’s blond flash of hair and watching as she left along with everyone else. Julien and Hannah were among the last to leave, allowing Hannah a final glance back at the closed casket, the photograph of a handsome, white-headed Thomas Bard hanging directly beside it, adorned with flowers. Her heart pumped. Although this story was a curiosity for her and had her investigative journalist instincts pulsing, she couldn’t forget that a man had died. He was a man with a wife, children, and grandchildren who loved him. That was a tragedy.
