by Mary Daheim
Milo gazed at me with his steady hazel eyes. “Let it go, Emma. It’s over.”
It wasn’t quite over. On Tuesday, the day that Gen was supposed to have been buried, Annie Jeanne Dupré’s funeral Mass was held at St. Mildred’s. Luisa Mazilli, the college’s music professor, played the organ. Before the liturgy formally began, she dazzled the mourners with selections from Bach, Chopin, Mahler, and Saint-Saëns.
But what uplifted my spirits most was that Vida was in attendance. I should have guessed she’d never miss a funeral. When I saw her coming down the aisle with her head held high and her eyes darting all around the church, I knew she was going to face down any criticism or curiosity. As she progressed toward me in her black swing coat and black sailor hat with a big white daisy, I wanted to jump up and hug her. But I refrained, and squeezed over toward Debra and Clancy Barton to make room.
“Such a crowd,” she declared in her stage whisper. “The Bartons, the Shaws, the O’Tooles, Jack and Nina Mullins, a gaggle of Bourgettes. And the Bayards, of course. Goodness, is that Rita Patricelli from the Chamber of Commerce? Oh, and her brother, Pete. Who else?” She rubbernecked through Luisa’s Chopin prelude. The attendees were doing some rubbernecking of their own, gazing up into the choir loft with pleasurable expressions.
The procession started down the aisle. Ben looked dignified in his white vestments, which symbolize the Resurrection. It was time to think of other things, of why we were there. It was time to remember Annie Jeanne, not in her final hours, but as a person. A person we hardly knew.
The morning was cold, with frost turning the cemetery grass to silver. Ben had preached a fitting homily, basing it on accepting Christ as little children do, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Dennis Kelly, who had been informed of Annie Jeanne’s death by Ben, sent a message citing her “simple faith and innocence.”
The senior Duprés were buried not far from the Runkel plot. Vida walked right by without even a glance. When the casket had been lowered and the final words had been spoken, she turned to me.
“Your brother does a nice funeral,” she declared. “I’ll mention that in my write-up. And I’m certainly glad he doesn’t ask members of the congregation to offer their own thoughts and remembrances. Really, it’s always such twaddle.”
I agreed.
“Not to mention,” Vida went on as we walked uphill from the grave site, “that Luisa Mazilli played the organ extremely well.”
I stopped and turned to look down at the green canopy and the deep hole in the ground. From our vantage point, the cemetery, with its headstones and markers and various family plots, reminded me of something: a quilt. Life was like that, bits and pieces, good and bad, all patched together to make a whole, often flawed creation.
“Perhaps Luisa will become the regular organist,” Vida said as we continued on our way. “She has an Italian name. Maybe she’s a Catholic. It would certainly be nice for you people if you could listen to such beautiful music at every Sunday service.”
“It was beautiful,” I conceded. Then, after a few more steps, I said what I really felt.
“But I didn’t like it.”
Also By Mary Daheim
The Alpine Advocate
The Alpine Betrayal
The Alpine Christmas
The Alpine Decoy
The Alpine Escape
The Alpine Fury
The Alpine Gamble
The Alpine Hero
The Alpine Icon
The Alpine Journey
The Alpine Kindred
The Alpine Legacy
The Alpine Menace
The Alpine Nemesis
The Alpine Obituary
The Alpine Pursuit
The Alpine Quilt is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2005 by Mary Daheim
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-345-48454-3
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