As I try to catch bits of talk, it dawns on me that Aunt Clara hasn’t once consulted my opinion on these arrangements.

As if to emphasize this point, as we turn up the churchyard gates, Aunt jerks forward, her palm outstretched. “Why, Jennie, you are still wearing your engagement ring!” she exclaims. “Of all preposterous sights. Give it here at once, before anyone in the congregation sees it on your finger.”

“Clara, dear,” says Uncle Henry. “Now is hardly the time.”

“That ring is no longer hers to wear. It is a Pritchett heirloom. Unless one is a nun, one cannot be engaged to…a spirit.”

“Yes, of course, but…” Uncle Henry lapses off, astonished, as always, by Aunt’s vile outburst but unable to find the words to refute her. He rubs the back of his head.

“Will was far too sentimental,” Aunt continues, daubing her eyes. “Any adult can see this for what it was a fickle vow from a boy too young for marriage to a girl too giddy to know better.”

“He loved me,” I whisper. “And that ring belonged to Grandmother Pritchett. Surely I can keep it?”

Nobody answers. The silence has hard corners.

Aunt Clara is wrapped head to toe in crepe so stiff she appears almost inhuman. She is a lump of coal in the corner of the carriage, her outstretched hand insistent as a beggar maid. If Will were here, we’d have been able to laugh at her. Alone, I find her quite terrifying.

The ring catches on the net of my glove and grips the bone of my finger. I wince as I pull it off. Aunt snaps the ring into her purse.

“I have Will’s favorite hymn,” I murmur in Uncle Henry’s direction.

I think of it, written out in Will’s fine script, pressed into my scrapbook with a lock of his hair. “He would have wished it sung for him. At the service.”