"It’s not your fault. And people got to find their own way to get over a death."

"But picking and fighting isn’t the way. Daddy would bust a gut if he was here."

"Maybe that’s the way of it," Roby said. "Everybody lost the one person they would look to when something like this happens. When was the last death? Didn’t you lose your aunt a few summers back?"

"Yeah. Iva Dean on my Momma’s side. Had a stroke in her sleep, the doctor said. Was gone before she knew what hit her."

Roby kept working the dishes, getting his momentum, wiping, flipping, stacking. "I remember now. That was some spread."

" What was a spread?"

"The kitchen. Had the sitting over at your cousin Vicky’s house. That was Iva Dean’s only daughter, wasn’t it?"

"Yeah. Iva Dean’s husband died back in the Reagan years."

"Tuna salad. One of you girls brought tuna salad, didn’t you?"

Sarah turned the cold water tap and rinsed the stack of cleaned dishes. "That was Anna Beth. She made it herself, back before she learned how to cook."

"Sweet pickles and mayonnaise and mustard. No onions."

"How do you remember all that?"

Roby looked at the food on the counter, the heaps of it, a feast fit for a king. Probably the most food that had ever graced Jacob Ridgehorn’s kitchen. The refrigerator had enough pork and beans, melons, and corn on the cob to feed a small army.

"Food and death go together," he said. "Because food is life."

"I reckon. I heard that Vicky hid food up in the attic so the preacher wouldn’t eat it all. Somebody said she done it so that those who dropped in to pay their respects would see no food on the table and would run out and bring some more."

"Vicky did hide food in the attic. Some of it spoiled." Roby shook away the memory of Iva Dean’s lean spirit, forlorn among the molded cakes and collapsed souffles. A Beverly Parsons pie was among the food that had gone to waste. How do you apologize to somebody when their death pies don’t get eaten?