Page 9 of What Remains of Grace

“I am,” Jenna said, because anything else would’ve been a lie.

Before Marilyn could answer, movement caught Jenna’s eye: a girl sitting at the end of a pew, head bowed, dark hair pulled into a messy bun. For a moment, Jenna didn’t recognize her from this angle. Then the girl looked up, and her breath caught.

Emmie.

Emmie Cruz looked so much like Grace it hurt, though every now and then Jenna would catch something of her father in her too. The same steady eyes. The same quiet way of holding space, as though silence could say what words couldn’t.

Manny Cruz, Emmie’s father, had already sat in a box in this room.

Cancer had taken him fast. Too fast. There hadn’t even been time to find the right doctor, to pin down a treatment plan, to hope. One week, they were charting test results, the next week, Grace was calling Jenna, voice shaking but controlled enough to say the words no one should have to: He’s gone. She’d found him unresponsive that morning, sunlight cutting through the blinds in cruel stripes.

At his funeral, Emmie had been two, too young to understand, and too young to sit still. Grace had held her on her hip through the entire service, rocking gently even when the hymns ended. Manny’s parents sat beside her, their grief settling deeply, the kind that fills a room without sound. Jenna remembered sitting in the second row, watching her sister’s composure and wondering how someone so young could already know how to survive this much loss.

There had been lilies then, too. Rows of them. Grace’s choice. She’d said they were Grandma Hart’s favorite, and they had been, so it felt right. Two funerals that year, her grandmother and her husband, both marked by the same scent. Maybe that was Grace’s way of keeping something familiar when everything else was falling apart.

A pew creaked somewhere behind her, pulling Jenna back into the present.

Emmie was still sitting at the end of the row.

“Hey, Em,” Jenna said delicately, stepping forward.

The girl blinked, almost like she’d been yanked out of a dream. “Oh,” she said after a beat. “Yeah. Hey.”

No hug. No smile. Just a recognition, delayed, polite, and distant.

Jenna nodded, uncertain if Emmie was being cold or just lost in the fog of grief. She remembered that same fog from Brooks’s funeral, how sound and color had gone flat. Maybe it was that. Or maybe not.

Aunt Marilyn touched her arm. “We’re still waiting on the director to bring out some paperwork,” she whispered. “We’ve got a few things to figure out before the service.”

At that, Emmie’s gaze darted to Jenna so suddenly that it almost startled her. “I want white roses,” she said. “They were her favorites.”

Jenna nodded, but Emmie wasn’t finished, “And for the music, ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ Not the regular boring one, but the acoustic version from the Philippines or whatever. Those Eat, Pray, Love guys. Can you find it?”

“I’ll find it,” Jenna reassured.

At that, Emmie’s shoulders eased, and she slipped back into the numb fog she’d been floating in when Jenna arrived.

Jenna followed Aunt Marilyn into a small side room, the one reserved for making arrangements, which really just meant decisions no one wanted to make.

The small arrangement room was quieter than the chapel, the air cool and close.

Her parents were already there. Her mother rose first. Lillian Hart crossed the room quickly, despite the stiffness in her joints, and gathered Jenna into her arms with a small broken sound that undid something immediately inside her. Her father followed more slowly, but when he embraced her, his grip trembled.

No one spoke for several moments. They simply held one another.

Jenna thought she had prepared for everything, but she had not been prepared at all to see the age of her parents here.

Her parents had always seemed immovable to her, fixed points around which the rest of life shifted. But now her father’s shoulders stooped where they never once had before, and her mother’s hair, once only touched lightly with gray, had gone nearly white at the temples.

They looked tired. Older than they had any right to look. And with sudden, brutal clarity, Jenna realized she had not truly seen them in years, not beyond rushed holidays and brief visits squeezed between obligations.

Ten years. Ten years of phone calls instead of presence. Ten years during which grief had continued shaping this family without her there to witness it.

Her mother touched her face gently, as though to reassure herself that Jenna was truly standing before her.

The funeral director, a thin man with kind eyes, laid out the paperwork, casket, flowers, and services, all with numbers written neatly in black ink. Every line item felt like another weight pressing on her chest.

Aunt Marilyn hesitated halfway through a question about payment. “Grace didn’t . . . she didn’t have anything set aside for this, right?”