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Was it the closure Rhiannon had talked about?

Or was it knowing that he couldn’t do much more damage?

Regardless, grief returned as the pallbearers gripped the bars of her casket. It vibrated in the center of my chest, condensed in the back of my throat, and escaped through glistening trails of salty water. They carried her body through the funeral home, out the front doors, down the short stone staircase that led to the hearse.

Sebastian and I stayed at the back of the crowd. Blinking at the tears, I pressed my lips together to retain my composure.

As a man opened the rear door to the hearse, a set of silent fluttering wings rode the gentle breeze. Brown inside, framed by black with blue dots, with the outermost edge trimmed in pale yellow. The colors popped against the pink casket when it landed there.

A butterfly landed on her casket in the coldest month of the year.

That fire in my eyes returned. My chest collapsed inward, desperate to expel a shriek of some emotion I didn’t have words for.

I didn’t believe in ghosts, or angels, or life after death. I didn’t not believe in them either. I just didn’t know for sure what came next, and I couldn’t stretch my mind far enough to believe that life continued after our hearts stopped beating.

But she had worn a butterfly bracelet the day she died. It had confirmed, at least for me, that she had not caused her own death.

Maybe she had heard me in there. Maybe that butterfly was the new form she’d taken. Maybe this was her way of thanking me.

Or maybe it meant something else to Allie, an old story she’d never gotten around to telling me.

Charlotte, only a few strides behind the casket, heaved in a gasp. She pressed a hand over her mouth to subdue the sob, but it still slithered out. She shoved past her husband to the casket. The butterfly stayed on top, wings coasting slowly up and down.

“My baby,” Charlotte said. That’s what it sounded like from the distance, at least. It was hard to tell through the sobs. She pressed both hands to the casket, the strong posture she’d maintained the last two days shattering. Her shoulders caved with each weep. Knees wobbling, she dropped her head to the shiny pink lid. “My baby.”

A shaking breath parted my lips.

Sebastian’s hand tightened around mine. The most consolation he could give in a moment like this.

Charlotte’s husband, Allie’s father, pressed a hand to her shoulder. He whispered something.

She swatted him away, sobs still quaking her entire body. Mascara ran down her cheeks. Those filled lips trembled so rapidly, it wouldn’t have shocked me if they burst. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”

All the while, the butterfly faced her, its wings flapping slowly up and down, up and down.

The crowd looked back and forth between Charlotte and each other. Unsure what to say, unsure what to do.

When it went on too long, long enough that the pallbearers’ arms began to quiver, Ava stepped forward. She laid a hand on her mother’s back. Rather than whisper in her ear as her father had, she lowered her head to the casket lid. Cheek pressed against it, she coasted that hand up and down her mother’s back, up and down, parroting the rhythm of the butterfly’s wings.

Opening her pinched eyes, Charlotte’s found Ava’s. Charlotte kept sobbing, and Ava let her tears fall. Her free hand slid toward her mother’s. She wrapped it around tightly. Just as Charlotte’s sobs ceased at her daughter’s touch, the butterfly fluttered vertical.

Only for a second.

It landed on Ava’s knuckles.

Charlotte’s sobs returned. Her wobbling knees gave way. They slammed the concrete with a thump.

Ava went down with her.

The butterfly resumed flight.

Henry rushed behind the girls.

But they only held each other. Skirts in disarray, makeup staining their cheeks, the mother and daughter coiled around one another in crumpled balls on the ground.

“Let’s go,” I whispered to Sebastian, surveying the shoulder-to-shoulder throng gathered on the stairs. “There’s a door in the back.”

We stopped at a convenience store when we left. Sebastian picked out some cat food, I grabbed a box and litter, and we mutually picked out a cozy kitty bed. I started to pay with my card. Sebastian inserted some cash into the self-checkout machine before I could, giving me a look as he did. A reminder that we wanted to leave as little trace here as possible.