The Theory of Crows by David A. Robertson

Author:David A. Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2022-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

14

When you walked inside the building, there was a waiting room immediately to the left; there was an actual fireplace lit and crackling; there was a pot of coffee, a kettle, a container with an assortment of tea, cups, a box of sugar cubes, and one of those miniature cartons of milk, all on a stand; there was a painting of a cabin in the middle of a forest with a path leading to it strewn with autumn leaves; and there was a rotating magazine stand, the kind she’d seen in drugstores that were typically filled with comic books. This one was filled with brochures that touted all the additional services that were available. The different styles of urns you could get. The models of caskets that were available to choose from (“With a refined style, premium fabric linings, impeccable finish, graceful curves, and unmatched durability, the MW21 Strafford Classic is a necessity for your dearly departed”). What sort of cremation container your loved one could get burned to dust in. The cost of a funeral if you planned on having it there in the attached church. The room may as well have been a car dealership. Cruise control? Power windows and locks? Remote starter? Directly ahead of them was a staircase to a second floor that was cloaked in darkness and, as a result, creepy as hell. To the right of the staircase was a small, sterile room that Holly could just barely see into from where she was standing. To their right was a narrow hallway that led to two enormous, rustic doors, which opened to the church. The hallway had a fancy red runner with gold trim. Holly hit her father’s arm and pointed it out to him.

“That looks like something you’d see at a movie premiere,” she said. “Where does the paparazzi stand?”

“The paparazzi are kind of the ones sitting in the pews, aren’t they?” her father said.

Holly thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

The funeral director fetched them, and they followed her to the meeting room with all the coffee and hot water and brochures. She offered them something to drink. Holly took a coffee with an abundance of sugar, and her father opted for a peppermint tea because, he noted, his stomach had been bothering him.

“Grief does a lot of things to the body,” the funeral director said.

“Or he could just be gluten intolerant or have IBS or something,” Holly said as they were seated.

She focused on one brochure in particular, about the casket models. SA23 was the model on the front of it. She was surprised to see that coffins were named like luxury automobiles, like you were choosing between a Lexus or a Mercedes-Benz. She wondered what sort of urn her moshom would be getting. She’d overheard her parents talking to her kōkom about it the other day, that her moshom was to be cremated. She heard them talking about urns after that. Her father didn’t care. Her mother thought it might be nice to get one of those urns that grew a tree.

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