Every weekday morning, around eleven o’clock, Sam O joined Maud in the kitchen to drink coffee, discuss business, and gossip. Nowadays, the child was usually present at these meetings, listening intently, as if he were consciously building his vocabulary.

As the kitchen did not face south like the sunroom, it was not filled with the same kind of overpowering light. Still, there was a warm feeling to it, pine being the predominant material used in the chairs, tables, and cupboards in the room. Maud, herself, lightened the atmosphere now that she was no longer in full mourning. She had changed her entire wardrobe to mauves, and light mauves at that, moving as close as she could to the edge of half-mourning while still maintaining her respectability. Today, she looked almost pretty, dressed in a lavender calico cotton print with a bit of white lace at the throat and the sleeves. The brooch containing Charles’ hair looked decorative rather than sombre when pinned on this costume.

Sam was concerned about Jesus Christ, his favourite of the two horses.

“She just doesn’t seem to have much pep,” he said to Maud. “Nothing like the way she used to be. I remember two or three years back you’d dress her up for a funeral and she’d just know she was going on parade.”

“Parade, par-ade,” the child echoed.

“She’d hold her head up like a queen, shake her feathers. Now she’s just listless, like she just doesn’t care any more. I think she is depressed about something.”

“Something,” the child announced.

“Remember,” said Maud, “she’s not as young as she used to be. She’s been here a long, long time. Maybe we should be looking for a new horse.”

“God Almighty would go into conniptions if we replaced her,” said Sam, alarmed. “I don’t think he could work with anyone else.”

“Conniptions,” the child repeated, and then, because it was such a strange, new word, he repeated it again.

“Used to be,” Sam continued, “you’d put her in a military funeral and she’d just fire right up. She likes music, you know, especially marching bands. She likes those drums and she was never frightened of the salute like some horses might be. God Almighty, now, he would sometimes get a little nervous, but never Jesus. She’d just stand there at attention, like the soldiers.”

“Gun!” exclaimed the child, and Maud smiled at him, pleased that he had made the connection.

“How was it?” she asked Sam, referring to the funeral a few days earlier of the last 1812 veteran in the neighbourhood.

“Just fine,” said Sam. “That historian went on and on with his address, but apart from that it was just fine. Except for Jesus being listless.”

“Listless,” said the child, and this time his little face mirrored Sam’s worried expression.

Sam and Maud drank their coffee silently for a while, mindful of the child’s seeming ability to totally digest their conversations. The child got down from his stool and walked over to the sink where he discovered an empty cup. Soon, he was back at the table, pretending to drink coffee along with the adults.

“That was the strangest thing,” Sam eventually said.

“You mean the horse?” asked Maud.

“No, no, that other funeral.”

“Oh… the stunt man’s.”

“No, remember last week when Peter and I took the casket to Chippewa?”

Maud nodded. The child nodded.

“Well, we get there, and here is this young girl, lying in bed, dead as a doornail from TB.” Sam stood up, walked over to the stove, poured himself a second cup of coffee, and returned to the table. “There she was,” he continued, “and pretty too. You know how some of them aren’t if they’ve been sick too long, even if they were to begin with.”

Maud crossed her arms and nodded again.

“Well, this one has a wedding dress laid out over her, on top of the blankets, with the veil on her head, partly covering her face.”

“What… why?” asked Maud.

“Seems she was engaged to the grocer’s son when she took sick and her dress and all was all made up and then when they knew for certain she was going to die, her mother decides she’d better get married first.” Sam looked thoughtfully down into his coffee cup.

Maud waited for him to continue.

“So they called in the parson and, because by then the girl was too weak to put on the gown, they just laid it on top of her on the bed and put the veil on her and married her up.”

“Oh no…” said Maud.

“And then she just immediately died. Just like that, right under her wedding dress.”

Maud shook her head. “Oh no…” said the child.

“It is strange to be dying and getting married at exactly the same time,” said Sam. “The mother even decides that she has to wear the wedding dress in the casket. And now, because she’s dead and not just weak, she can put her right inside it.”

“Married,” said the child. “Dying.”

“So then, when Peter and I go back there three days later for the funeral, to take her to church, you know, the mother’s got all these pretty dresses… all different colours, all laid out like, all over the furniture in the parlour. Seems they belonged to the bride. And what does the mother do but start rolling them up and stuffing as many as she can into the coffin with the girl. ‘She’ll need her trousseau,’ she kept on saying, ‘She’ll need her trousseau.’”

“Trou-sseau,” said the child.

Sam was silent for several moments. Then he spoke. “Not much upsets me, but that bride did. And maybe that’s what upset Jesus Christ too. Her pulling that bride with all her clothes packed around her, down to the church and then over to the graveyard. Horses have feelings, you know. Maybe that bride upset her.”

“Bride,” the child whispered to himself, liking the sound of the word. “Bride, bride.”

Maud carried Sam’s story around with her for the rest of the day, thinking about costumes. Lord, she thought, they are always dressing you up as something and then you are not yourself anymore. This young girl, the frozen, immobilized bride, coerced into it and then dead and unable to ever grow beyond it. No one now would even remember her name. Anecdotally, she would always be the bride, the one who was married and buried in the same breath.

Just as Maud in her costume of violet cotton would still be “the widow,” were she to stop now.

Bride, wife, widow. She would not stop now.