The car stopped abruptly and Rosie jerked forward, the seatbelt knocking the wind out of her. “Dad!” Rosie felt the welt that was developing where the seatbelt caught her shoulder.
“Sorry!” Her dad pointed to the dark figure that had just run in front of the car and darted into the thick bushes. “He came out of nowhere!”
Rosie glanced at where the boy had vanished. His dark jersey with the white 44 was still playing across the back of her eyelids. A heavy fog rolled off the graveyard and seemed to surround the car.
Her dad let out a sigh as he drove through the drizzle past a long line of cars parked on the side of the road. To Rosie’s right, a few mourners in black wandered through the graveyard. Her dad pulled the car slowly ahead until they stopped in front of the ancient limestone church. Its Gothic wood doors opened, revealing six pallbearers carrying a shiny brown casket out of the church. They slowly started making their way across the graveyard lawn.
“Strange,” her dad said. “I guess you don’t need a hearse to get the casket to the graveyard if the burial is right next to the church.”
Rosie peered more closely at the pallbearers: six boys about her age, three on either side of the casket. A shiver went through her. Man, she hated funerals. It had been three years since Jessica died, but sometimes it still felt like it was just yesterday. Rosie went from being a big sister to an only child. And then everything else fell apart.
Even though the doctors said there was nothing she could have done, she still felt like it was partially her fault. She had been home with Jessica; she was the one who’d been there the night her sister died. Why hadn’t she checked on her sister just one more time? If Rosie had, maybe she would have seen her sister choking.
Rosie shivered and shut the vents on the dashboard. It was September, but the day was chilly. Many of the trees had already lost their leaves and were nothing more than dark skeletons.
The group following the casket walked solemnly in their dark clothes toward the open grave. The hair on the back of Rosie’s neck rose. A creeping chill made her shudder.
“You all right, Rosie?” her dad asked.
She nodded. “Let’s just get to your house so I can unpack.” Starting over in Middleton meant that she needed to stop dwelling on the past, Rosie reminded herself. She took one last look back at the funeral and just caught the street sign as they passed: Zumbay Road.
Rosie didn’t want to look at the sad sight of the mourners anymore so she flipped down the visor to check her face. She smoothed her hair. Man, her light roots were growing in fast, and the dishwater blond didn’t look good with the rest of her bright red hair. But she hadn’t had time to do anything but pack and say quick good-byes to her friends since her mom had announced her three-month transfer to Germany. Rosie basically had no choice but to move in with her dad, in Middleton. A town far enough away from everything and everyone to keep her isolated from her friends. But at least here the locals spoke English. She flipped the visor back up.
“I wonder who died,” Rosie said as they turned down the next road. An unsettled feeling rose from the pit of her stomach.