Kara Was Here. William Conescu

XXOO.”

      Margot smiled. “You’d fit right in,” she typed.

      The parade of black and grey and navy from the parking lot across the street was starting to pick up. Only a few minutes before the big show. Margot didn’t recognize most of these people. The older ones might have been friends of the family or people who went to their church; the younger ones probably went to high school with Kara. And junior high. And elementary school. Everyone in Greenwood Park knew everyone else. Or was related, Kara used to say. They probably reserved the third weekend of each month for a real good town funeral, something everyone could enjoy.

      Margot hadn’t seen Kara in two months, which seemed kind of silly, considering they only lived an hour apart. But it was a long hour between Brooklyn and Long Island, and everyone was so busy these days. There was work, and—well, they talked more often, of course. Kara had heard all about Mike, all about the horrors of dating a man in the military. “When you meet him . . .” Margot had said so many times. It was hard to believe that would never happen now, that Kara would never meet Mike or their children. The children Margot hoped they’d have, eventually.

      Margot had met Mike two years ago. She’d helped cater his brother’s wedding, and there Mike was, this big hunk of a guy, biceps thick as cantaloupes, face like an oversized cherub, sneaking into the kitchen for an extra helping of potatoes or to check on the groom’s cake. Margot fell for him instantly—women always did, apparently—and for whatever reason, he fell for her too. Then, five months after they met, he was stationed overseas. In Japan, thank God, and not Iraq or Afghanistan, but still. By now, she’d had more email exchanges with the man than live conversations. But they were in the home stretch—just seven more months and he’d be back. “And it does feel real,” she’d told Kara. “Sometimes it’s funny how life works out.”

      Or doesn’t. “Kara girl, what did you go and do?” she mumbled.

      Kara’s stepfather had called with the news. As soon as he’d identified himself, Margot knew why he must’ve been calling. It was just a question of how and where. An overdose. At least she’d died in her sleep.

      Margot excuse-me’d her way back through the front doors and kept her eyes down as she crossed the lobby with its heavy drapes, burgundy carpet, and fake antique chairs. She passed through the wreaths and floral arrangements, passed clusters of mourners saying mournful things or laughing awkwardly. People were starting to take seats in the next room, and in there was the box. It was open. She’d heard people saying it was open.

      When she crossed the threshold, the first thing Margot saw across the room was Kara’s hair. It fell in familiar dark brown waves below her shoulders. Margot took a few steps forward. Kara’s eyes were closed, and in a way she did look like she might be asleep, though her arms weren’t sprawled all over the place. They were folded tight to her body, her hands gripping a strangely inappropriate bouquet of spring flowers in what looked like a fucking doily. Margot dropped her eyes and tried to suppress a laugh. Kara wouldn’t have bothered trying. Daisies and baby’s breath. A little snort of amusement escaped.

      “Cougar Cominsky?”

      Margot turned. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she muttered.

      “It is you,” he said.

      Standing beside her was Brad Mitchell looking not a damned thing like Brad Mitchell. The face was the same, but everything else had turned all country club. The hair was parted to the side, a shiny black instead of blue or green or magenta. The face was clean shaven. He was wearing a black suit, and everything looked crisp and tailored and not stolen from the drama department’s costume shop. He didn’t look like he was carrying a joint anywhere on his person.

      Brad drew her into a tight hug. He even smelled good. Eucalyptus and mint something. “I see you bathed for the occasion,” she said.

      “I did.”

      “Very thoughtful of you.”

      “I’ve been trained.”

      “Well . . . you look good,” she said.

      “So do you.”

      He stood there for a minute, smiling like the goon she remembered, as if he was all dressed up to play a romantic lead, complete with shoulder pads in his suit and mousse in his hair. He could’ve been a politician. For all she knew, he was one. It was crazy how easily you could lose track of people you used to see every day. Margot hadn’t heard anything about Brad in years, not since Kara said he was getting married. Margot checked his hand. Yes, wedding band in place.

      “Wow,” he said at last. “I’m really glad to see you. I mean, I can imagine events I’d prefer.”

      Margot scanned the room. “I can imagine funerals I’d prefer.”

      Brad hadn’t given much consideration to who else might be attending the funeral. If pressed, he might have acknowledged that he’d imagined a roomful of sixty-something-year-old relatives and locals, none of whom really understood Kara. When he walked into the Greenwood Park Funeral Home, he was surprised to see so many dimly familiar faces painted to varying degrees with signs of age: the hair, the figure, the makeup a little different, more sophisticated or at least less unsophisticated. They were mostly people from the UNC theater crowd, surrounded by husbands and wives and others Brad didn’t know or recall.

      For a moment, he thought he recognized the poor girl from Kara’s Philosophy of Ethics class to whom Kara had “confessed” that she and Brad were not only a couple but also half-siblings. So . . . is it, like, half-ethical? Kara had asked. After that, she and Brad somehow ran into the girl at least once a week, walking to class or at the cafeteria or in a coffee shop. Kara would stick her tongue in Brad’s ear or grab his ass for show. He wouldn’t have minded seeing that girl today. He’d have kept up the part, if he could.

      Brad smiled a few greetings, then passed through the lobby to the back room where the casket was. He needed to see Kara before the room filled up. The casket was a lacquered white, which struck Brad as an odd choice, and as he approached, he saw that Kara was dressed in a white long-sleeve shirt with some sort of ruffles happening on the front and a dark skirt with black stockings. They’d put flowers in her hands too, as if she were an aging flower girl for the dead. She was the picture of someone who had once made a marvelous quilt, not someone who had gone for two years without owning a fork. (What can a fork do that a spoon can’t? Honestly?) Brad stopped within a few feet of the casket. This wasn’t the way he’d imagined her, even dead—her lips folded into a nothing sort of expression, a false complacency in her relaxed cheeks and brow. As he stood staring at her, Kara’s tiny nose divided in two. Or maybe he made his eyes do that, as a test.

      He had only been seated for two minutes when he spotted Margot. She walked into the room by herself and was laughing through her nose, amused by some private joke. So typical. She looked all grown up, a little plump, but undeniably herself. They only had time to exchange a few words before the organ started to play, so Brad invited her to sit beside him, and he was glad to have a friend from the past close by.

      A mass of people moved in from the lobby, and Brad checked his watch. It was just a minute before four o’clock. Kara had never done anything on time in her life, but apparently it wasn’t too late for a first. A minute later, the pastor entered the room. Then everyone stood for the family: a few older relatives, followed by Kara’s mother, Lucy Ann, who refused to stop looking like a woman in her forties. Her hair was dyed in the honey brown/blond family, and she kept it short now, in a bob. Beside her was stepdad Randy, who was greyer and stockier, followed by Kara’s ten-year-old half-brothers, the twins, born just as Kara was moving to New York. They were blond with bowl-cut hair, and wore matching navy suits. Then, after a gap, came Kara’s sister, Gwen, wearing small oval glasses, her hair tied behind her in a dark knot. And God, somehow it hadn’t occurred to Brad that the little girl who was seven or eight the last time he saw her would be so much older now. Or that she might resemble Kara.

      Once