The Second Sister by Marie Bostwick

surprised by the number of people who came to Alice’s funeral; Father Damon had prepared me for that. But he forgot to mention the dogs.
    Alice’s part-time job at the pet rescue involved cleaning cages, walking dogs, feeding cats, administering routine medications, that kind of thing. I didn’t realize she had also become a sort of unofficial adoption coordinator, going to great lengths to find homes for recently rescued or abandoned animals, a sort of human-animal yenta. Judging by the scores of her clients, both two- and four-footed, who came to pay tribute to her matchmaking skills, she must have been a good one.
    People brought cages with cats, birds, even a rabbit. The dogs were on leashes, every breed and size, from a shivering Chihuahua that peeked nervously out of Amanda Lane’s shoulder bag, to a lumbering Newfoundland named Bruce, who sat on his haunches in a seat instead of lying on the floor and took up half a pew.
    I was nervous about the presence of so many four-footed mourners, but they all behaved; no fighting, barking, or peeing. In fact, until the end of the proceedings, there wasn’t a peep out of any of the animals, except for the snoring of an elderly, jowly bulldog who fell asleep almost as soon as things began and that of his elderly, jowly owner, Mr. Coates, who ran the little upholstery shop that was housed in the basement of the hardware store.
    When the organ prelude began I went into the church and sat in the front row, on the right-hand side. Barney sat with me, blowing his nose through the whole thing. There was no one else in the family pew. We are all that’s left now.
    Three women came in soon after and walked to the front, sitting in the first pew on the left.
    The first was tall, probably five foot ten, looked to be in her late forties, and had sandy-colored hair cut in a short, layered bob that stuck out at odd angles. It was hard to tell if the style was intentionally edgy or if she had just neglected to comb it that morning.
    The next woman was thin, almost wiry looking, about my height, five foot six, probably in her early to middle fifties, and had a determined set to her jaw, as though daring anyone to try to make her cry. She had dark brown eyes, close-cropped black hair, and coffee-colored skin, which, frankly, surprised me. When I was in high school, our class didn’t have a single African American student. Time marches on, I guess, even in Nilson’s Bay.
    The last member of the trio, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, was a petite little thing, barely topping the five-foot mark, with bright blue eyes and a unicorn tattoo on her forearm. In contrast to the somber suits worn by her companions, the young one wore a dress of hot pink with a turquoise belt and turquoise cowboy boots. Clearly, she was one of those people who preferred to approach funerals as celebrations of life, but she was sobbing uncontrollably.
    This was the FOA: Friends of Alice—I was sure of it. And if I’d had any doubts, they were banished when I saw how many of the mourners gave them pitying glances as they passed through the aisle, reaching out to pat their hands and mouth words of condolence, a consideration no one had offered me when I had passed by.
    Father Damon reminded me that people in Nilson’s Bay can take a long while to accept strangers. Apparently, the policy also applied to people who had been gone so long they had become strangers.
    Perhaps I deserved it.
    I folded my hands in my lap and looked at the blush-pink spray of roses, thinking how much Alice would have loved them. I sent her pink roses every year for her birthday, and she always called to gush over them, as if she were surprised by their arrival. She may have been—Alice lived in the moment. I always felt very pleased with myself after those calls. Much as she loved flowers, what she’d have loved more was for me to deliver them in person. I didn’t. And now I