A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd

finely carved, a smile just touching the parted lips and reflected in the eyes. I knew, having seen the portrait, that this was where Juliana was buried.
    It was moving to see how lovingly she had been remembered. As if to keep her with the living, even if only in cold stone.
    I was walking with Mrs. Ellis, and she bent to brush a leaf from her daughter’s marble skirt. “My husband designed the monument,” she said to me. “He couldn’t bear the idea of a stone like all the rest. Not for Juliana. And I keep flowers here most of the year. Pansies in the spring, asters in the autumn.” She paused for a moment by her daughter’s memorial, and then moved on to a newer grave, still raw and ugly. “We wanted to bury her at Vixen Hill, but the rector at the time—Mr. Pembrey—persuaded us that here would be best. But it seems so far away. So lonely. As if we’ve abandoned her here and gone on with our lives. Never mind, I’m just fanciful today.”
    Alan Ellis’s stone was plain, with his name, rank, and the dates of his birth and death. But there was a relief chiseled into the curved top of a ship in full sail.
    Eleanor touched it gently. “It was what he asked for,” she said to Gran. “And it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
    The elder Mrs. Ellis said, “Yes. Alan always had an eye for such things.”
    There were a number of other people present. Among others, I saw Dr. Tilton and was introduced to his wife, Mary, and then to the rector, Mr. Smyth and his sister, Janet. When we had all gathered and settled ourselves on the benches set beside the grave, Mr. Smyth conducted a very moving service, recalling Alan Ellis as he’d known him as a boy, the connection between him and the sea, and how courageously he’d faced the knowledge that he was dying.
    “His faith was strong. He had made peace with God before he was rescued from the cold and turbulent sea, and he never lost that deep feeling that he was in the hands of his Lord.”
    He went on to speak to the family individually, to the widow first, and next to the two Mrs. Ellises, mother and grandmother, then moved on to the surviving brother and sister.
    Mr. Smyth was a short, balding man, his tortoiseshell glasses catching the last of the daylight as clouds spread across the weak winter sun. His eloquence surprised me until I learned later that Eleanor had written much of it. She sat there, her face hidden by her heavy black veil, one hand holding tightly to her brother’s, listening to the words and the prayers, seeming not to feel the cold.
    I realized it was her farewell to her husband. That the stone on his grave was a final duty that she had taken on herself.
    This was not a usual service. I couldn’t recall ever having attended another dedication of a memorial stone by gathering of family and friends. But it was impressive, and I could see that to the family it was offering much needed solace.
    Looking around at the faces in the half circle, I could see that Gran, shielded by the silk veil, was staring into space, her mind on the words but her eyes on what must have been her own husband’s marker. Mrs. Ellis, from behind her own veil, was lost in thought, perhaps remembering the little boy who had become a man. Margaret was weeping quietly.
    The men had no such defense from the public gaze. Roger, standing closest to the stone, put his hand out to it, then quickly withdrew it, as if reluctant to touch it. George Hughes kept his eyes on Roger’s face, and I was surprised to see speculation in his gaze. Henry, his arm around his wife’s shoulders, looked down at the stone as if envisioning his own. The tic at the corner of his left eye had grown worse.
    And then the service ended with a benediction, and we began the slow progress back to the motorcars waiting for us at the side of the churchyard.
    I saw George Hughes pause briefly as he passed and put his hand on the cold marble head of Juliana’s memorial. It was a lingering caress, as one might touch