The grandfather clock in the corner of my mother’s living room struck a quarter to midnight, its rhythmic bronze pendulum slicing through the suffocating scent of funeral lilies and damp wool.
Outside, a late autumn rain swept down from the Blue Ridge Mountains, lashing against the leaded glass windows of the old Asheville home.
Inside, thirty family members and neighbors sat in subdued clusters, speaking in hushed murmurs over lukewarm porcelain cups of black coffee.
In the center of the parlor, resting on brass biers surrounded by banks of white chrysanthemums, lay the open mahogany casket holding my thirty-four-year-old sister, Rachel.
