At my husband’s funeral, my best friend cried harder than I did. Back then, I thought it was simply the compassion of someone who had been my friend for forty years. Until six weeks after the funeral, when a taped shoebox in his closet made me understand who those tears had really been for…

She did not like anyone fussing over her when she was upset. She did not like being seen before she had decided what face she was wearing. Those were Gloria’s rules, and for most of our friendship I had treated them the way you treat the weather in Atlanta—something you plan around, not something you argue with.

But I watched her. Between greeting people and accepting hugs from Raymond’s colleagues, between nodding at things people said that I was not fully hearing, I watched her from the corner of my eye. I watched the way her shoulders shook, not dramatically, not the way some people cry when they want the whole church to know grief has entered the room, but in a small, contained way that made it worse.

She kept pressing one palm flat against her chest, as if she was trying to hold something in place. Her eyes never went directly to the casket. They landed slightly to the left of it, again and again, like looking straight at Raymond was more than she could do.