The funeral was set for Wednesday. There were preparations to be made, of course. Everyone affected by Tulee's death had some sort of preparation to make. Liz, by common consent, became the one to shepherd the details of the funeral and all its related tasks to their respective ends. Bart prepared to help her through the sad time just as she would have for him if their roles had been reversed. Annbel, over in Hickory, was overcome by the need to prepare although, at any given moment, she seldom had any idea exactly what she was preparing for. Luke, her husband, continued to prepare for his upcoming fishing trip, enthusiastically.

Bob's older son's, Jimmy and Wayne, who both lived up around Roanoke, prepared to come down together with their wives for the day. It was less than a three hour trip, mostly along I-81. None of their kids would be coming along. All of them were pretty much on their own and they hadn't enjoyed a great deal of closeness with their great-grandmother. Anyway, all were involved with their own lives and weren't eager to endure the awkwardness of a solemn ritual they were still little prepared for.

Around Taylorsville, friends and neighbors, each after their own custom, prepared to send Tulee home and to support both the family and each other in the ways they had for generations. Time and again, Liz broke away from her own work to thank those who called, to gratefully acknowledge the invitations for dinner or supper, for assistance in the local tasks that needed to done, for help in dozens of different ways.

Eb and Brig both had things to prepare for but those sorry activities would be undertaken later. Right now, they both prepared to be as far away from the deceased and from anything to do with her as possible.

And then there was Denise.

*******

"Jerry? Jer! For God's sake, where are you?"

Denise came around the end of the garage where Jerry had just finished hooking up the Stingray to the Toyota. Twenty three feet of brand new, six day old 230SX sat on the tandem wheel trailer ready for the three hour trip up to Lake Winnipesaukee. Not the biggest boat on the lake but, hey, at twenty two hundred bucks a foot this baby was a pretty nice little toy to show up with. Jerry had been too deep in self congratulations to have heard Denise as she had irritatedly yelled for him during the last couple of minutes.

"Can't you ever pull your head out long enough to hear me when I'm yelling at you? God, Jerry, I don't know why I put up with you!"

"Oh can it, Denise. You 'put up with me' because you want to. You know it and I know it. What's the huge deal now?"

Jerry stopped his preparations and listened as Denise told him about the phone call she'd just gotten from Bob's sister in Tennessee. Quickly she recounted the bare facts of Tulee's death as Liz had explained them and said the relatives there were planning to bury her Wednesday. When she finished, Jerry resumed his check of the gleaming red toy sitting on the trailer behind the nearly new fifty thousand dollar Crewmax Limited rig he'd bought just for this baby. He paused only long enough to ask the obvious.

"So?"

"So she's dead and the funeral's Wednesday. My god, Jerry, this is the kids grandmother. You know they ought to be there."