Before Caryn's passing, the only funeral Louise had attended - not counting the funeral she held for her goldfish - was for her grandma's older brother, her Grunkle Dimitri. Louise may not have remembered Dimitri's funeral too well - she was only six at the time - but she remembers it being… grey. Then again, that may have just been cultural bleed from seeing funerals in movies and TV shows, where it's always raining.

Louise thought about this as she and the rest of grandma's family were led into the cemetery. Grandma had made it clear she didn't want her funeral to happen in a stuffy chapel or synagogue, she wanted everyone to be outside, and so they were. Today certainly wasn't grey - quite the opposite. The trees were in full bloom, a whole rainbow of flowers was scattered about the grass, the noon sun was shining from a clear sky; 'funeral weather', it was not.

She'd have almost wished for funeral weather. Since she forgot to bring something to wear, she found herself wearing an ill-fitting men's suit that her dad found tucked away in his closet. It kept sagging at the hips and the shoulders, forcing her to stop every few steps and adjust it, and it felt like a walking sauna. The bees buzzing around the cemetery certainly weren't helping. If it weren't for the occasion, she'd be tempted to flail her oversized sleeves around like a madwoman trying to swat them away. As if she didn't already look like a total fool, the way she keeps stumbling over her words.

It was appropriate that she felt small in this suit, because as they approached the graveside, she saw all the graves around her. Of Dimitri, and grandpa's parents, and his three brothers who all died fighting in World War Two, and probably several cousins she's never heard of.

Then she looked at the living gathered around. Her father, wearing a much better suit with a bowtie, as he often does (probably thought it made him look like a suave English secret agent). A few steps away stood a sleep-deprived, pot-bellied man with fogged-up glasses and an even messier suit than her, his hands jammed into his pockets - he looked a lot like dad, so Louise assumed it was Uncle Stanford. He's clearly been up to… something, alright. On the other side of dad was grandpa, hobbling on his cane, his gaze as undecipherable as usual.

Grauntie Shprintze was there, too - it was impossible to ignore her, she was always the biggest presence wherever she went, with her big figure, big hair, big dress - and right now she was loudly wailing and sobbing her heart out. She was clinging to one of her sons, Tiber Romanoff (which made him Lou's… cousin? She wasn't sure), a man with prominent sideburns who'd shown up to the funeral in a tracksuit. So Louise is dressed better than someone, at least.

The coffin behind them was being carried by four young men she didn't recognize, all of them wearing tracksuits similar to Tiber. They obviously weren't relatives. Lou remembered hearing that he ran a martial arts dojo - the kind where you have to pay up front, and you're 'guaranteed' a black belt in less than a year - so they were probably 'students' of his.

Then there was her. By herself. The child. Surrounded by graves and old people and empty legacy, a mountain of history, stepping into a suit she hasn't grown into and probably never will.

She felt that old prickly, stinging feeling that she'd been pushing down and stomping on these past few days. Right up to now, even as she walked into the cemetery, she'd ignored it, instead thinking about bees or some other irrelevant thing. What is up with her? Can she not just think about what's right in front of her?

Her grandma is dead. Her grandma who looked after her when she was a baby, when dad could have been shot in a Vietnamese jungle and her mom - her biological mom - was nowhere to be found.

Her grandma who patiently put up with her crap when step-mom was trying to beauty her up and make her join acting schools, and then gave up and forgot she existed when it became clear Louise wasn't interested.

Her grandma, who let dad move back in with her so he wouldn't be homeless, after he sold the house in LA so Lou could go to college.

She gave so much of herself, and what's Louise ever done to repay her?

What's she ever done to repay anyone?

Now she stood by the graveside. For the first time since she heard the news, she let tears roll freely down her face. If there was ever a good time, this was it.

Of course, dad had to notice, shooting a glance her way.

"...Pollen," she muttered.

He didn't question it, simply nodded. It was clear he'd recently been crying, too. His face had that sheen.

Once the coffin was in place, ready to be lowered into the ground, she heard her father swallow hard as he took a crumpled bit of paper out of his jacket and pocket and gave it a brief scan. He wheeled his way over to the side of the gravestone, drawing Louise's attention to it. It was another thing she'd been purposely trying to ignore.

Caryn Romanoff Pines

(b. Karina Romanova)

1919-1994

'Look out, dead bozos, there's a new free spirit in town!'

"Three weeks ago…" dad started saying to everyone assembled, "after ma got out of the hospital, we had a talk about what she wanted to do for her funeral, 'cause she figured even if she quit smokin' she didn't have a lotta time left. She wanted to set up some big prank where her coffin bursts open an' some… horror movie prop comes out an' screams like a banshee or somethin'. Strike the fear o' God into all o' yers. God, or whatever 'almighty bein' is out there, even if it's some space-demon. She weren't too picky. In the end we didn't go with it, 'cause it woulda required the services'a Hollywood special effects artists, an' nobody's got the money fer that. Heh…" he chuckled harshly, "story of 'er life."

Louise sniffled, glancing over at Uncle Stan. He kept fidgeting uneasily, but the mention of money seemed to make him inch away from everyone.

"I ain't gonna pretend ma was some kinda angel," dad continued, "'cause she'd never forgive me if I did. Spent her life lyin' to a whole town, makin' broad statements an' tellin' folks what they wanted to hear to light up some dyin' feelin' in their tiny Jersey hearts fer way too much money - can ya believe it used to be ninety-nine cents an hour?"

He paused, trying to grin, just in case someone laughed at that remark. When it became clear no-one was, the grin fell.

"...Anyway. Some folks would probably call her a crook, an exploiter, an' say that the world's better off without people like 'er. On some level, she was aware'a that - she weren't stupid, or a hypocrite. She wouldn't want me to keep lyin' on her behalf. 'Cause the thing is, she wanted somethin' better fer me, an' fer my brother, an' fer the rest'a us, so we wouldn't have'ta lie. She came here from… I think Ukraine? Wherever it was. She an' Uncle Dimitri an' Aunt Shprintze over there, only a button an' two rubles to their name, barely knew how to speak English, in a time an' place Slavic Jewish immigrants weren't exactly welcomed. She didn't have'a lotta options. But 'cause'a her, we do now. Me, my brother, my cousin, my daughter here…"

Louise felt herself tense up as everyone's gaze was drawn to her. She nodded, if only to acknowledge the point. She noticed grandpa's face twist into a… look. Not a good one. Even from this distance, she could tell; she could track the wrinkles.

"...An' she made it clear it weren't nothin' to do with this whole 'American Dream' bull, neither. She'da done it no matter where she was. Never believed in fate - was part'a the job to say she did, but that was the biggest lie of 'em all. Fate was fer the dumb an' the ignorant. Y'only get ahead by stickin' a finger up at fate. But I think, on some deeper level, that was also a lie - on that level, she thought we were destined to be born, an' we may not'a been destined fer 'great things' - 'cause how d'ya define that? - but we were destined to be free spirits, free to do what we wanna do, an' go where we wanna go, even if it killed us doin' so. 'Course, if y'asked her, the only truly free spirits are the dead ones - it's just common sense. ...So…"

Dad lowered his speech, his brow furrowing in thought. "...Huh. Guess sayin' we oughta be 'free spirits' don't mean what it used to, now that I think about it. ...Gah, yanno what, forget the whole 'free spirit' thing, ya get the idea," he finally said, screwing up his bit of paper and tossing it away.

"I gotta be honest, I wrote all'a that last night an' I didn't even get someone to look it over first. Ma's probably laughin' in her coffin right now at my dumb ass," he said, sounding much more content than the words may imply. "Let's just cut it short. Ma told me that if she outlived me, her speech woulda been 'good kid, shoulda gone to the doctor'. So: ma. Yer a good ma. Ya shoulda gone to the doctor. ...Well, ya did, but ya shoulda gone to a better one. But then ya'd hafta spend more- yanno what, shoulda gone to Canada. Weather's more like Ukraine up there anyway. Welp. Now yer in the great Canada in the sky. Quote that outta context."

Louise wanted to chuckle at that - she did, internally, where no-one could hear. On the outside, she just remained silent. She even held in her sniffles. Dad finally wheeled away from the grave and over to her, offering her a tissue. She hesitated to take it, once again seeing Grauntie Shprintze making her tears look like a dripping tap, but it seemed Tiber had come prepared.

"...Thanks," Louise finally muttered, accepting dad's tissue. Felt like ice as she dabbed it against her face, even in this heat.

The rabbi who'd been supervising the whole funeral stepped forward, and led them through the mourner's kaddish as the coffin was lowered . Not being particularly observant - the most Louise ever remembered to do was not eat pork or cheeseburgers - she didn't know a lick of what any of the Hebrew he was speaking actually meant, she just knew to say 'amen' at the designated times along with everyone else. Even if she had known what he was saying, by now it was too late to distract her from her hot face - hot from heat and hot from steaming tears.

After the coffin had been lowered and Tiber's hired help aided in burying her, everyone just stood there in silence for nearly ten minutes, taking in the finality of the whole thing. Even Shprintze finally went quiet. No thoughts ran through Louise's mind now. She was empty. A shell. She felt like the slightest breeze could make her shatter like porcelain.

It was almost comforting, in a strange way. To not need to distract herself for once. To just… not think. To just exist. Surrounded by people just like her, also just existing.

She stood there some more.

There was definitely a feeling in there after a while. A spark of something.

She ignored it.

Once the ten minutes was up, everyone assembled slowly trudged their way out of the cemetery. For some reason, Louise felt like picking up the pace. The bees were still buzzing around. Yeah. That was probably why.

Her father couldn't keep up with her. He said something, but it didn't register.

The cemetery wasn't a fancy affair - even the gravitas of a funeral couldn't cover up that it was a square of green surrounded by Jersey suburbia, with a short chain-link fence. Hell, just over the road from where Louise was standing, there was some greasy fast-food restaurant. Apparently, dad had wanted to have grandma buried in the fancy cemetery a way up the road from here - it actually had brick walls and a treeline to disguise the urban surroundings - but Caryn had insisted on being buried next to her brother.

Everyone has so many siblings, seems like. Brothers, sisters, cousins. All Louise had was Caryn and her letters.

She wished she'd had a sibling.

Just then, she felt smoke enter her nostrils. Alpaca smoke. It was only a wisp, but after that much sensory deprivation, it felt like burning the inside of her head.

With almost robotic speed, she found herself snatching the cigarette responsible from the hand of a man standing next to her and tossed it into the road.

"Woah, what the hell?!"

"Don't! Even!..." Louise snapped at the man.

She regretted it less than a second later. It was her uncle.

"Oh. ...Uncle Stan. Sorry," she said, uneasily coughing.

"Nah, I get it," Stanford replied. "It's the, um… psychological… association. Between the… cause of death, and the… well, you know."

Louise got a better look at the uncle she hadn't seen since she was a kid. He looked even worse up close. She knew he was younger than her dad by eight years, but he looked almost as old as him, if not older. The bags under his eyes were almost like tumours, and his matted-together hair was already starting to go grey. His voice sounded even scratchier, but at least she could assume that was because of the Alpacas.

His hands were jammed into his pockets again. Almost cartoonishly deep. She knew he had polydactyly, but he never used to want to hide it like that.

"It's, uh…" she racked her mind for something to say, "it's… been a while."

"Yep. Yep… indubitably has."

Was the right usage of the word 'indubitably'? She wasn't sure.

"I heard you've gone into tourism."

"Yep. That is most… correct."

Lou paused to scratch her cheek.

"Why?"

Stanford shrugged. "I dunno. Guess it turned out 'anomalies' were just a load of bullsh- uh, hoax-y… falsehoods and whatnot. Dunno why I expected anything different."

Louise's mouth hung open, but she stopped to think before speaking.

"That… does make sense, I s'pose…" she said after some hesitation. Between Caryn's insight into the world of superstition and spending her childhood reading mystery novels, she probably should have known that Uncle Stanford was wasting his time chasing down the paranormal - and he'd be smart enough to realize that himself, sooner or later. Something still seemed a little off, though.

"But… why tourism?"

Stan's face bore a hint of surprise, and he coughed and spluttered.

"Oy. What are you, a cop? Heheh," he chuckled.

"Not yet. I'm studying to join the FBI," she said, remaining blank-faced. "Though I assume you knew that already."

"Um… yeah. Yeah, 'course I did," he replied, nervously shifting his gaze to the street, looking over his shoulder. "That's... nice. Just, um… hope you don't implicate Tiber the tiger over there in anything, heh. Dunno how your grandma woulda- have, would have, felt about that."

Louise glanced over at 'Tiber the tiger' - he was still in the cemetery, talking to Grauntie Shprintze and his hired help, gesturing wildly about something. At one point he started punching the air.

"I think she'd have been okay," Lou said.

They stayed quiet for another ten seconds or so. She saw Stan swing his leg.

"You didn't answer my question. Why tourism?" Lou said. "I-I mean, I'm not judging, it's just… you have 12 PhDs. Seems weird, is all."

"I do?!" he blurted out, almost flinching. "I-I mean… heh, yeah, 'course I knew that. Funny joke. Well, I mean… it seemed... prudent. I have a mortgage to pay. It's a big residence, out in the sticks. Not cheap. And I s'pose… well, ma had the right idea. Yanno what I mean?"

Louise raised a brow for a moment, but let it fall.

"I guess I do, yeah."

She heard that distinct sound of squeaky wheels as her dad rolled himself out of the cemetery, grandpa hobbling alongside him. Between grandpa's age and her father's beefy arms that could probably make his wheelchair rival a supercar, it was no surprise he had to slow down.

Dad stopped to glare at his brother.

"Stanford."

"Sherman."

Dad's face screwed up into… something.

"What the hell have you been doin'? You look like garbage," he said, sounding much more blunt than when he'd said it to Lou the day before. "An' how come ya waited 'til now to show up?"

"I'm sorry," Stanford answered, rubbing a hand through his hair. It came away greasy. "I, uh… peak season. Plus, I had to stop to get some gas- gaso- petroleum on the way here."

Another pause.

"Your daughter seems to be performing well."

"I-I never said anything about my grades…" Louise felt the need to add.

"Ya never needed to, I know you're doin' swell, greenie."

"Greenie?" Stanford said, his brow furrowing.

"...Yeah. That's what I call 'er sometimes," dad replied, his brow furrowing even more, like they were in a facial wrinkle contest. "Don't tell me you've forgotten yer own niece."

"Well…" Stan paused to think, "...maybe a little. Cut me some slack- uh, afford me the benefit of the doubt. It's been… how long?"

"Since I was eight," Lou confirmed.

"Eight?! Sweet moses, has it been that long already?"

"Evidently…" dad added, sighing, sliding his palm over his face.

Grandpa, who'd been as quiet as usual during this whole exchange, finally hobbled forward, apparently to lean in closer to his younger son.

"Oh, hi pa," Stanford said, spluttering a little again. "Um, how you doin'?"

Grandpa froze. That in itself wasn't unusual. But Louise could see it in his wrinkles. His eyes beneath his shades had actually widened.

"...Stanley?"

What?

"Uh…" Stanford was the first to say, standing up a bit straighter and holding his newly-developed gut in. "Heh, oh geez. I knew you'd gone senile, but... I'm Stanford. Remember? Stanford? The wimpy one?"

"Who's Stanley?" Louise couldn't help but ask.

"Nobody. Just some cousin. Died before you were born," dad added in quickly.

"Y...you, y-you, you…" grandpa kept mumbling, "Stanley. You're dead…"

"Hehe, okayyyy, pa, I think it's about time you had your nap," Stanford tried to calm him down, placing a hand on his father's shoulder.

"Get off me!" grandpa actually grabbed his son's hand and shoved it off. "This is it, this is it, this is it…" he started mumbling again, his hand shaking.

"Um… pa, are you okay?" dad said.

"You've come… you've come to drag me to hell, haven't you? To show me my sins?" grandpa asked, suddenly sounding a lot more calm. A lot more lucid.

"Uh, pa, you do know we're Jewish, right?" Stanford said with a forced smile, obviously trying to lighten the mood. "We don't do the whole 'hell' thing. You should know, you taught us."

"Don't gimme that, boy!" Filbrick tried to hobble in closer, poking his son hard in the chest.

Louise found herself recoiling - this was easily the most emotion she's ever seen coming from her grandpa. It was clear her father and uncle were equally shocked.

"I'm not done yet. I-I-I ain't got anything to apologize for, not like my wife. I'm clean! You wanna take me to hell, you'll have to fight for it! Fight for it! FIGHT FOR IT!"

Suddenly, something changed. His hand, locked tight into an outstretched finger, went limp. His mouth began to hang open. He started gasping for air, clutching his chest.

Then he dropped his cane, it loudly clattered against the ground. He collapsed.

Louise darted in and grabbed him, stopping him from falling over and shattering his bones. She could feel his chest heaving up and down.

Stanford stood there, dumbfounded. Her father wasn't much better.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TWO WAITIN' FOR?!" she screamed. "HE'S HAVIN' A HEART ATTACK! SOMEONE CALL AN AMBULANCE! I NEED AN ASPIRIN!"

Shprintze, Tiber and his hired help soon rushed in. Tiber helped Lou shift grandpa into a more comfortable position, leaned up against the fence.

Then all pretense of calm disappeared. Everything erupted into an indistinct cacophony of panic and yelling and running and fumbling as someone tried to find a phone.