Free The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer by Anne Tyler, Monica McInerney Page A

twins—”
    “The Barley twins! Are they coming?”
    “Sure, and Jo Ann Dermott and Nat Abrams, whom she finally did end up marrying, you’ll be interested to hear—”
    “I haven’t thought of Jo Ann in years!”
    “She’s going to read from
The Prophet
. You and Ira are singing.”
    “We’re what?”
    “You’re singing ‘Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.’ ”
    “Oh, have mercy, Serena! Not ‘Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.’ ”
    “You sang it at our wedding, didn’t you?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “That was what they were playing when Max first told me how he felt about me,” Serena said. She lifted a corner of her shawl and delicately blotted the shiny places beneath her eyes. “October twenty-second, nineteen fifty-five. Remember? The Harvest Home Ball. I came with Terry Simpson, but Max cut in.”
    “But this is a funeral!” Maggie said.
    “So?”
    “It’s not a … request program,” Maggie said.
    Over their heads, a piano began thrumming the floorboards. Chord, chord, chord was plunked forth like so many place settings. Serena flung her shawl across her bosom and said, “We’d better get back up there.”
    “Serena,” Maggie said, following her out of the bathroom, “Ira and I haven’t sung in public since your wedding!”
    “That’s all right. I don’t expect anything professional,” Serena said. “All I want is a kind of rerun, like people sometimes have on their golden anniversaries. I thought it would make a nice touch.”
    “Nice touch! But you know how songs, well, age,” Maggie said, winding after her among the tables. “Why not just some consoling hymns? Doesn’t your church have a choir?”
    At the foot of the stairs, Serena turned. “Look,” she said. “All I’m asking is the smallest, simplest favor, from the closest friend I’ve had in this world. Why, you and I have been through everything together! Our weddings and our babies! You helped me put my mother in the nursing home. I sat up with you that time that Jesse got arrested.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “Last night I started thinking and I said to myself, ‘What am I holding this funeral for? Hardly anyone will come; we haven’t lived here long enough. Why, we’re not even burying him; I’m flinging his ashes on the Chesapeake next summer. We’re not even going to have his casket at the service. What’s the point of sitting in that church,’ I said, ‘listening to Mrs. Filbert tinkle out gospel hymns on the piano? “Stumbling up the Path of Righteousness” and “Death Is Like a Good Night’s Sleep.” I don’t even know Mrs. Filbert! I’d rather have Sissy Parton. I’d rather have “My Prayer” as played by Sissy Parton at our wedding.’ So then I thought, Whynot all of it? Kahlil Gibran? ‘Love Is a Many Splendored Thing’?”
    “Not everyone would understand, though,” Maggie said. “People who weren’t at the wedding, for instance.”
    Or even the people who
were
at the wedding, she thought privately. Some of those guests had worn fairly puzzled expressions.
    “Let them wonder, then,” Serena said. “It’s not for them I’m doing it.” And she spun away and started up the stairs.
    “Also there’s Ira,” Maggie called, following her. The fringe of Serena’s shawl swatted her in the face. “Of course I’d move the earth for you, Serena, but I don’t think Ira would feel comfortable singing that song.”
    “Ira has a nice tenor voice,” Serena said. She turned at the top of the stairs. “And yours is like a silver bell; remember how people always told you that? High time you stopped keeping it a secret.”
    Maggie sighed and followed her up the aisle. No use pointing out, she supposed, that that bell was nearly half a century old by now.
    Several other guests had arrived in Maggie’s absence. They dotted the pews here and there. Serena bent to speak to a hatted woman in a slim black suit. “Sugar?” she said.
    Maggie stopped short behind her and said, “Sugar