"Death is inevitable. You can't hide from it, run from it, bargain with it. Each one of us has to accept that sobering fact. The best thing you can do is be ready."

Pastor Hezekiah Fowler's deep bass voice reached every person within the packed frame church without the help of the failing PA system. In the front pew, Lilly Crawford sat with her long legs demurely crossed at the ankles. Her hands clutched a flowered, tear-stained handkerchief as she stared at the white casket draped with a spray of white gladiolus. More sprays were at the head and foot and clustered around the casket and podium.

So many flowers, Lilly thought, and so utterly useless. Mother Crawford couldn't smell them now. She had loved flowers of any kind, loved to spend time in her garden, but she'd been bedridden for the past six months as her body fought a losing battle. Yet the only person who had thought to send her flowers while she could enjoy them was the one person who couldn't be here for her home going. If Rafe had come, there might have been two caskets instead of one.

To Lilly's left sat her husband, Myron, in his best black suit, his usually straight shoulders slumped, his callused hands clamped between his legs, his proud head bent in submission to a power greater than his. Next to him sat his daughter, Lilly's stepdaughter, Shayla, draped in black and misery, sobbing loudly. To her right was David, her husband, a shy, earnest young man with a nervous eye tic but, according to Shayla, a computer genius. Since David had been to his in-laws' house only a handful of times before their marriage three years ago and twice since, Lilly couldn't be sure.

"Hear me now; I said you can't run from it, hide from it, bargain with it," Pastor Fowler continued, and Lilly respectfully gave him her attention. "Each one of us in God's appointed time is gonna have to give an accounting of our sins and look God and death in the face. The best thing you can do is be ready."

Pastor Fowler's hands, work-worn from thirty years at the bottle plant lifting twenty-pound crates of beverages, clamped around the scarred wooden pulpit. Out of his mud-brown, heavily lined face his brown eyes sparkled with the fervency of his message as he leaned his robust torso over the worn, open Bible.

Shouts of "Amen" came from around the church. Lilly knew if she were to turn around she'd see heads nodding in agreement as well. The pastor was in top form. Mother Crawford would have been pleased, but a little sad as well. She had always said no one preached more earnestly than Pastor Fowler when trying to win lost souls; his fervent prayers could wrench tears from the eyes of the boldest sinner. Too bad, she'd once commented after a particularly powerful Wednesday night prayer meeting, that he didn't seem to be able to save himself.

Lilly hadn't asked for an explanation. She had lost faith in too much to add Pastor Fowler's sins, real or imagined, to the list. Besides, she knew how frightening and helpless it felt not to be able to save yourself.

"Our faithful sister, Minnie Faye Crawford, was ready," Pastor Fowler said, assurance in every syllable of his voice. "At eighty-one she had lived a long time. Was blessed with a loving husband who preceded her in death, a loving son and granddaughter who gave her countless moments of joy and blessings in her declining years. The Lord saw fit to take her first daughter-in-law, but He blessed her with another fine Christian woman in Sister Lilly."

"Amen" flared up again. Lilly closed her eyes against the looks she knew would be cast upon her. No one except Mother Crawford and Rafe ever let her forget she hadn't been the first Mrs. Crawford. To everyone else Lilly was still trying to measure up, still failing. Just as Rafe had failed.

"So, brothers and sisters, I come to you today asking this question." Pastor Fowler paused, his hard, piercing brown gaze sweeping over the gathered crowd again. "When it's your time to lie in the arms of death as our beloved Sister Minnie Faye Crawford now rests, when it's your time to close your eyes and wake no more, when it's your time to lie in front of the pulpit, when it's your time to take that last final ride, will you be ready?

"Will you be able to look back on your life with no regrets as this sister did, to count your blessings instead of your woes, or will you bow your head and weep for all that is lost, for all that should have been done and wasn't?" Lilly's head snapped up. Wide-eyed, she stared at Pastor Fowler. Had he guessed?

No, he wasn't looking at her. He didn't know that she lived with regrets, that her blessings were few, her tears many.

Lilly didn't know she was sobbing until she felt the brush of wind on her face and opened her eyes. Standing in front of her, in her starched white usher's uniform and black armband, was Sister Lawrence waving her fan. "Mother Crawford wouldn't want you to weep for her."

Tears rolled faster down Lilly's amber cheeks. She shut her eyes again. Guilt pressed against her chest like a heavy weight.

If only they knew.

Stepping back from the pulpit, Pastor Fowler lifted his hands and beckoned. "Undertakers in charge."

"Grandma! Grandma!"

Lilly shut her eyes tighter against the wailing sound of her twenty-one-year-old stepdaughter. No matter how unchristian it was, Lilly couldn't help thinking that Shayla should have come to see her sick grandmother. Houston was only a three-hour drive away from Little Elm, but Shayla always had an excuse.

"Grandma!"

The wail grew more plaintive, more demanding. As in the past, Shayla's father drew his only daughter and favorite child into his arms, murmuring words of comfort and reassurance.

"Hush, baby girl. Daddy's here."

"She's gone! Grandma's gone!" Shayla refused to be comforted.

Lilly turned to see Shayla being physically restrained by her father and her husband. David's eyes were wide behind his gold wire-frame glasses. He was as lost as Myron in his attempts to comfort Shayla, and just as concerned. No surprise there. Shayla wouldn't have married a man who wouldn't meet her many demands and go soft at her frequent emotional outbursts.

"Daddy! Daddy!" Shayla shouted as the spray of gladiolus was removed, the upper half of the coffin lid lifted.

Lilly faced forward thinking this was one time that Myron wouldn't be able to give Shayla what she wanted or what he thought she needed as he had done so many times in the past. The pain and heartache he had caused others hadn't mattered. No price was too high for Shayla to be happy. No one knew this better than Lilly ... or felt the burden of it more.

The small white frame house on North Fourth Street was filled to capacity. The April day was unseasonably warm, with no clouds in sight. People spilled out of the eight-by-ten living room, cooled ineffectively by a window unit, onto the freshly cut grass in the front yard, careful of the borders of newly sprouting tulips on either side of the paved walkway that stopped in the middle of the yard.

The mourners were content now to mingle happily beneath the undisciplined mulberry tree in the front yard. Laughter came often. Funerals were a social event. People took the opportunity to mourn, but they also renewed acquaintances not seen sometimes since the last funeral and gave thanks that they were still among the living.

Inside the scrupulously clean kitchen there was barely enough room for the women from the...