THE FAMILY FILED away from the service, the beige building reflecting too cheerily bright in the afternoon light; the camera people kept an almost-respectful lawn’s-distance away from the procession.
As the group, from one somber car to the next, wound its way to the cemetery, garish updates were already being made to cable network Twitter accounts and websites: Cassidy Holmes’s final resting place, Cassidy Holmes’s thirty-nine car procession, Cassidy Holmes’s hearse stopped traffic on Main for forty solemn minutes. Blurry, grainy images of the black car were posted as well, not remarkable at all except for the contents inside.
Houston’s channel 26 followed the car in a traffic helicopter, out of deference, perhaps, to their station’s affiliation with Big Disc. Having brought Cassidy Holmes into people’s televisions for the first time on Sing It, America! some fifteen-odd years ago, they thought it would be fitting to show her last journey across town before being set into the ground.
At the cemetery, passengers spilled out of their dark cars. Yumi could see a light smattering of paparazzi from the corner of her eye; it was a well-honed instinct of being able to recognize a telephoto just from the glinting reflection off the spherical lens. She ignored them as best she could, gripping her own arms so tight that she unknowingly drew a crescent-shaped slick of blood from digging in with an overgrown fingernail.
Meredith stood next to her as the priest made his comments and invited family to toss rose petals. She watched impassively as Mr. Holmes, his face slack with grief, brushed a handful of petals onto the gravestone, and held Soleil closer to her body.
A simple black hat with a half-veil shadowed Rose’s eyes. She was away from the other two women, on the opposite side of the mound of earth excavated for the fallen Cassidy. Her hands were clasped in front of her body, her cell phone tucked inward toward her palm.
If the photographers outside of the cemetery gates could magnify Rose’s face with their telephoto lenses, they might have seen a slight flickering of one cheek.
It could have been a smile.
It could have been her weeping.