Her mother wanted to go home after the funeral. Dunja asked her to come inside for at least a coffee. All morning she had held Dunja's arm, found tissues, and remembered where the car was parked. She had been divorced from the man they had just buried for twenty-one years. His second wife, Branka, sat in the living room among people telling her that she had to eat something.
Aunt Vera stopped Dunja's mother at the kitchen door. She did not raise her voice, which made the scene worse. She said they ought to show consideration for the widow. Dunja held an empty tray in one hand and still held her mother's elbow with the other. "I invited her," she replied. Her aunt looked toward the living room as though someone there had the authority to overrule her sentence.
Her mother began taking off the coat she had already put on. Then she pulled it back on. Dunja recognized the movement from her childhood, when her parents would stop talking and her mother would head somewhere without explanation. "Don't make a scene over me," she whispered. But there was already a scene. Two cousins had stopped eating, and her aunt was now explaining more loudly that there were such things as order and decency.
Branka stood and came over. Dunja expected a verdict, perhaps a demand that everybody finally stop. Instead, Branka asked her mother whether she still took her coffee without sugar. They knew each other from two birthdays and a hospital corridor. "I haven't the strength today to be jealous of your divorce," she said, then began crying in the middle of a sentence that had almost sounded like a joke.
They sat at the kitchen table. They did not become friends or begin exchanging pleasant memories of the same man. Her mother passed Branka some water, and Dunja found a clean cup. Her aunt carried the tray into the other room and did not return to their table. Through the window, they watched a neighbor trying to close his trunk over an oversized wreath. That ordinary, awkward sight briefly gave them something else to look at.
Before leaving, her mother hugged Branka, briefly and cautiously. Dunja walked her to the car. "I didn't come to prove that I used to be his," her mother said. "I came because you're mine." Only then did Dunja cry as she had been unable to at the cemetery. Later she washed three cups, one at a time. She did not answer her aunt's message about inappropriate behavior that evening.