The cops nabbed Roderick digging up his late wife’s body. “What did you hope to find? Buried jewels? A confession? A lost key?” Roderick explained as they handcuffed him. “The sound of mirth. Dora believed that when our brains and bodies die, laughter, like hair and nails, continues to grow.”

Ann S. Epstein writes novels, stories, memoir, and poems, and is also an end-of-life doula.