Cold Trail

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The coffin was the cheapest model available. Behind it, the pastor once again shifted uneasily from foot to foot and tentatively recited, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

Aside from the clergyman and his customer, three men in dark suits were the only other people in the large, lofty chapel. The pastor read the Twenty-third Psalm from his book:

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

The final phrase prompted Timo Repo, who was sitting in the tenth row, to raise his head. Thy rod, exactly, he thought. His father, who was lying in the coffin, hadn’t been one to spare it. It felt like an eternity has passed since those days-or at least decades. Timo Repo was now fifty-two years old, and Erik Repo had lived more or less the average age for a Finnish male, seventy-six years.

Timo hadn’t seen his father in six years and hadn’t even learned about the cancer that brought his death until after the fact, from his medical records at the hospital.

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