Max Devore Meets Kyra at Lance’s Funeral is the first meeting between Max and his granddaughter, Kyra, at the funeral home where Lance’s closed casket is being viewed. Recalled by Mattie to Mike, the meeting briefly makes reconciliation seem possible: Max approaches the child, admits that he has been a fool, and asks Mattie not to shut him out. Yet the moment does not erase the history behind it. Mattie’s sympathy for the old man coexists with her memory of his efforts to separate her from Lance and buy access to the family, while her later account leaves open what caused Kyra to grow uneasy around him.

Setting and First Encounter

Mattie places the meeting at Dakin’s Funeral Home in Motton, during the viewing after Lance’s death. The casket was closed, but the gathering was still called a viewing. Mattie had stepped outside for a cigarette and asked Kyra to sit on the funeral-home steps, away from the smoke. When a large gray limousine arrived, she recognized Max and called Kyra to her; the child came down the walk and took her mother’s hand.

Rogette Whitmore got out first, carrying Max’s oxygen mask. Max followed in a gray suit and shiny black shoes. Rather than accept Rogette’s help up the few steps from the road, he made his way to Mattie and Kyra under his own power, though his breathing was labored. Mattie recalls him bending forward with his hands on his knees before looking at the child. His visible frailty sets the encounter apart from the powerful family patriarch she had reason to fear, but does not itself settle what his intentions are.

Max and Kyra Meet

Max initially said nothing. He looked at Kyra, and Kyra looked back. Then he picked her up. Mattie was struck by the fact that the two-year-old allowed a stranger to do so; she seemed, in Mattie’s account, almost to recognize him. Max asked whether she knew who he was. When she shook her head, he told her that he was her grandfather.

The exchange is brief, but it changes the emotional terms of the family conflict. Max is no longer only the distant, wealthy opponent in a dispute over his granddaughter: he is also an elderly man meeting the child who connects him to his dead son. Mattie says he held Kyra’s gaze for perhaps ten or twenty seconds, then tried to hand her back. Having spent his strength, he staggered, and Mattie had to be close enough to take the child before Max might drop her. Rogette supported him, and he put on his oxygen mask for a few deep breaths.

Regret and a Plea for Access

After recovering his breath, Max turned his attention to Mattie and said that he had been a fool. Mattie answered that she thought he had. She sensed that he resented her frankness, but he did not strike her; instead, he asked her to help him go inside. Mattie and Rogette accompanied him up the steps. In the vestibule, he sat down to rest and take more oxygen.

The meeting’s emotional turning point came when Max reached for Mattie’s hand and asked her not to shut him out. By then, Mattie says, he looked profoundly tired, and his expression reminded her of Lance. She began to cry and promised that she would not exclude him unless he made her. Her response reflects compassion, but it is not an unconditional reconciliation: the qualification keeps responsibility for the future of the relationship with Max as well as with her.

Meanwhile, Rogette engaged Kyra with a rhyming question and gave her a Hershey’s Kiss after Kyra looked to Mattie for permission. Kyra readily accepted the treat. Mattie’s recollection contrasts this ease with her own discomfort at being enlisted to help Max into the funeral home, and emphasizes that the child was not afraid of Rogette at that time. The small exchange shows how quickly the adults’ strained history and the child’s ordinary friendliness could occupy the same scene.

Family History and Later Unease

Mattie’s account places the meeting against Max’s earlier efforts to influence her and Lance. She had refused his money, and by the previous October he had stopped asking. Still, she had allowed Kyra to visit him. Part of her acknowledged the possibility that the relationship could matter to Kyra later, but her principal reason was that Max was the child’s only blood link to her father. She wanted Kyra to have the experience of knowing a grandparent without inheriting the bitterness surrounding Lance’s death.

At first, Mattie thought the arrangement was working. Max taught Kyra games including checkers, Candyland, and box-dots, and, despite her young age, taught her addition and subtraction. Kyra had her own room at Warrington’s and a small computer there. Mattie’s description suggests that the visits gave Max sustained access to his granddaughter, not merely the brief contact of the funeral-home encounter.

Over time, however, Mattie noticed that Kyra no longer seemed to like her white poppa as much. Her feelings toward Rogette appeared unchanged, but Max began to make her nervous in a way she could not explain. Mattie asked Kyra whether he had touched her in a way that made her feel uncomfortable. Kyra said no, and Mattie believed her, while remaining convinced that something Max had said or done had unsettled the child. She offered no definite explanation. The distinction matters: the account records Mattie’s concern and uncertainty, not proof of a specific act.

Significance of the Recollection

The scene gains much of its force from the way Mattie remembers and interprets it. She recounts practical details—the funeral-home steps, Max’s need for oxygen, Kyra’s permission before accepting candy—alongside the emotional contradiction of feeling sorry for a man whose earlier conduct had hurt her family. The meeting is neither a clean restoration of trust nor a simple continuation of hostility. Max’s admission and plea make a different relationship conceivable; the conditions under which that relationship develops remain contested.

In the wider family conflict, the encounter helps explain why Mattie initially allowed Max to see Kyra even after refusing his money. Her choice was rooted in the child’s connection to Lance, although she remained alert to the possibility that Max’s influence might harm Kyra. The later change in the child’s response turns the funeral meeting from a moment of tentative openness into the beginning of an unresolved question: whether the grandfatherly bond Max sought could remain separate from the antagonism and pressure that had shaped the family’s past.