Roy Watzka’s death closes his long decline and forces Delphine to face a love that had survived years of anger, disappointment, and anticipated loss. He dies seated before photographs of Minnie, the mother Delphine barely knew; at his funeral, grief becomes a public occasion, but the private consequence is Delphine’s recognition that life is finite and that affection should be spoken while there is still time.

Decline and Death

After Doctor Heech prescribed extended rest to ease Roy’s liver problems and prevent his cough from developing into pneumonia, Roy spent much of the day in bed near the stove. At first, he and Delphine treated his hours asleep as evidence of recovery. Delphine gradually understood that his sleep was not restoring him: he ate little, grew weaker and quieter, and seemed to her to be preparing for death. She feared he would die while she was at work, so she checked his face when she returned home and again in the morning.

As he weakened, Roy asked for photographs of Minnie and placed them on a shelf by the flour and spice counter where he could see them from bed. Delphine had long wanted him to tell her about her mother, but he gave her little information despite the intensity of his grief. Minnie had no gravestone for Delphine to visit, and Roy would not say where she was buried or explain why there was no marker. He said only that Minnie was the only person left who could tell the story.

The county visiting nurse found Roy dead, sitting upright and staring at Minnie’s indistinct photographs. She checked for a heartbeat, recorded the time and her observations, then closed his eyes and laid him down before contacting Delphine. The nurse’s record included Roy’s fixed expression, which she understood as part of the striking story of his devotion. The photographs had been placed within his view during his decline; in death, they remained before him, making his final posture a last, silent orientation toward the woman he had mourned.

Minnie’s Story and Roy’s Grief

Before his death, Roy began to tell Delphine the story of what had happened to Minnie when she was eight. He framed it as a painful account he had told no one else, and spoke while physically weakened, sitting up with pillows behind him and drinking water Delphine had mixed with ginger. His disclosure helps explain why Minnie’s memory had such a powerful hold on him, even though he had kept the details from his daughter.

Roy described Minnie as a child among Minneconjou Lakotas fleeing with women, children, and a few exhausted warriors. Their dying leader, Big Foot, was being transported in a wagon; the group sought shelter and hoped to survive through the Ghost Dance, which promised that the dead might return. Roy placed them in a Christian community at Christmas, where they sought food and mercy. The story’s focus is not only on the massacre but on the people’s vulnerability before it: they were hungry, cold, displaced, and looking for protection.

Roy recounted how the group surrendered its guns and camped where soldiers directed them. Minnie’s father shared their last bannock with a woman nursing a baby; in return, the woman shared a small gingerbread figure she had received at church. The next morning, she prepared a drink from a root, melting snow over a small fire and offering the tea to Minnie. A shot sounded as Minnie drank. Her father was killed as he ran from the tent, and soldiers opened fire on the camp, including the white flag of surrender. The woman who had shared her food was killed while nursing her baby.

Minnie briefly returned to her father and received his last words before walking away through the violence. She witnessed further killings and the stripping of a dead girl’s clothing, then escaped down a ravine and across a fence. Her lighter appearance and farmer’s clothes may have helped her avoid notice, though Roy presented these only as possible explanations. Following the tracks of other fleeing people through the snow, she eventually reached a mission run by a priest named Jutz. Roy stopped there, saying he could tell no more. His account leaves the details of Minnie’s later life largely unfilled, even as it makes the source of her childhood trauma unmistakable.

Funeral and Delphine’s Response

Roy’s funeral was well attended. The wives of bankers and landowners came, and flowers filled the church. Photographs were placed face down in his coffin, over his heart, as he had instructed. Afterward, mourners gathered for dinner in the church hall, which had served as a gymnasium the night before. The formal service and communal meal turned Roy’s death into a public event, but the photographs and Delphine’s response kept its emotional center within the family.

At the dinner, Delphine found the sympathy overwhelming and left the hall with Mazarine Shimek. When Mazarine told her she was sorry, Delphine answered that she was sorry too. Her response does not resolve her feelings: she was tired and angry at the waste of Roy’s life and at the waste of her affection, yet his death had awakened the desperate love she had felt for him as a child. She had spent years preparing to lose him and had sometimes looked forward to the end of his frustrations. Still, grief arrived as a force she could not explain away as fear of loneliness, exhaustion, or relief. She called it existential and used the word to steady herself.

Delphine turned that recognition into a practical appeal to Mazarine. She urged her to write to Franz, telling him that he loved her and she loved him, and asking why she should not tell him. Roy’s death thus changes the direction of Delphine’s attention: rather than leave affection unspoken, she presses the younger woman to act before the opportunity is gone. The lesson comes not from an uncomplicated example of love, but from Delphine’s memory of a father whose devotion and failures had been inseparable.

Aftermath and Significance

Roy’s death does not erase the damage Delphine associates with his life, nor the bond that made his loss painful. It brings both into sharper focus: she mourns the time and care she feels were wasted, but discovers that the child’s love for him remains. The contrast between that private turmoil and the orderly funeral gathering prevents the event from becoming a simple public celebration of devotion.

The photographs of Minnie link Roy’s death to the story he had withheld and finally began to tell. His fixation on them, his refusal to provide basic information about her burial, and his admission that only Minnie could tell the tale make grief both a form of attachment and a barrier to knowledge. Delphine inherits the consequences of that silence without gaining a complete account of her mother’s life. Roy’s final disclosure supplies a history of Minnie’s childhood survival, but he stops before answering everything Delphine had wanted to know.

The aftermath also broadens beyond Roy’s immediate family. Later, Delphine imagines that her own place in a cemetery plot might be between Roy and Eva, with Roy beside her for eternity. At the same time, she recognizes that losing her mother in childhood has left her with a lasting loneliness and a sense of being damaged and searching. Roy’s death therefore sits within a longer history of bereavement: it recalls the maternal absence that shaped Delphine, while prompting her to speak directly to Mazarine about love, mortality, and the cost of waiting.