It's an improvement, in a way.
Things at least don't have widows and grandchildren and Sunday dinners I'm now going to have to attend without them.
But it's over finally.
I sign the document and shake the AUSA's hand. I walk out into the afternoon, and as the warehouse door swings shut behind me, my body realizes something my brain hasn't gotten around to admitting yet.
I'm not human anymore.
Not by choice.
But that's just how this fucked-up world works, and so I just get rid of the thought and focus on what's in front of me.
A car with federal plates.
A Crown Victoria, actually, which is the kind of car a man like me wouldn't even let one of my drivers be seen in.
Is this some kind of joke?
A Crown Victoria?
It's a thought that invites incredulity and humorless smiles, but it's also a safe thought so I keep thinking it while I get behind the wheel and start driving.
Anything to keep my brain thinking about something other than the photographs.
And I only stop driving when I find what I didn't realize I was looking for.
A cemetery, just past the edge of the city, off some county road I don't remember turning onto. Italian-coded, by the look of it. Having'Buon riposo, Madre amata, Riposa in pace'on the gates also gives it away. It's the kind of place a person could come to read a book or eat a sandwich on a bench if a person could forget what the stones underneath are.
The grass is freshly cut, and someone's left a candle in a red-glass holder on a grave near the gate, the wick burned all the way down to the wax. Whoever lit it lit it days ago and hasn't been back. A few rows over, someone else has left wilted carnations. Then nothing.
Cemeteries in the afternoon are doing exactly what cemeteries do in the afternoon, which is nothing, and that's what I'm here for. Nothing.
I park. I walk in. I'm here because the dead don't ask questions and I don't have any answers ready in case anyone living tries.
There's a stone bench fifteen feet ahead, set off the path under a maple, and I'm three steps from it when I see her sitting on the matching one across from it.
Fuck.
She still hasn't looked up from the book she's reading even with my footsteps grinding against the path's gravel.
For a second I consider turning around. Walking back to the Crown Vic. Picking another cemetery, of which there are several within the metro area I've already memorized for exactly this reason.
So just do it, Sestini.
But against all logic, I remain there, and I have no fucking idea why that is. The part of my brain that I usually trust to answer that kind of question for me has gone very quiet.
I sit on the bench across from hers. I'm thinking I should at least look at the stones to figure out which dead person I'm pretending to visit, but I don't bother. I just look at her.
Short hair, a bob, tucked behind her left ear and not the right. Sensible glasses, the kind a girl wears because she stopped pretending she could see without them. A long skirt and a sweater that's been washed enough times to lose the memory ofits original color. The cover of the book is creased so many times the title has mostly gone, but I can still read the author's name.
V.C. Andrews.
That almost makes me question if she's real. Italian cemeteries, Tuesday afternoons, and a girl on a stone bench reading V.C. Andrews. If I were as superstitious as my deceased father, I'd be making theSign of the Crossby now.
But since I'm not...
Who can you be,signorina,that you'd choose to spend your spare time in a cemetery?