He Sacrificed Our Son, But Won't Let Me Go novel · Chapter 4 of 32
Chapter 4: The Funeral Director
The funeral director was the first person in nine days who looked at Maura and did not offer her a tissue.
He was a stooped man in his sixties, with grey cuffs and a grey face.
He met her at the side door of his Dorchester chapel before it opened.
The blinds were already drawn.
"Mrs. Saraceno."
"Donnelly," Maura said. "I'm going back to Donnelly."
"Of course."
He led her through the cold front parlor into a back office stacked with hymnals and unsold urns.
Cormac stayed in the truck at the curb, because she had said the man would talk more easily to one person.
"I buried your son on Tuesday," the director said. He did not sit. "I want to say that I have buried a great many children, and I have never done one like it."
"Like what?"
"The box came to me closed." He rubbed his thumb across the knuckles of his other hand. "It came from the morgue in a Saraceno van, with the seam already welded."
He swallowed.
"Mr. Carlo Saraceno called me himself the night before. He asked me not to open it, not to ask the family, and not to keep a record."
Maura felt her pulse in her throat.
"But you kept one."
"I keep everything, Mrs. Donnelly. Forty years of it." He opened a drawer and drew out a single sheet in a plastic sleeve. "I haven't slept since Tuesday. I would rather give this to you than to a priest."
It was a photocopy of a form, the corners soft from being handled.
She read the heading first.
Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Release of remains.
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