Chapter 24: The Lake

The cove was still black where the boat house had stood.

Six charred pilings stuck out of the water, and a gull sat on each.

I stood on the stones above the waterline at dawn with Dario's grey coat around me and a coffee going cold in my hand.

Nine days had passed since the council.

Aldo was in a clean white room in St. Anne's, learning to hold a cup in his left hand.

He had asked for me twice and I had gone once, to tell him the Torrisis were gone from the lakefront.

He had wept, and I had let him, and I had not said anything kind.

Behind me, gravel crunched.

I did not turn.

Stefano came down the path with the wooden marker over one shoulder, the stake from my grave with its card still pinned to it.

His hand was out of its bandage and the long scar showed pink across the palm.

He stopped ten feet from me.

"I dug it up myself," he said. "Nobody else touched it."

"Put it down."

He laid it on the stones.

The card had gone soft in the rain.

*Maeve MacNamara, beloved ward.*

"Is there anything you want from me?" I asked.

"No."

"Anything you want to say?"

"A great deal. I don't think I get to."

I waited.

"I'm leaving Chicago," Stefano said.

"Dario has given me a share and a desk in the Detroit office. I'll send my mother money."

"I won't come to the funeral of anyone you love, and I won't write."

"Good."

"I put a stone over your parents' grave," he said. "Their real names. It was missing one for six years, and I never noticed."

The wind moved the water.

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't."

"I mean it. That one I mean."

He nodded.

He looked at me for as long as he could.

"I'd have given you the house," he said, very low.

"I know. It was never the house."

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