Chapter 23: What the Autopsy Found

I drove him to the lake house, because it was the only place left that was mine.

Daniel slept for eleven hours on the couch in the tuxedo trousers, with one arm over his face.

I sat in the kitchen with a mug of tea and my sister's phone, and I did not touch him.

On Monday at seven he put on a borrowed shirt, took a lawyer's card out of his wallet and went to give his statement.

I went to the cemetery.

St. Anselm's was gray and wet that morning, and the grass had a skin of frost.

The detective had gotten the order on Sunday afternoon, from a judge he had woken at home.

Four men in coveralls stood around my sister's grave with a small yellow machine.

A woman from the county medical examiner's office stood beside them with a clipboard.

I was the next of kin.

Nobody tried to send me away.

"Mrs. Bannister." The examiner touched my elbow. "You're sure about being here?"

"I asked for this on the first morning," I said. "Your office told me my husband had withdrawn the request."

"I read the file." Her mouth tightened. "He phoned it in at seven-thirty. Nobody ever called you to confirm."

"No."

"I'm sorry. We'll do it properly now."

They brought the casket up in a sling of straps.

It was dark and spotted with earth, and it rocked gently once as it came clear of the ground.

My mother was in the next plot, and my father the one after.