Chapter 12: The Fifth Photo

On Friday morning I stood across Dorchester Avenue from Molly's building, in a gray hat, and waited.

I had told her one lie, and nobody else in the world.

Friday at nine, at the house.

If nobody came to the gate that night, Molly was only a girl who had been paid to like me.

If somebody did, she was something else.

At ten past ten she came out the front door in her good coat, carrying a handbag.

She walked three blocks.

I followed on the other side of the street, my heart beating in my teeth.

She stopped at a flower stall under a green awning, with buckets of lilies and tulips on the sidewalk.

The man inside was big, with a black mustache and a thick neck.

I knew him.

Three years ago he had driven me to the grocery store and carried my bags up to Rocco's kitchen.

Molly bought a bunch of white lilies, and while he wrapped them, she tucked a folded paper under the ribbon on the counter.

She said something, and smiled, and the man smiled back.

The paper went into his apron.

She walked away with the flowers in her arms, and she never looked back.

I stood in the doorway of a closed barber shop and breathed.

It was the same smile she had given me at the pharmacy, with the coupon.

I texted her from where I stood.

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