Wedding Eve Goodbye novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Grave

"Where would he go?" I asked.

Odile leaned on her cane and thought for exactly one breath.

"Where your father is," she said.

I ran to the kitchen in his shirt and my wet jeans, and I grabbed the driver by the sleeve.

"Take me to Linden Hill cemetery. Please."

He looked at Odile and she nodded.

For three years this man had driven me home from every dinner, and I had never once sat in the front seat.

I sat there now with both hands on the dashboard.

"He told me never to let you ride with him," the driver said quietly as we pulled out. "He said, Not until she knows."

"Knows what?"

"He didn't say, ma'am. But I knew about the crash." He shifted gears. "I'm sorry I never told you."

"You were keeping his promise too."

"Yes, ma'am."

The cemetery was grey and wet.

Dominic's black car sat crooked at the gate with the door still open.

I ran up the path between the headstones, slipping on the leaves.

He was at the end of the third row.

He knelt in the grass in front of my father's stone with his coat in a heap beside him.

His head was down.

The small black recorder lay on the earth in front of him, and my engagement ring sat on top of the stone.

I stopped a few feet behind him, out of breath.

"Dominic."

He did not turn.

"You read my note," he said.

"I read it."

"Then you know you can go."

"Is that today's answer?"

"It's not a question."

"No," I said. "It's not."

I walked around him and stood in front of him, between him and the stone.

He looked up.

His face was wrecked.

The scar over his eye was white against skin that had not seen sleep in two days.

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