His Test Was Fake, But My Death Was Real novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: Sandbags
The housekeeper found me in the back corridor of the council wing with a garment bag over her arm.
"Camille wore this to your funeral," she said. "She took it from your closet. I took it back out of the Torrisi car the same night."
She unzipped the bag.
Inside was the long black dress I had worn to bury my parents, and then to bury Stefano's grandmother.
"I pressed it myself," she said. "I didn't know what for."
"You knew."
"I hoped."
I put it on in the pantry with the door shut.
It still smelled of Camille's scent, and I stood in it with my eyes closed until the smell was only a smell.
Then I went to the double doors of the council hall.
They were carved oak, twice my height, and in the left one a narrow slit of glass had been set for a servant to check whether the elders were ready for the wine.
I put my eye to it.
The long table was full.
Twenty-four men sat along it in their dark suits, and at the foot, on a wheeled stand, stood the open coffin, tipped so everyone could see.
Sandbags lay in it in neat rows.
Stefano sat at the head, in his father's chair, with both hands flat on the wood.
Dario sat beside him with his arm in a sling, and I saw the sweat on his temple from where I stood.
Vincent stood at the middle of the table with a hand on the coffin lid.
Camille sat behind his shoulder in a black dress of her own, her chin lifted, her eyes bright.
"Gentlemen," Vincent said. "I am sorry to show you something so ugly."
He nudged the sandbags with his shoe.
"This is what the Carrano Family buried two weeks ago. Forty pounds of sand. Not a girl."
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