Identity Zero novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Headstone

"Yes," Jesse said.

Gideon didn't seem to have expected it that fast.

"You didn't ask when."

"I don't care when."

The clerk behind the counter cleared her throat.

"Sir, you need to sign the temporary."

Gideon took the pen in his good hand and signed his name on the line, slowly, in block capitals.

Then he looked at it.

The cemetery in Kalispell sat on a hill above the town, and it had snowed the night before.

Five inches, clean, with the mountains behind it white all the way down.

The groundskeeper met them at the gate in a canvas coat and a hat with ear flaps.

He was older than Gorham, and he walked with a limp, and he'd been told they were coming.

He looked at Gideon for a long time.

"You've got her chin," he said finally.

Gideon didn't say anything.

"She used to talk to you out loud," the groundskeeper said. "Told you the weather. Told you who'd died and who'd married who."

Gideon swallowed.

"She told me once you'd have hated the carnations," the groundskeeper said.

"She figured you'd hate it all anyway, so she brought what she liked."

Gideon laughed, short and surprised.

It was the laugh from under the range overhang.

The groundskeeper walked them up the hill through the snow.

Two stones sat side by side under a pine tree.

The left one was newer.

His mother's name, and two dates, and under them in small letters: MOTHER OF GIDEON.

The right one had been there ten years.

Grey granite, a little lichen at the corners.

GIDEON STRAKE. Under it his birth year and a year ten years gone.

BELOVED SON.

Gideon stood in front of them with his hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat.

He'd brought a bunch of grocery-store carnations wrapped in plastic.

He crouched, slowly, and laid them on her stone.

He brushed the snow off her name with his bare hand.

He stayed down there a while.

Jesse didn't say anything.

When Gideon stood up his eyes were wet and his face was perfectly calm.

"The order says I'm to take the stone out," the groundskeeper said. "I've got a bar in the truck. Takes two men."

"I've got two men," Gideon said.

Jesse had brought his own Pulaski.

He'd carried it on the plane as checked luggage and the woman at the counter had asked if he was going to chop down Montana.

The ground was frozen an inch down and soft under that.

He cut around the base of the stone in a square, the way you cut line around a spot fire.

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