Chapter 6: Sunday Roses

On Sunday I drove my delivery van to Holy Cross cemetery at seven in the morning, the way I had for four years.

This time Domenico sat in the passenger seat with a thermos of coffee between his knees.

"You don't have to come," I said.

"I know."

"You're going to see how I do it."

"That's why I'm here."

The cemetery in Yeadon was white with frost, and the air had that stillness you only get at dawn among stones.

I parked at the end of the Carraro row and unloaded a bucket of white roses, a dozen long-stemmed ones.

Domenico took the bucket out of my hands.

The mausoleum stood on a small rise, grey granite, with an iron door and a name carved over it.

CARRARO.

Inside, behind a bronze plate, was the vault with GIULIA on it and the dates.

Below them ran a line of Italian too small for me to read.

I had stood in front of this plate every Sunday for four years and never once been introduced.

I knelt, took last week's roses out of the bronze vase, and cut the new stems at an angle with my little shears.

"You do it fast," he said.

"I do it right."

"My mother always cut the ends at a slant."

"She was right, too."

I set the roses in the vase.

Domenico crouched beside me, his black overcoat spilling over the frozen stone, and looked at the plate for a long time.

"Why white?" I asked.

"She had a bush of them in the yard behind our old house. The only thing that never died."

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