Chapter 31: Not Here. Home.

The small white casket came out of the Saraceno mausoleum on a Saturday morning in May, on a hand truck, with two electricians holding the straps.

Cormac had insisted on the electricians.

"They've carried worse," he said. "They carried a transformer up four flights once, and a bishop's organ."

The Donnelly plot lay at the top of a hill in a Dorchester cemetery, under a maple that had just come into leaf.

Maura's mother was there, and her father, under a grey stone that Cormac had paid for in monthly installments.

There was a new hole beside the stone, no deeper than a flower bed.

Finn stood at the edge of it in his red boots.

He had been told what was in the box.

He had said, "It's only sand," and gone to find his shovel.

Nico stood beside him in a clean shirt, holding a handful of daisies from the supermarket.

"Is it sad?" Finn asked.

"A little," Maura said.

"Why?"

"Because we said goodbye to you, and you weren't in it. We had a whole funeral for nothing."

Finn thought about this.

"I wasn't dead," he said.

"No."

"Then it isn't sad. It's a mistake."

"Okay," said Cormac. "I think the child has summed up the situation."

Vincent stood on the far side of the hole in a plain black coat.

He had not spoken since the car.

The old captain's sons had brought the Saraceno priest, a stout gentle man in a raincoat who had buried Maura's mother once, years ago.

He opened a book, and Maura shook her head.

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