Chapter 24: Ash and Wine

We did not burn them that night.

Sandro put the white box in the study safe, and we went back upstairs and slept until noon.

At six the next evening the whole family stood in the study, in front of the cold fireplace.

Aurelio had come in with his cane.

Bianca came in with a bottle of her father's good wine and four mismatched glasses.

"If we're doing a funeral," she said, "we're doing it properly."

Sandro knelt at the hearth and laid the kindling himself.

He lit it with a long match, and the study filled with the smell of pine.

I set the box on the mantel and took off the lid.

The five photographs lay on top, face up.

The woman at the bar was twenty-four and had her hair pinned up.

She looked afraid.

I looked at her for a moment, and then I picked her up and held her over the flames.

"Goodbye," I said.

It was a stupid thing to say to a piece of paper, and nobody laughed.

The corner curled and went brown, and the bar went black, and she was gone.

Bianca fed in the dead man, smiling at someone off to the side.

"Rest well," she said, "you idiot."

Her father made a rough sound in his chest and said nothing.

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