The Unsent Appeal novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Where He Is

The cemetery in Quincy sat on a hill above the highway, with frost on the grass at seven in the morning.

Elliott parked at the gate and turned off the engine.

"I'll be right here," he said.

"You can come."

"Not for this part."

I walked up the gravel path alone.

My father's plot was near the top, under a maple that had dropped half its leaves on the stone.

My mother was kneeling in front of it in her good gray coat, with a canvas bag beside her knee.

She heard me and did not turn around.

"I knew Briana would tell Finley," she said. "She never could keep a thing to herself."

"You wanted me to know you'd be here."

"I wanted to see if you'd come."

I stopped a few feet behind her.

The ground beside the stone was open, a small square hole with the sod cut back and set aside.

A cemetery truck stood parked farther down the lane, and a man in a green jacket waited beside it with his hands in his pockets.

"You're burying him," I said.

"I'm putting him where he asked to be. Where he paid to be, thirty years ago, next to the space I'm meant to take."

She finally turned her head.

Her eyes were red, and her silver bob was not combed.

"I couldn't stand to leave him on that shelf one more day," she said. "Not with your brother looking at the study door."

"You told me you'd scatter him."

"I know what I told you."

"You meant it."

"I meant it when I said it." Her mouth trembled. "I've never been able to do the things I say to you, Rose. You know that. I say them anyway."

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