Chapter 14: The Headstone

Florence Whitfield was buried at Fairmount Cemetery under a cottonwood tree.

I hadn't been there since the day we put her in the ground.

I'd told myself it was because I was busy.

The truth was that I didn't know what to say to a stone.

Gina drove, because she'd asked to, and she held the wheel so tightly that the tape on her wrists creased.

She had brought nothing from the gym except a small bundle of paper in her jacket.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Not yet."

We parked on the gravel loop and walked.

The grass was still brown from winter, and the wind smelled of cold dirt and the first thin green.

I found the stone by the crooked pine behind it.

FLORENCE LOUISE WHITFIELD, it said.

BELOVED MOTHER. HONEST HANDS.

I had picked that last line myself, and it had been the only thing I could manage that week.

Gina stopped three steps behind me.

"Go ahead," I said.

"I don't know how."

"Neither did I."

She stepped up beside me and took off her jacket, though the wind was cold.

As if she had to stand there bare to be taken seriously.

She looked at the stone for a long time.

Then she said, in a voice I had never heard from her, "Mrs. Whitfield."

I held my breath.

"My name is Gina Marchetti. You don't know me. I mean, you did, a little, but not my face."

She stopped, and swallowed.

"You paid off my father's mortgage when I was twenty-six and a mess."

"I'd lost him a year before."

"I was going to sell the building to a man who wanted a juice bar."

"I had the papers on the kitchen table."

I put my hand over my mouth.

"Then a letter came."

"I read it standing in the hall with my coat on, and I sat down on the floor."

"By morning I had called the buyer and told him no."

Her voice shook, and she let it.

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