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She looked at the sky above her, clutching the slim white memorial album in her cold hands Did you know that, Francis, did we tell you?

“I don’t want to go up there,” Lina said quietly beside her

Madelaine looked at her daughter, noticed the pallor of her cheeks, the haunted darkness in her blue eyes She wondered suddenly what to say to this girl asn’t a girl and wasn’t a woht s would be okay, or to be honest and show her own pain She didn’t knoould help Lina right now If anything could

Tentatively she reached out and caressed her daughter’s o sometimes…”

Lina sniffed hard and looked up at her “Yeah?”

“Maybe we could go there and sort of … say goodbye to Francis in our oay”

Lina’s lower lip started to quiver Tears filled her eyes “That’s just it,” she said softly “I don’t want to say good-bye”

Madelaine didn’t knohat to say to that, so instead of speaking, she slipped her hand around her daughter’s waist and drew her close Lina resisted for a heartbeat, , then slid in close to Madelaine’s side Together, silently, they walked down the long black driveway, ignoring the cars that prowled past thehts that shone in their eyes

They climbed into the Volvo and slammed the doors shut, and for a split second Madelaine felt as if they were shutting the funeral away But on the long drive out to her old neighborhood, she felt it co across hersound that filled the church, the smell of hothouse lilies and smoke fro voice talking about a man Madelaine barely knew—Father Francis Pious, serious, always ready to lend a hand, the archbishop said

The whole tihteen-year-old boy who’d come to her rescue Who’d heard her sirl Forever

Shutting off the engine, she sat there for araindrops hit the windshield Through the blurred glass she saw her father’s house, sitting there against the gray clouds, amidst the bare trees, its s as dark as they’d been in the long years since his death The laas too long and brown and covered with dying leaves

Finally she sighed “Let’s go”

Madelaine led the way past her father’s eh she could never think of it that way Her father had disinherited her in life and left her everything in death The last graspingher saddled with the house andshe despised about her childhood

She strode up the brick steps, down the ay, around the dead rose garden that once had been her mother’s pride and joy, and onto the brown carpet of the backyard

The lawn led to a low-banked waterfront, where the sea spit across the gray rocks in gentle spurts Madelaine’s high heels sank into the dead grass as she walked to the end of the creaking old dock and sat down