Page 29

She sent me one word this morning. Fine. With a period after it. A woman who writes discharge summaries at four in the morning can do better than that. I've read it nine times and still don't know if I've been agreed with or sentenced.

Our other main property is in Saddle River, New Jersey, about an hour away, depending on traffic. Beautiful and atmospheric, with enough acreage to keep things private. That’s where I am now. Viewings downstairs, business up here, in a room with thick carpeting, triple-glazed windows that don't open and two padded doors, because my father bought the place off a man who understood that grief needs peace and quiet, ideally contained in a space that doesn't carry sound.

There are six caskets along the far wall with the lids up because this room doubles as the showroom, and Tomek is sitting on the mahogany one.

"Get off that. It's four thousand dollars and there's a grandmother going into it on Saturday."

He gets off it, brushing salt off the lid as he goes. Tomek is twenty-eight, has had a captain's seat for eight months, and I rarely see him without something to eat in his hand. Right now it's paluszki, straight from the bag, and there is a fine dusting of it on the casket, on his lapel, and on my floor. I decide, for the sake of the meeting, not to see it.

Rafe is at the window with his back to the room. He's a year older than me and looks better than I do, which he knows and has never once had the grace to pretend otherwise about. Fair hair, pale eyes, his mother's face from Gdańsk and none of her temperament. One charming flaw: his nose was broken twice by me.

Four years ago he came down into the mortuary while I was working, took one look at what my hands were doing to a man's face, and went straight back up the stairs. He's never mentioned it but he hates visiting me while I’m there, which is fine with me as I thrive on the quiet. He's wanted somebody's blood for Nicko since the night it happened, and he's always down for making sure I know what he thinks of this wedding. Yet the man would take a bullet for me any day.

Constantine has claimed the chair by the far door, ankle on his knee.

And in the wingback, the chair that usually holds a widow or another bereaved, sits Février. A tobacco tin lies balanced on his knee, unopened, and his coffee seems untouched.

I am quite sure he’s over ninety. Spotted hands, a cane across his lap, a suit that was expensive when Kennedy was alive. He came over on a boat with Manon's great-grandfather, and the night she told them what she'd agreed to, he said war would be better than giving a Valmont girl to me. I wasn't in the room, but I made it my business to know.

Henri didn't come himself. He didn't send Olivier either, the one he’d send when he wanted terms written down and signed. He sent the oldest man in his house—a shark who would be fine with a war. That man is now sitting here in my house, and he's not even drinking my coffee.

Message received.

"You can smoke in here."

"I know."

"That was an invitation, Février."

"It was very kind."

He doesn't move. This is going to be a joy.

Rafe doesn't sit down. He's had eleven hours to work out how to say this yet struggles to get on with it.

"Somebody's been using our coffins," he blurts out at last.

"Using them how?"

"Packing them. Four flights out since March. Marku's people paid one of ours to open them at the far end."

I let that sink in and scratch my head, because it's a concerning development.

We fly people home to be buried next to husbands, wives or other family. I seal those boxes myself. I put my signature on the paperwork. I have stood in the small room downstairs and told a crying family member that their relative will reach their final resting place intact, as they were flying out.

Since March, I've been lying to them.

"Bring him in."

His name is Wes. He's a broker. He puts the man who needs something in a room with the man who has it, takes six percent of whatever changes hands, and is careful never to be there when it does. He's the one who put Marku's people together with whoever on my payroll has been opening my coffins. They sit him in the chair in the middle of the room and strap his wrists flat to the arms.

"Mr. Novak," he starts before anybody says anything, "I want to be straight with you, completely straight, because I think there's been a misunderstanding about my involvement⁠—"

"Would you like a mint?"

He looks confused. "What?"

"Mint." I hold the tin up. "Dolores buys them for the viewings. People worry about their breath at funerals."