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"You already know what they were like. You probably have the CCTV."

"The cameras in your hospital are for security purposes only, and the resolution is a disgrace. I'd never learn anything useful from them."

"Comforting."

"I'm asking you," I say, "because I want you to tell me."

And there’s the kind of question she never has an answer ready for. She can bat away my threats and my jokes all day long, but the minute I say something to her plainly, something I actually mean, she goes quiet. Just for a moment. She covers it by bending down to pull the other shoe off, but I saw it, and she knows I did.

"It was a shift, Laszlo." She speaks to the floor. "Long one. We lost one we shouldn't have … a young one." She toes her shoe off. "You'd have liked him. He's your demographic now."

Christ, I want to marry her again.

"Manon."

"What."

"I'm not angry about the dinner and what happened after," I tell her, and it's a total lie because the image of her spread out on that bathroom counter will be forever engraved into my brain.

She straightens up slowly. "I don't remember asking for absolution."

"You didn't. I'm giving it away free. It's a promotional period." I take my coat off the hook. "You broke into my mortuary. You went down into the one room in this world that's mine, and you put your hands on every tool I own, moved every last thing, and left it for me to find. Then you vanished for a day and let me wonder. Your point was well made. I answered it at dinner. Call it a draw and come back to the table."

"A draw." She laughs, once, with no warmth in it. "You bought us burial plots, Laszlo. You designed the headstones yourself and passed the drawings around at my mother's table like vacation photos."

"They're very good drawings. The stonemason studied in Carrara."

"You're mentally unstable."

"Everyone says so, but you still married me."

"To save my brother."

"Details." I check my cuffs. "We have dinner tonight. Eight o'clock. Dolores is doing the veal."

"I'd rather die."

"I imagined as much. I've planned around it." I open the door. "Wear whatever you like. You'll be beautiful and savage in any of it."

She holds up her middle finger, her only comeback. Yeah, she really is worn out. She just stands there in the hallway in her creased scrubs, arm out straight, holding the finger up at me. I see she’s been biting her nails to the quick. She’s lost a patient—that got to her. Always did. My heart squeezes in my chest. I really want to comfort her, but she doesn't want me to.

"Noted," I say. "There's food in the warmer. Eat before you sleep, or Dolores will come up and sit on the bed until you do. She's done it to me, so I can tell you there's no dignity in it."

The finger stays up until I close the door. God, the commitment.

Daniel drives me to our second home. The viewings happen downstairs and we take care of business upstairs, in the room with the caskets arranged like showroom models. There's a family down in reception choosing music for a Thursday service when I arrive, so I go up the back stairs to avoid them.

They're all waiting for me when I walk in. Rafe, Tomek, and Constantine are already sitting at the table. With them, old Février, who’s been invited once more for some reason. Also, since the marriage, I understand our families are shifting to a new dynamic of alliance and collaboration. In short, a miracle.

I pour myself a coffee and sit down at the head of the table.

"Go on," I tell Rafe.

"Here's where we've been since Wes." Rafe doesn't waste time. "Back in March, somebody started paying one of our men to pack drugs into the repatriation caskets we fly home for burial. We were sending people back to their families with heroin packed underneath them and my name signed on the customs paperwork. We caught the man who was opening the boxes at the other end, and we caught the broker who set it up. That was Wes and we got him. Before he stopped being useful to us he gave up two things. An address in Bushwick, and the name of a man inside the port authority."

"Tell me about the address," I say.

"We went and watched it for three nights before we made our move." He puts a folder on the table and slides it across to me. "It's a packing house, belonging to Marku's people. We sat outside and photographed everyone going in and out. Here's the part you're not going to like."