Chương 2
Numbers did not whisper to me.
They did not glow.
They simply failed to agree with each other, and I had learned to respect disagreement.
A consulting payment had been booked twice under different subsidiaries.
Then another.
Then a charitable grant had disappeared into a vendor whose mailing address belonged to a storage facility outside Wilmington.
I told Luca we might be looking at sloppy accounting.
He told me his mother personally reviewed the family trust distributions tied to those subsidiaries.
Neither of us said anything for several seconds.
That silence had been the true beginning.
Now Wendy took my elbow.
“Come with me.”
I pulled free.
Her eyebrows lifted.
“After the service,” I said.
It was the first thing I had said to her since she began.
My voice sounded strange to me.
Too ordinary.
Wendy’s eyes narrowed.
“Why wait?”
“Because your son is still lying ten feet away.”
Something moved across her face.
Not guilt.
Calculation.
She stepped back.
“Try not to make this uglier than it already is.”
I nearly laughed.
Instead I walked toward the coffin.
Every step felt wrong.
If Luca was alive, why were we here?
If he had chosen this, who knew?
How could any legitimate investigation justify letting me believe he had died?
I wanted to grab his hand and force him upright myself.
Two taps.
Pause.
One.
Keep quiet.
Trust me.
I placed the white rose across his folded hands.
His skin was cool.
Not cold.
I hated myself for not noticing immediately.
A faint pressure touched the side of my little finger.
Luca.
I swallowed.
“You idiot,” I whispered.
His finger pressed once.
I almost smiled.
Then the chapel doors opened.
Three people entered in dark suits.
A fourth remained near the doorway.
The shift in Wendy was immediate.
Her shoulders stiffened.
Flynn stopped halfway to his seat.
The man in front showed a badge to Father Daniel and said something too quietly for the congregation to hear.
Father Daniel went pale.
A woman in the third row stood.
She had introduced herself earlier as a former compliance director from one of Luca’s subsidiaries.
I had assumed she came out of professional loyalty.
Now she moved into the aisle and unfastened the black coat she had kept buttoned through the entire service.
A badge hung at her waist.
Wendy took one step backward.
“What is this?”
No one answered her.
The man approaching her had the tired face of someone who disliked ceremony.
“Wendy Sterling?”
She drew herself up.
“This is my son’s funeral.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You can speak to my attorney tomorrow.”
“We’re speaking to you now.”
Several phones appeared openly this time.
The relatives who had whispered about me began whispering about her.
Flynn moved toward the side exit.
The woman with the badge stepped into his path.
“Mr. Vance, stay where you are.”
His face lost color.
Wendy looked at me.
For the first time that morning, her expression was unguarded.
“You did this.”
I did not have to pretend confusion.
I truly had no idea what was happening anymore.
Then Luca inhaled.
It was soft, but in the silence it sounded enormous.
A woman screamed.
Someone knocked over a folding chair.
Father Daniel said, “Jesus Christ,” with enough sincerity to qualify as prayer.
Luca opened his eyes.
Wendy stared at him.
Her mouth moved without sound.
He sat up slowly, wincing as he pulled a thin monitoring lead from beneath his shirt collar.
The undertaker standing near the wall covered his face with both hands.
I looked at Luca.
He looked back at me.
“Hi,” he said.
I slapped him.
The sound cracked through the chapel.
No one moved.
Luca touched his cheek.
“That’s fair.”
Then I grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him against me so hard his shoulder struck the coffin edge.
For one terrible second I could not decide whether to kiss him or hit him again.
I did neither.
I held him.
His arms came around me.
He was warm.
Alive.
Shaking.
That surprised me.
Whatever plan had put him inside that coffin had frightened him too.
Over his shoulder, I saw one of the agents take Wendy’s handbag.
Another instructed her to turn around.
She did not.
She stared at Luca as if he had committed an unforgivable betrayal simply by breathing.
“You let me think you were dead,” she said.
Luca released me.
His face changed when he looked at her.
The softness vanished.
“So did Jessi.”
Wendy’s lips parted.
Luca climbed awkwardly out of the coffin.
His legs nearly buckled when his shoes hit the floor.
I caught his arm on instinct, then immediately resented myself for helping him.
He noticed.
“Later,” he murmured.
“Oh, there will be a later.”
Flynn suddenly shoved the agent blocking the side aisle.
He got two steps.
That was all.
A deputy caught him against a pew, and the chapel erupted into overlapping voices.
People stood.
Someone began crying.
A reporter shouted Luca’s name.
Father Daniel kept asking everyone to sit down while remaining standing himself.
Wendy did not run.
She stayed perfectly still as the agent fastened handcuffs around her wrists.
“This is insane,” she said.
The man holding her handbag removed a sealed document envelope from it.
“No,” Luca said.
His voice was quiet.
“This is the part where it stops being insane.”
Wendy looked at me again.
The hatred in her face was almost comforting.
Hatred I understood.
What frightened me was the realization that Luca did not look surprised by any of this.
Not by the agents.
Not by the badges.
Not by the envelope.
Not by his mother’s arrest.
He had known.
He had planned it.
And judging by the way the lead investigator shook his hand, he had planned it with people who had made sure I knew nothing.
Luca reached for me.
I stepped away.
His hand remained suspended between us.
May you like
The chapel roared with confusion around him.
I looked at the man I had mourned, the husband I had kissed goodbye in a hospital room, the person whose wedding ring I had worn on a chain against my chest because I could not bear to leave it in a drawer.
