Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

40

Jesse tried to reconcile the size of the closed white coffin with the skeleton of the girl inside. He tried to reconcile the images of the girl, of her mugging for the camera with Molly and Ginny, with the dirty bones found in a hole on Trench Alley. He stopped soon after he began. These weren’t the kinds of things Jesse focused on. He didn’t see the point. The dead were just that, dead. If humans possessed souls and if there was something that came after this world, Mary Kate’s had gone there a long time ago. The rest of it, these few hours at the funeral home, were for the less fortunate, the ones left behind to suffer.

Jesse made his appearance at the funeral home before receding into the backdrop. He paid his respects to Tess O’Hara and Mary Kate’s sisters and their families. One of the grandkids looked a lot like her late aunt. Mary Kate’s father was nowhere in sight. No surprise in that. But Jesse was surprised by the paltry turnout. Then he remembered what Healy had said to him about small towns and shame. They all just wanted to forget, to go to work, come home and have dinner with their families, watch TV, and be left alone. They wanted to forget. It was Jesse’s job to remember.

He had given Molly the day off to attend the wake and the service, but she came and sat beside him in one of the empty back rows of folding chairs at the funeral home. Molly’s jaw was clenched tightly. Lately, that seemed to be her default expression. The rest of her face was blank, her eyes far, far away.

“Do you think she’ll be lonely, Jesse?” Molly said, her voice a brittle whisper.

“How do you mean?”

“She’s had Ginny there to hold her all these years. Now...”

Jesse turned to stare at Molly. This was a side of her he had never before seen. He understood that she felt guilty about something. Maybe that she had lived happily all these years, had raised a family and built a career, while her friends had been murdered and left to molder in a filthy hole in a forgotten building. But Jesse sensed there were other things at play here. And there was a question he had wanted to ask her from the very start, that in deference to their relationship, he had not asked. He had hoped she would just come to him and explain, but she hadn’t. He thought, for both of their sakes, the time had come to ask the question.

“Come with me,” he said, standing and walking out back of the funeral home.

Snow was falling in big, lazy flakes. A white dusting covered the few cars that would follow the hearse to Sacred Heart Catholic Church. They stood close to each other under an overhang.

“What?” she asked.

“You know what.”

“No, I don’t.”

“If Mary Kate was your best friend and Ginny was a friend of yours who grew up only two houses away from you, why weren’t you there that night?”

Molly looked as uncomfortable as Jesse had ever seen her. He put his hand on her shoulder, friend to friend. Molly’s mouth opened and closed. No words came out. She was torn.

He repeated the question. “Why, Molly?”

“Mary Kate and I were fighting over a boy. We hadn’t spoken to each other in weeks.”

“The boy who you mentioned when we were on Stiles Island, was he who you were fighting over?”

Molly nodded, looking very stoic.

“What was his name?”

“Warren. He went to Sacred Heart Boys.”

“Older?”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Jesse.”

“I know you don’t, but you have to talk about it to someone.”

“Not now. Not today, of all days.”

“Did Mary Kate take Warren away from you, Molly?”

“Please, Jesse, stop. I can’t do this now.”

Jesse took his hand off her shoulder and watched her head back inside. He had been in therapy long enough to know that Molly would tell him when she was ready and not before. Jesse turned his attention to the weather, looked at his watch, and decided he’d better get over to the church.