Page 75 of Cara & Gian: The Guzzi Duet

“But with the shooting and all,” Cara continued, “it brought me back down to reality.”

“And what does that mean?” Gian asked.

He wasn’t sure he was going to like her answer.

“I don’t know right now, Gian.”

Yeah, he didn’t like that at all.

The cemetery had a quiet, almost peaceful, quality about it. The usual sadness clung in the air, but it wasn’t as thick as Gian expected it would be. He stepped out of his car, and looked down the way, noting no vehicles but one that happened to be parked there. Checking his watch, he figured that gave him a bit of time before the men showed up.

Quickly, he strolled through the graveyard, passing by shined headstones and cleaned graves. Fresh flowers—some of the winter kind, but most for spring—rested upon the tops of a great many of the headstones.

All too soon, he came up to the one gravestone he was looking for. His grandfather’s. When his grandmother, Aurora, had died, Corrado made sure that the headstone placed on her grave also included his name, birthdate, and a blank spot waiting for his death date to be added. Now, that spot was no longer blank, but rather, carved in identical font and style to the rest of the numbering with his grandfather’s date of death.

His father waited on a nearby bench, a paper in his hands.

“Do you come here often?” Frederic asked.

Gian shook his head. “This is the first time, actually.”

“How does it feel?”

“Odd.”

“Oh?”

Gian bent down to place a handful of fresh flowers along the ledge of his grandparents’ stone. “I thought it wouldn’t feel like he was here, but it does, in a way.”

“Even though he isn’t buried yet.”

“Like I said, it’s odd.”

Corrado’s body was still waiting to be buried because of the frost in the ground. Another month, and the ground would be soft enough to dig. Gian didn’t plan to attend that event, but he figured that he didn’t need to.

“Do you come here often?” Gian asked his father.

Frederic set his newspaper aside. “Once a week to say hello to Ma. She used to threaten me that if I didn’t come to chat with her—even when she was dead—that she would haunt me for it. Turns out, this is like a haunting of sorts, anyway.”

“What about for Corrado?”

His father pointed to his temple. “That’s all in here. I hear him all the time there, Gian.”

Strange …

“I don’t hear him there. Or rarely.”

Frederic lifted his brow and said, “Perhaps you’re not listening close enough, son.”

“Or maybe he thinks he told me enough when he was alive that he shouldn’t need to be repeating it now.”

“Or that,” his father agreed, chuckling. “What did you want me here for today?”

Gian stood straight again, and crossed the path to sit with his father on the bench. “There have been some ongoing problems lately.”

“You must think I’m completely out of the loop because I’m not a made man.”

“I assume nothing about no one, Dad.”