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I shook my head. “They were murdered.”
His eyes widened. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I’m just not sure what else to talk about… here, you know?” he said, motioning around us.
He glanced back at his mother’s headstone, and his warm eyes grew shiny with unshed tears.
“You could tell me about your mother,” I offered.
He looked up at me, and the corners of his lips twitched in a smile. “I think she’d like that.”
I watched his lips, waiting for him to continue. They were well-shaped lips, not too thin but not overly full.
“She was kind,” he said, but then he stopped and shook his head. “That’s what she’d want me to say. What I’d say is that she was mischievous—she could stir up strife or settle disputes with just a few well-chosen words.”
I smiled gently. “My father was the mischievous one—secrets and such.” The image of my parents had faded in my mind over the years, but I could still see the way my dad’s eyes lit up whenever we were conspiring to keep secrets from Mum.
“Does it ever go away?” he asked, his eyes meeting mine. “That urge to turn to them only to realize for the hundredth time they’re gone?”
I smiled sadly. “I’m afraid it doesn’t. But it does become a little less of a jarring shock, I think. You catch your breath a little easier from it, your heart doesn’t feel like it skips quite so many beats.”
His lips twitched in an empathetic smile. “Thanks.”
I nodded, not sure what else to say.
“Well, maybe I’ll let you finish with your visit,” he offered, shuffling his feet. “I’ll come back later.”
“No, please,” I said before he could turn away. “I was just leaving, truly.”
He nodded and stopped shuffling. “Thanks.”
I looked at my parents’ headstones once more, fidgeting with the forget-me-nots so that a light brush of breeze wouldn’t blow them away.
“…strange and probably highly inappropriate,” he was saying as I caught a glimpse of his lips as I turned to leave. “Did you want to get coffee… sometime?”
All right, well, this had taken a quick turn in a direction I hadn’t been anticipating.
The man was attractive and well-dressed. He seemed kind and courteous as well. Here in the cemetery, so close to my parents, it was easy to feel their glowing approval.
But he’s not Amadeo,a voice whispered from the back of my mind. A trait that should have been this man’s most appealing feature. But it wasn’t.
“Thank you, but I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, all the while wondering what was wrong with me.
I’d felt my parents’ cold disapproval on my shoulders the whole time I’d been engaged in a meaningless sexual relationship with Elio, and here I was turning down the chance for a real relationship in favor of sex with a dangerous man, a man who only came to me in the middle of the night.
“You’re probably right,” the man said with a chagrined smile, though it didn’t deter him from holding out a business card. He shrugged. “In case you change your mind.”
I hesitated for a moment, then took it. When his fingers brushed against mine, I waited to feel the tingling warmth that should have been there, that first moment of contact with a sexually appealing potential partner.
There was no tingling, no warmth.
“Goodbye,” I said as I tucked the card into my purse and left, ignoring the slight prickling of unease that was stirring the hairs at the nape of my neck.
***
I stepped off the hospital elevator onto the fourth floor, wondering, not for the first time, what on earth I was doing. My shift was over for the day. I should have been on my way home.
“The multiple-gunshot victim?” I asked at the nurse’s station. “He came into the ER this morning—a boy, about fifteen years old?”
A nurse with a long braid down her back and blue butterfly scrubs nodded. “Yup, he’s here,” she said, scanning through the charts in front of her and holding out the one I was looking for.
