“I would say so,” Anthony said. “In her own way. As much as Maxine loved Nancy, Nancy loved her back. As you know…that does happen sometimes.”
Rainy thought of Duke in Pilcrow House, waiting between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, waiting for her forever.
Anthony started to say something else to her, but the limousine suddenly slowed. It turned into a parking lot and then onto a winding path through the cemetery.
“There will be people here who knew Maxine,” Anthony said. “I’ll tell them you’re my niece, if they ask. But you better come up with a fake name.”
“Right,” she said. “Of course. I’ll be Sunny August.”
He glared at her.
“Joking,” Rainy said.
“You get that from her, you know?”
“The resilience to smile in the face of tragedy?”
“An obnoxious sense of humor.”
“Jessa Charming will be there, won’t she?” Rainy asked.
“She will.”
“Good, I need to have a little chat with her.”
The driver parked and opened the door. Anthony got out first and then helped Rainy out of the low-slung limo. He took a ragged breath. “Let’s get this over with.”
A few men and women in dark suits waited for them at the top of a gentle hill. Anthony didn’t seem to be in any hurry to reach them. They walked up the sloping path to a marble monument with two small doors, side by side. One had Maxine’s name on it, and the other was blank, though in time, it would bear Anthony’s name. Rainy noted that on other graves there were crosses or Stars of David or crescents and stars. But Maxine had chosen the pilcrow symbol.
Death, she seemed to be saying, was only another new beginning.
Two of the men in suits wore name tags indicating they worked for the cemetery. Everyone else—a dozen or so men and women—greeted Anthony with careful hugs and firm handshakes, hearty pats on the back, and promises of “anything you need, please let us know.”
One of the men with a name tag spoke softly but clearly. “Ms. Blake didn’t want formalities at her graveside service. If anyone would like to say anything before the interment, please feel free.”
“Please,” Anthony said. “Anyone but me.”
A long, tense silence followed. Everyone was too grief-stricken or scared to speak.
Even Jessa Charming opened her mouth, then closed it again.
But Rainy knew exactly how to say goodbye.
She looked at the little mausoleum, smiled, and said Maxine’s two favorite words.
“Pencils down.”
Chapter Thirty
After the men in suits placed the wooden box holding Maxine’s ashes in the marble chamber, Rainy and the other mourners drifted away to let Anthony have a moment alone at his wife’s final resting place.
Rainy couldn’t imagine a lovelier place to spend eternity. The cemetery overlooked the ocean. She walked right to the edge of a cliff and saw the beach below and then the endless expanse of sea and sky. The sun had started to set, turning blood red as it sank lazily toward the horizon.
And there, at the fence that overlooked the beach, stood Jessa Charming, all alone, like the heroine of a women’s novel searching the water for answers to questions she didn’t even know how to ask yet.
Game time.
Rainy took a deep breath, then walked over.
