The girl’s body hung from the middle of the ceiling, rope secured to a hook, wheeled desk chair cast aside. The green surgical scrub shirt shrouded her skinny frame, and her body swayed lightly, as if teased in the wind.

“Get her down, get her down” came Danielle’s voice, urgent behind her. “Code, code, code! Dammit, Greg, call it in!”

But Greg wasn’t moving. It was obvious to him, as to D.D., that the time for medical attention had come and gone. To be certain, D.D. took one step forward, wrapped her hand around the girl’s ankle. Lucy’s skin was cool to the touch, no pulse beating feebly at the base of the foot.

D.D. stepped back, turned to Neil. “When you notify the ME, remind Ben we’ll want the knot on the rope left intact.” She turned to Danielle and Greg. “You two can return upstairs if you’d like. We’ll take it from here.”

But neither of them took the hint. Greg’s arm went around Danielle. She turned, ever so slightly, into him.

“We’ll stay,” the nurse said, her voice flat. “It’s the duty of the lone survivor. We must bear witness. We must live to tell the tale.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

DANIELLE

Six months after the funeral, Aunt Helen took me to pick out tombstones for my siblings’ graves. She’d already selected a rose-colored marble for my mother, inscribed with the standard name and timeline. But when the moment came to select a stone for Natalie and Johnny, Aunt Helen wasn’t able to bear it. She walked away.

So my sister and brother lay in unmarked graves for the first six months, until Aunt Helen decided it was time to get the job done. I went with her. It was something to do.

The monument store was a funny place. You could pick out lawn ornaments, decorative fountains, or, of course, tombstones. The man in charge wore denim overalls and looked like he’d be more comfortable gardening than helping a black-suited woman and her hollow-eyed niece pick out grave markers for two kids.

“Boy like baseball?” he asked finally. “I could engrave a bat and ball. Maybe something from the Red Sox. We do a lot of business with the Red Sox.”

Aunt Helen laughed a little. It wasn’t a good sound.

She finally selected two small angels. I hated them. Angels? For my goofy siblings, who liked to stick out their tongues at me, and were always one whack ahead at punch buggy? I hated them.

But I wasn’t talking in those days, so I let my aunt do as she wanted. My mother was marked in rose marble. My siblings became angels. Maybe there were trees in Heaven. Maybe Natalie was saving bunnies.

I didn’t know. My parents never took me to church, and my corporate-lawyer aunt continued their agnostic ways.