The voice of a female rabbi speaking in Hebrew soared over the crowd that had gathered at the graves as the three of us stepped into the large group. There were enough people assembled that I wasn’t sure where Mischa stood, although I was sure she was in the front row. I inched up toward the middle-aged couple standing in front of me and peered into the gap between their heads. But I couldn’t see past the extremely tall older gentleman standing in front of them.

On my right, Henry nudged me in the arm with his elbow, and nodded his head on an angle to suggest that I should take a few steps to the right along with him. The three of us inched over by a few feet, and suddenly I could see Mischa.

Or rather, she could see me.

She was standing on the left side of the two polished, slate-gray caskets, which had been arranged side by side, both set atop the straps of lowering devices arranged over the rectangular graves that had been dug in the ground. She looked more serious and mature than I’d ever before seen her in a fitted black wool coat. Her uncle Roger stood beside her and rested his hand on her shoulder.

But I could tell even from her posture that Mischa was not Mischa. And she didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see me as our eyes locked. A barely there grin curled at the corners of her lips. The expression on her face informed me that I was right where she wanted me.

“Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach l’alam ul’almei almaya,” the rabbi said as everyone listened politely. A tiny redheaded woman standing next to Mischa’s gymnastics coach sniffled and dabbed at her nose with a handkerchief. The rabbi switched to English to continue praying the Mourner’s Kaddish. “Blessed, praised, honored, exalted, extolled, glorified, adored, and lauded be the name of the Holy Blessed One…”

A bitterly cool breeze rustled the bare branches of a nearby tree, and everyone in the crowd shuddered. But I was barely paying attention to what was happening around me. All I could focus on was Mischa’s face, and the menace that I saw in her dark eyes. I’d stowed my earbuds and phone in the pocket of my coat, which still stank like smoke, hoping to make it less easy for the spirits to realize that the phone was my method of communication with Jennie—just in case they weren’t already aware.

Even as the caskets were slowly, ever so slowly, lowered into the ground, Mischa’s eyes remained fixed on me. She only looked away when the rabbi handed her a small shovel, and she stepped around the two open graves to raise a scoop of dirt to dump into her father’s grave, and then her mother’s. As soon as Mischa handed the shovel to her uncle Roger so that he could take his turn, and her gymnastics coach and his wife embraced her in a group hug, her eyes returned to me.