The simple tombstone inscription always turned Grant’s thoughts to Rachel. He wondered what she was up to, how things had gone so terribly wrong. He hadn’t seen their daughter since the funeral. Shortly after Allison had been diagnosed with lung cancer, Rachel had flown in from New York and holed up in the bedroom with her mother. She had left the house barely uttering a word to Grant. The one time he had tried to get his daughter to talk, Rachel had laid it out pure and simple.

“Mom is dying. There’s nothing more to say.”

Why she refused to ever have another conversation about it was a mystery to Grant. She’d stopped responding to his emails a while back and had even changed her cell number. If it weren’t for coming across an occasional feature piece she wrote in the New Yorker or the New York Times Magazine, he might think that Rachel had dropped off the face of the Earth.

He traced his fingers over the inscription, remembering those final days.

He was forever haunted by that last memory: seeing Allison carted off to hospital, unable to touch her, not realizing in that moment he would never see her again or even get a chance to say goodbye.

Grant sighed and glanced at his watch, the same Tag he’d been wearing for three decades, and spied the tiny window on its face with the date.

The eighth.

Twenty-three more days till year’s end. Three weeks and two more days until he didn’t have to get up and go anywhere. He certainly wasn’t going to rent a house in Todi. Not by himself.

He knew he would end up right here—on this bloody bench. At least he would be rid of his current troubles and wouldn’t have to deal with situations like the Fleming mess earlier in the year.

“Sir?”

For a second, Grant thought he’d drifted off and fallen asleep. He couldn’t come up with another reasonable explanation for hearing Hawley’s voice.

He turned around to see the man himself standing on a path among the graves. Hawley seemed nervous and a little jiggly, still carrying the extra weight Grant had urged him to lose for the job and his health.

“What are you doing here, Hawley?”

“You didn’t answer your mobile, sir.”

“That’s because it’s Sunday and I don’t have it on.”

“Well, I know you come up here every Sunday.”

“And how would you know that?”

Hawley hesitated before answering. Grant felt sorry for the man; he knew he still intimidated him, even though he’d been Hawley’s superior for over a decade.

“Because you told me this is where you go,” Hawley finally explained. “In case I really needed you—if something important came up.”

“Then I presume this must be very important.”