The young carabiniere, whatever he thought, kept his mouth shut. We walked down through the heat and drove to Volterra so I could identify the corpse. A ancient town, narrow streets, new construction on the outskirts, cheap and modern—but in the older part of town buildings from the dark ages held most of the town’s officialdom, including the police office and the morgue. Inside, Frank lay uncovered on a slab: neck broken, head swollen, beaten out of round. Face abraded, eyelids torn, eyes that did not look like eyes. Crooked nose more crooked, mouth smeared wide and bloody. It was still him, though—I could tell by the slope of the shoulders, the shape of him, the mole on his neck, the curled left foot with the yellowing nails.

“Si,” I said.

The morgue attendant and the carabiniere talked in the hall. I heard Orsini’s name.  He was influential around here.  After a while they made a phone call. A different carabiniere appeared, this one of higher rank. He expedited the matter. They released Frank’s body and sent us to the mortuary down the road.

––––––––

They burned Frank’s body in Tuscany, and I rode back in a private car, with my husband’s ashes on the seat beside me. In Rome people had begun to gather around the gate at the old entrance to the city, but I didn’t think too much about this. People often gathered there, tourists and pilgrims, coming as in the old days to tuck notes between the stones, messages to be carried along to the dead.

“She has returned,” said the driver.

“Who?”

“Isabella.”

I didn’t understand. Alone, back at the apartment, I folded Frank’s shirts and slacks and books into the black steamer trunk he’d been packing for Arkansas. Then something broke inside me, or maybe it was broken already, I don’t know. I felt tears on my cheeks, but they weren’t the kind of tears they were supposed to be, I don’t think. Maybe that’s how it is for everyone. I wept anyway. I took up the urn and headed toward the river. The streets were more crowded than usual. I pushed through them to Ponte Sisto, where Frank and I used to stroll, only here the crowds were thicker, the people carrying on as if my grief were their own. I still didn’t understand. Then I saw a vendor working his way from the other side, selling photographs of Isabella, and I realized that the crowds were for her. Isabella’s body had returned to Rome. I pushed through the Italians to the river wall and gazed at the black water. I opened the box and shook Frank’s ashes into the Tiber.

I watched the ashes fall.

I tried to think about Frank, but I couldn’t see him. Instead I saw that boy who’d kissed me in the closet when I was little.