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Back We Were Killers Once Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty–one
  25. Twenty–two
  26. Twenty–three
  27. Twenty–four
  28. Twenty–five
  29. Twenty–six
  30. Twenty–seven
  31. Twenty–eight
  32. Twenty–nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty–one
  35. Thirty–two
  36. Thirty–three
  37. Thirty–four
  38. Thirty–five
  39. Thirty–six
  40. Thirty–seven
  41. Thirty–eight
  42. Thirty–nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty–one
  45. Forty–two
  46. Forty–three
  47. Forty–four
  48. Forty–five
  49. Forty–six
  50. Forty–seven
  51. Forty–eight
  52. Forty–nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty–one
  55. Fifty–two
  56. Fifty–three
  57. Fifty–four
  58. Fifty–five
  59. Fifty–six
  60. Fifty–seven
  61. Author’s Note
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. Also by Becky Masterman
  64. About the Author
  65. Newsletter Sign-up

GEMMA-KATE, reading from prepared notes: I’m interviewing Carlo DiForenza of Tucson, Arizona. Let’s get some of the basics out of the way. How old are you and where were you born?

CARLO: I’m sixty-seven years old. I was born in Torino, Italy, in 1949, four years after World War II ended.

I had cleaned up the kitchen after dinner while they were talking, and then put on a sweater and went outside to listen to all this, pulling up a patio chair near the chaise lounges where they sat keeping warm by the fire pit. I knew pretty much all of what Carlo was telling Gemma-Kate, heard it more than once and never tired of it. I thought this was what it meant to love.

That was a good evening, all of us accustomed to the worst that life could throw, yet none of us conscious of that melodramatic thing they call impending doom.

When Carlo gave his date and place of birth he spoke like someone who knew he was being recorded, carefully and slightly formal.

Carlo’s father was a fisherman, with a small boat that he took into the Mediterranean from the coastal town. This was before the whole Cote d’Azur from Montpellier down the Italian coast to Sorrento was linked by wealth, border patrol, and the euro. So Carlo’s boyhood was that of the too-intelligent lower-class child, sneaking into the local library as if it was something sinful to read. His mother, Sophia, took him to mass daily at the large church that had been built to house the Holy Shroud. Carlo would stare at it during the mass, squinting his eyes in hopes that the blurring would make the figures more likely to move. He wanted to be the kind of person who saw visions.

GEMMA-KATE: Did you believe the shroud was the burial cloth of Jesus?

CARLO: Of course. We all did.

GEMMA-KATE: It’s not. Science has proven it’s not.

CARLO: Does it matter? I think the miraculous lies not so much in the physical world as in what meaning we see in it. And how we’re changed by the meaning.

Gemma-Kate gave him the respect of not scoffing, while I watched Carlo look at her with an open smile. The smile was one he had turned on me from time to time. It said, you either feel this or you don’t, and I won’t try to convince you.

GEMMA-KATE: Did the shroud ever move?

CARLO: It moved me.