“Dramatic. Incontrovertible. Undisprovable,” Francesca said, pacing.
The burner wouldn’t light. Mira removed the teakettle to a different burner and lifted the metal grate, then the burner cap.
Francesca stopped short. “I have to raise someone from the dead.”
Mira looked up, holding the cap aloft, back still turned. “How would you find someone who’s died?” she asked slowly.
“I missed my chance with Donata. It would have to be a recent death.” Francesca started pacing again. “A hospital, maybe. God, that would be impossible.” She stopped and whispered a prayer into her hands for taking the Lord’s name in vain. The pacing started again. “The VA hospital in Jamaica Plain is supposed to be kind of sketchy. Or the nursing home on Union Street! I bet that’s easy to break into.”
Mira set the cap down onto the burner port and turned the knob. Tick tick tick tick tick. The gas smell bloomed.
Francesca covered her ears with her hands and stomped. “Oh, dear Lord. Think, think! I have the power, I know I have the power. I just have to show him. But how do I find someone who died?”
Tick tick tick tick tick. Mira willed the blue flame to appear.
“Who do we know that’s close to dying? Nana Pignataro? She’s at least ninety-eight. Maybe I could start going over there to help with chores. Keep tabs on her. But what if she wanted to die? I mean, how much fun can it be to keep living when you’re ninety-eight and your friends and kids are dead and you’ve got a hump in your back? No. This has to be a miracle worth doing. A tragedy that someone has died. And a spectacular miracle that they’ve been brought back to life. Like a kid—”
“Don’t dry out that macaroni now! That would be a crime!” Father Ernesto called from the dining room.
“—but I don’t know any kids. Or kids about to die. I don’t even know any kids who take unusual risks. Unless you count Kamil Kulik and his heroin habit, and no one would want him back from the dead if he OD’d. It’s hopeless!”
Gas fumed thick. “Nothing’s hopeless,” Mira said brightly. “There has to be a way to make this a win-win for you and for some … deserving … person. Someone you can save who needs saving. It might be a matter of waiting for the right moment, but when it comes, you’ll know it and be able to act. Then everyone will know. And he’ll know.”
“Girls?”
“I wait until someone has an accident and hope that I happen to be there?” Francesca said. “That’s insane.”
“Not really. Think about it. The potential for accidental death is all around us.” Mira glided to the drawer and removed a matchbox. “The quarry is incredibly dangerous. Someone dies diving there every summer. I hear Steven Pignataro is into huffing these days; maybe he’ll go too far, and he’s right across the street. Then there’s a whole host of kids in school who have EpiPens because they’re deathly allergic to peanuts. A guy eats a peanut butter sandwich and kisses a girl in the cafeteria: it could be deadly. And you could be right there.” Mira lit a match and touched it to the holes in the center of the burner. The burner lit in a neat ring. Mira turned and smiled. “Your gift would be proven in front of hundreds of witnesses.”
Francesca grunted. She froze at the kitchen window and crossed her arms, hooking her index finger around her chapped top lip.
“The weak and vulnerable are everywhere. You just have to find them.” Mira licked her finger and drew it through the flame. It tingled, but it didn’t hurt.
Francesca parted the checked curtain and gazed out over the Pignataros’ cape to the shingled wedge of the Villelas’ rooftop. “Or I can create my own miracles,” she said.
Mira turned the knob until the flames reached high: blue, red, orange, white. If their house exploded, and they were consumed in an airless blaze and returned to ashes, it would be terrible, but it would also be quiet. The urges that tugged and bit at Mira would be evaporated.
Silence could be a wondrous thing too, Mira thought. Her mother would agree.
PART 6
Throat
NOVEMBER 2016
Ben dropped his bike to the grass and shoved his hand in his front pocket, feeling for the mushroom-shaped bottle as he walked toward the brick buildings and grounds office. The pills were supposed to take the edge off. Ben shook the bottle as he walked. He liked how it reminded him of the wormy Mexican jumping beans he used to play with as a little kid. It was easier to tell himself the bottles were toys than the truth: that the pills were his insurance, in case he couldn’t handle being there.
Nobody understood why Kyle wanted to work in a cemetery, especially that cemetery. Never mind that it was the kind of job described as “semi-skilled,” where your coworkers might be prison inmates. Kyle was smarter than most people knew. He’d managed to complete the EMT course nights and weekends in the required eighteen months, though he lasted at the job less than one whole summer. Kyle said his new job was easy. All you needed were a strong back, a little knowledge of hand tools (read: shovels), and the ability to compartmentalize, with grief crowding you every day.
Also, it gave him lots of unsupervised time outdoors to smoke weed.
Ben peered into the window of an office hut. Seeing it empty, he turned to look for a sign of Kyle. As far as cemeteries went, this one was a nice place to land. It was the size of two football fields and framed by the Blue Hills, which meant some graves had views (though Ben couldn’t figure why this mattered to someone six feet under). It was considered fancy by most folks in Bismuth in the same way the boat club was considered fancy, but wasn’t. Ben had overheard his friends’ parents talking about it at the Villelas’ house after Connie’s wake. Mr. Cillo had pulled strings to get Connie in there, and to get the girls in four months later. You had to be a decorated vet or a Kennedy or Frank Cillo to get that kind of real estate, they joked.
An engine roared. Ben shaded his eyes toward Kyle driving a banged-up golf cart straight for him, then jamming on the brake just short of Ben’s toes. Kyle swung himself out of the cart and peeled off canvas gloves, tucking them in the back pocket of his shorts. Dirt crusted over his bare knees. He slipped a cigarette pack from his front pocket and tapped one out, flicking a retro, chunky metal Zippo and lighting the stick under his cupped hand, protecting it from an imaginary draft.
Ben eyed the lighter glinting in the morning sun. “They let you smoke on the job?”
Kyle blew a shot of smoke. “Anything that keeps the nerves tamped down is acceptable. Long as you’re not near sobbing guests.”
“Guests?”
“Family members of the recently departed.”
“You got the lingo down.”
Kyle eyed Ben’s fist. “Whatcha got there?”
“Oh, this?” Ben held the bottle out. “Something some doctor wants me to take.”
“Most prescriptions are. What is it?”
Ben held the bottle at a distance and read as if for the first time. “Ser-tra-line.”
“You mean Zoloft.”