THE DEVIL'S CONTRACT

Elena

The funeral smelled like lilies and lies, and I didn't cry once.

I had done my crying three nights before, on the bathroom floor, my back against the tub and a towel pressed to my mouth so Marco wouldn't hear. Forty minutes. I knew because the pipes knocked when he turned on the upstairs shower, and when he came down again I was still there.

Afterward, I washed my face. Picked a strand of hair off the soap. Went to bed.

I had mistaken being able to do those things for being finished.

At six on the morning of the funeral, Marco found me in the kitchen trying to put a lid on a container that didn't belong to it.

“That's the round one,” he said.

“I can see that.”

He took it from me and set both pieces on the counter.

His suit hung badly at the shoulders. His tie sat too high and too tight, the same knot he'd been making since fifteen. Our father had called it distinctive.

“Come here.”

“What's wrong with it?”

“You need to be able to swallow.”

Marco bent his head. I loosened the knot and started again while he stood with his hands at his sides, letting me fuss over something that could be fixed.

“Dad liked it like that.”

My fingers stopped.

“Dad also thought brown shoes went with everything.”

“They mostly do.”

“Don't start.”

He made a sound that almost became a laugh. I finished the knot and flattened it against his shirt. He didn't step away.

“You okay?” he asked.

“No.”

He nodded, looking over my shoulder at the table.

Our father's unfinished crossword lay on his chair. Neither of us had moved it. Two cups of coffee stood beside the sink from the night before, and behind them was the box of Yamamotoyama tea I had put on the shopping list out of habit.

“We should eat,” I said.

“You first.”

I opened the bread bin. Closed it again.

Marco leaned against the counter beside me. For a while, that was breakfast.

***

At the graveside I counted people because counting was something I could finish.

Twenty-three mourners. The priest. Two cemetery workers waiting far enough away to pretend they weren't waiting.

Mrs. Pereira from next door cried into a tissue that had stopped being useful. One of my father's colleagues checked his watch, then caught me looking and pulled his sleeve down. Another told Marco that Rafael had been a good man, as though my brother might need the reference.

The priest opened his book.

I listened until he said my father's name. Then I concentrated on a loose thread at Marco's cuff.

Rafael Vasquez had hated being late. He'd read restaurant bills with the same attention he gave his work and left generous tips even when he found a mistake. Once, when I was small, he'd spent an entire evening repairing a paper lantern I'd sat on, although we could have bought another for less than the cost of the glue.

None of that belonged in what the priest was saying. I wanted to interrupt him and supply better information.

Marco's hand found mine.

“I can't,” he whispered.

The workers had stepped forward.

“Look at me.”

He shook his head.

“Then look at my shoes. Anywhere you want.”

“That's stupid.”

“I know.”

He looked at my shoes.

I held his hand while they lowered the coffin. His fingers hurt mine. I was grateful for something so ordinary to hurt.

Across the grave, a man stood a little apart from the other mourners. Tall, dark-haired, perhaps in his thirties. His coat was open despite the cold. He wasn't watching the coffin now. He was watching us.

I met his eyes.

People had been looking away from me all morning. He didn't. I became conscious of my mouth pressed shut, the effort it took to stand there.

His gaze dropped to our joined hands, then returned to my face. He didn't offer the small, encouraging smile people kept giving me, as though I were doing well at something.

For a moment I didn't have to arrange my face for someone else's sympathy.

Marco moved against my shoulder. I turned back to him and tightened my grip before the coffin disappeared below the edge of the grave.

When the priest finished, my brother asked, “Do we have to stay until they...?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

I wasn't. I couldn't bear to ask.

“We're going home.”

***

Mrs. Pereira reached the house before us and began opening cupboards. I moved a vase away from the counter's edge and thanked a woman whose name I couldn't remember.

The reception spread through the downstairs rooms and out into the little garden, where people stood with cups warming their hands. My father would have complained about the back door being left open. I nearly shut it twice.

“Elena, where do you want these?”

Marco held a stack of plates against his chest.

“On the table.”

“Which one?”

“The one with the food.”

“There isn't any food out yet.”

I looked at him. He looked back.

“Right,” I said. “The dining table.”

He set them down carefully.

“You don't have to run this whole thing.”

“Someone does.”

“Mrs. Pereira's been running it since yesterday. She's just letting you think it's you.”

From the kitchen came a firm instruction about serving spoons. Marco raised his eyebrows.

I almost smiled. Then somebody touched my arm and asked whether the police had any news.

“Nothing they've told us.”

“You'd think, by now...”

“Yes.”

She waited. I waited with her until she found somewhere else to be.

Three men stood near the back of the garden. I didn't recognize any of them from my father's office, although that meant little. He'd spent twelve years in forensic accounting and had known people he never brought home.

The thin one kept looking toward the side gate. The younger man stood with his hands loose and his weight forward, leaving himself room to move. Between them, a broad man with silver at his temples nodded sympathetically while Mrs. Pereira spoke to him through the doorway.

When she turned away, his expression settled. His gaze lifted to my father's study window on the floor above.

He looked for only a moment.

I moved toward the doorway. His gaze dropped from the window and met mine before he returned his attention to the garden.

“Do you know those men?” I asked Marco.

He followed my glance. “No. Why?”

“I wondered who invited them.”

“Was there a list?”

There hadn't been. We'd published the details because making a hundred phone calls had felt impossible. Now strangers could stand in our garden and study our windows.

“Go get something to eat,” I said.

“It's still covered.”

“Uncover it.”

He studied me, then went toward the kitchen.

The fourth man stood inside, beside the window overlooking the garden.

The man from the cemetery.

He held a glass of water. His fingers rested around it without lifting it, and his eyes moved from the garden to the doorway as I approached. Up close, the line of his mouth was less severe than I'd expected. That annoyed me before we'd exchanged a word.

“Did you work with my father?”

“I knew him.”

His voice was low, carrying easily through the murmur of conversation behind us.

“That's not quite what I asked.”

“No.”

He let the answer stand, waiting for the next question.

“Were you a client?”

“Sometimes he brought me questions.”

“Did you answer them?”

“When I could.”

“You're making this difficult.”

His gaze held mine. “I'm trying not to claim more than I should.”

I wasn't sure I believed him. I was sure he had noticed the three men outside. Once, while I spoke, he'd looked beyond my shoulder toward the silver-templed man, then back at me.

“My father didn't usually bring clients home.”

“That sounds like him.”

“A lot of people have been saying that today.”

“Saying what?”

“Things that sound like they knew him.”

The words came out harder than I intended. I waited for the little retreat, the sympathetic head tilt. Instead, he lowered his glass to the windowsill.

“What would you rather they said?”

For a moment I had nothing.

He stood close enough that I could see a crease beside his mouth. His attention made me unreasonably aware of the space between us.

“Something true,” I said.

He considered that.

“He made people explain themselves. Even when they weren't used to it.”

“Including you?”

“Including me.”

“Did you mind?”

“Sometimes.”

That was the first thing anyone had said about my father all day that didn't seem to have been polished for the occasion.

I looked down at the glass. There was a wet ring beneath it, spreading toward the edge of the sill.

“He'd ask the same question three times,” I said. “Slightly differently, so you couldn't accuse him of repeating himself.”

“I'm beginning to recognize the method,” he said.

I looked up. “I've only asked you once.”

“About whether we worked together? Three times.”

“You haven't answered properly yet.”

“No,” he said. “I haven't.”

His mouth moved, barely. I wanted to see what it would do if he actually smiled. Worse, I wanted to be the reason.

The thought was so out of place that I reached for his glass.

“There's a coaster.”

He lifted the glass, waiting while I slid the coaster into place. I straightened it unnecessarily. His hand stayed above mine until I finished.

“Thank you,” he said.

“He hated rings on the furniture.”

I heard the past tense after I'd said it. The correction in my head was immediate and useless: hates.

The man looked at the coaster, then back at me. He didn't tell me that my father wouldn't mind now.

Behind us, someone called my name. I half turned, already preparing to answer, but Mrs. Pereira intercepted the question with instructions about finding the serving dishes.

“You could sit down,” he said.

“So people can bend over me and ask how I'm managing?”

He glanced at the chairs along the wall. “Fair objection.”

“I've tested it.”

“Then I withdraw the suggestion.”

I nearly smiled, then glanced toward the kitchen. Marco was helping Mrs. Pereira lift a serving dish. When I turned back, the stranger was still listening.

He moved his glass farther back on the sill, safely on its coaster. The care he took with the small correction made me look at his hands again.

“Does everyone do what you suggest?” I asked.

“Clearly not.”

“You looked surprised.”

“I was reconsidering the chairs.”

This time I did smile, briefly. He noticed, and something changed in his face before he looked toward the garden.

The silver-templed man outside had stopped speaking. He was watching us. When the stranger beside me met his eyes, he turned away.

My smile faded.

“Are they with you?”

“We know each other.”

“Another careful answer.”

“Yes.”

I should have asked his name. I should have asked why a man who spoke so quietly could make someone look away through a window.

Instead I stood there regretting that the conversation had changed.

“Elena?” Marco stood in the doorway. “Sorry. It's the man from the funeral home. He needs you to sign something.”

“Now?”

“I tried that.”

I turned back to the stranger. “Excuse me.”

He stepped aside. As I passed, I caught the faint scent of his coat, cold air carried into the overheated room.

In the hall, the funeral director held out a pen.

I signed where he indicated. Asked for a copy. Read the receipt because my father would have read it, and because numbers were easier to look at than the description of what we had paid for.

By the time I returned to the window, the man was gone. His glass stood on its coaster, still full.

I picked up the glass and glanced into the hall. I had a better question ready now, and nobody to ask it of.

Outside, the silver-templed man touched the younger one's elbow. The three of them left through the side gate before Mrs. Pereira brought out the food.

I watched the latch drop into place.

***

By evening I had said thank you so often the words sounded borrowed.

Marco ate half a plate standing at the kitchen counter. I sat beside him and ate enough to stop him looking at mine. After the last guests left, we stacked containers in the refrigerator until neither of us could find room for another.

“We could feed the street,” he said.

“Mrs. Pereira would want her dishes back first.”

He closed the refrigerator with his hip. “Did he ever tell you what to do with all this?”

“The food?”

“The house. His things.”

I put down the towel I was holding.

“No.”

“Okay.”

“We don't have to decide tonight.”

“I wasn't asking to decide tonight.”

“I know.”

“You say that when you want me to stop.”

He was right. I pulled out a chair.

Marco stayed by the refrigerator, one hand still on the handle.

“I can't remember what he said when I called,” he said. “The last time. I know we talked about my classes. He asked about something, and I was doing something else, so I wasn't really...”

“Marco.”

“Don't say he knew I loved him. I know he knew. I just want to remember what he said.”

I sat with my hands empty on the table.

There was a mark on my brother's neck where the tie had rubbed. I wanted to go back to six that morning and loosen it sooner.

“Tell me what you do remember,” I said.

He pulled out the other chair.

We talked until his tea went cold. He remembered our father asking whether he'd eaten, which irritated him because Rafael had asked that every time. Then he remembered a joke about the cost of textbooks. He tried it twice. Neither version was funny.

“That sounds right,” I said.

Marco laughed, and for a second I heard both of them.

By ten he was asleep on the couch with his shoes still on. I loosened the laces and worked them off without waking him. One sock had a hole at the heel.

I covered him and left the shoes by the wall.

***

My father's study was upstairs, overlooking the garden.

I went in to turn off the lamp someone had left burning. At the doorway I stopped, because his reading glasses lay open on an unfinished book, and for one foolish second it seemed rude to touch anything. He might come back looking for them.

I sat in his chair instead.

The room smelled of paper and the tea he'd spilled often enough to leave a pale stain beside the blotter. I pressed my palm there. The wood was smooth.

I looked down at the patch of garden where the silver-templed man had waited. He'd looked toward this window as though he knew what was behind it.

I closed the curtains.

Two years earlier, looking for tape, I had found papers behind the bottom drawer. I left them alone then. He respected my privacy; I respected his.

Now I knelt on the carpet and eased out the drawer.

There were folders behind it. A notebook. Loose pages clipped together in my father's maddeningly tidy way.

I carried them to the desk.

The first page was dated six months earlier. Columns of figures, company names, arrows in blue ink. I turned another page, then another. Property transactions. Payments that passed through companies whose names meant nothing to me yet.

Marrano Holdings appeared often enough that I stopped turning.

I knew the name. Most people who'd grown up here knew it, although knowing and saying were different things. Real estate on the business pages. A crime family everywhere people felt safe enough to speak plainly.

My father's handwriting crowded the margins.

I wanted him there to explain it. I wanted to be impatient while he explained too much. Instead, I laid the pages in order and reached for the notebook.

Near the end, a line had been underlined once.

*Call Dante in the morning.*

I read it again. Then I looked back at the name on the documents.

Whatever my father had meant to ask Dante Marrano, I couldn't ask him why he'd chosen that man to answer it.

Downstairs, Marco coughed in his sleep.

I closed the notebook. I'd begun rereading figures without taking them in. I returned the folders behind the drawer and checked that it shut flush.

It was nearly midnight when I went downstairs.

Marco hadn't moved. I checked the front lock, switched off the hall light, and went to close the living-room blind.

A man stood across the street.

Dark coat. Bare head. The light above our front door reached far enough to show his face when he lifted it toward the window.

The fourth man. The untouched glass. That almost-smile I'd had no business wanting.

My hand tightened on the blind cord.

I stayed where he could see me. Behind me, my brother slept under our father's blanket, and upstairs were papers somebody might have killed to keep unread. I didn't know which of us the man outside had come for. I didn't know whether he had seen me close the study curtains.

I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist.

His head turned toward the corner.

A car passed between us, its headlights catching the glass. I blinked against the glare.

When I could see the pavement again, he was gone.

Elena

In the morning, I checked the pavement before I checked on Marco.

That bothered me afterward.

The street was empty except for a woman dragging a reluctant dog past our gate. I watched them reach the corner, then turned away from the window. My brother had rolled onto his side in the night. One hand hung off the couch, his fingers almost touching the shoes I'd taken off him.

I pulled the blanket back over his shoulder.

“I'm awake,” he said.

“You don't sound it.”

“Neither do you.”

He opened his eyes, looked toward the window, and shut them again.

“What time is it?”

“Just after seven.”

“Too early.”

I left him there and went upstairs for my father's papers.

I would give myself three days to read them properly. That was the bargain. Three days before I called anyone, accused anyone, or decided that a man standing outside our house was an answer rather than another thing I di