SPECIMEN DAYS
Chapter One
Walt said that the dead turned into grass, but there was no
grass where they'd buried Simon. He was with the other
Irish on the far side of the river, where it was only dirt and
gravel and names on stones.
Catherine believed Simon had gone to heaven. She had a locket
with his picture and a bit of his hair inside.
"Heaven's the place for him," she said. "He was too good for this
world." She looked uncertainly out the parlor window and into the
street, as if she expected a glittering carriage to wheel along with Simon
on board, serene in his heedless milk-white beauty, waving and
grinning, going gladly to the place where he had always belonged.
"If you think so," Lucas answered. Catherine fingered the locket.
Her hands were tapered and precise. She could sew stitches too fine
to see.
"And yet he's with us still," she said. "Don't you feel it?" She worried
the locket chain as if it were a rosary.
"I suppose so," Lucas said. Catherine thought Simon was in the
locket, and in heaven, and with them still. Lucas hoped she didn't expect
him to be happy ab ... read full excerpt from Specimen Days ebook
