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For Marian, strong and useful for those past five days, offering support to those weaker than she, volunteering late into the night and bearing up, that small thing had been the sight of Peggy Molloy. Seeing her shoulders bent as though carrying weight, her head covered in the old style with a black lace shawl, had brought Marian to unexpected tears.

If Tom was the abdicated prince, living now by choice as a commoner, Peggy Molloy, widowed seven years, was still the sad queen she had always been. She dressed as other women did, and walked like them, sat and talked among them in the same gentle voice she had always used; her grandchildren's friends adored her as her sons' friends always had. Others in church that day had lost loved ones; Peggy Molloy had not. But seeing her clothed in mourning out of respect for other mothers' sons had swept Marian back through years, to another mass, also at St. Ann's, when the loss had been all of theirs but Peggy's more than anyone's: the funeral mass for Jack.

PHIL'S STORY

Chapter 10

Sutter's Mill

October 31, 2001

The phone again. Goddamn it. There might be something to be said, Phil thought, fumbling for the damn thing in his pocket, for a city where the phones don't work.

“Constantine.” More of a threat than a greeting, but screw whoever it was if they couldn't take a joke.

“It's Kevin.”

Shit. Good going, Phil. Courtroom technique, swift softening of voice: “Hey, Kev. How're you doing?”

“You need to come out here. I need to talk to you.”

“I've been wanting to. But your mother—”

“Mom doesn't want to see you. We'll meet somewhere. You and me.” Kevin was on edge, his voice tight and cold, but at least he was calling.

“Wherever you say.”

“I'd come in—”

“No, no problem.” Come in, Kev—on the crutches, with the pain pills every four hours. “Where's good?”

“There's a bar called the Bird.”

“I know it. On Main Street?”

“That reporter's dead, Uncle Phil. I need you to tell me what's going on.”

“Kev? Kev, I don't know.”

“The paper says someone killed him.”

“I saw that.” And was just told it, by a girl not much older than you are, who's sure it's true and wonders if it was me.

“Did they?”

Do you mean, did I? “There's no evidence he didn't jump, Kevin.”

“Evidence? Oh, fuck evidence! What the fuck does that mean, there's no evidence? You think you're talking to a jury, you can just throw words around and convince me?”

“I'm not trying to convince you of anything.”

Kevin's anger fell back, a quick blaze that flared itself to embers. “What's going on, Uncle Phil? What does it have to do with Uncle Jimmy?”

And there you had it. The way it had always been: Uncle Phil and Uncle Jimmy. One weaving through the world the other came from, like the wind, everywhere in it, never part of it; the other a shining light so bright his glow had colored that world long after he'd left it. Now he was gone from all worlds, Jimmy McCaffery was, but his radiance was still blinding.

“Kev . . .” At a loss for words. Phil Constantine? Amazing, incredible. Thou who dost not believe how much the world has changed, check this out. Finally, with colossal effort: “I'll meet you. I'll tell you what I know. But it's not much. Kev, how's your mother?”

“Mom's . . . yeah, Mom's fine. When can you come?”

Yeah. Mom's fine. “I'll take the next boat. Half-hour, forty-five minutes at the outside.”

“Okay. The Bird. See you there.”

The end. Click off. Rise, tell Sandra to cancel appointments. Tell Elizabeth you'll be in touch about Mrs. Johnson.

Tell yourself, at least Kevin's calling.

Phil rode the boat in his usual spot, outside, facing the Brooklyn waterfront and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. The day was calm, but not on the ferry. (On the ferry it never was.) Wind churned up by the boat's single-minded rush for the opposite shore slapped his jacket around him. He tugged off his tie (always wear a tie in the office, always look ready) and folded it into his pocket. Clouds slipped along the sky escaping east, out to sea, away from entangling treetops and tall buildings. Poetic but inaccurate: clouds only got snagged on trees on the peaks of high mountains, where the earth reared up to stab the sky. And among buildings, few were tall enough to touch them.

The towers had been.