Abandon - Meg Cabot [68]
I saw how his face brightened, and I knew I’d said exactly the right thing.
“Great,” he said. “It’s always so good to see you, Piercey.”
If I’d known then how that evening was going to turn out, I might not have just smiled and waved back at him, then opened the gate and ridden off. I might have canceled my meeting with the cemetery sexton and stayed glued by Uncle Chris’s side for the rest of the night. To make sure the evil didn’t get him. This was supposed to be my new hobby.
But I didn’t know then how much the cone of uncertainty had narrowed, or that it was pointing directly at Isla Huesos.
“My son,” the courteous Master said to me,
“All those who perish in the wrath of God
Here meet together out of every land.”
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto III
The office of the cemetery sexton, as he’d reminded me, closed promptly at six. It was way past that when I tapped on the door.
“You’re late,” Richard Smith grumbled when he threw it open. “But I wouldn’t have expected anything less. Come in.”
He stepped aside, allowing me to enter his immaculately neat office. Because the sun had already started sinking past the tree-tops, he’d turned on a small brass desk lamp, the only thing that seemed in keeping with the historical aspect of the Isla Huesos Cemetery, which a brass plaque by the door outside explained had been established over 150 years earlier, in 1847.
Which I suppose might have surprised most people, considering the fact that the office was housed in a quaint, whitewashed cottage complete with a picket fence, tin roof, front porch, windows with turquoise shutters, and original pine floors.
But inside, it was exactly the way I remembered from ten years earlier, though Richard Smith hadn’t been cemetery sexton then: all metal file cabinets and shelves containing badly photocopied applications for internment and construction permits for the sealing and setting of tombs.
That’s what cemetery sextons do, though. Supervise the burying of dead people. They’re not exactly supposed to be into decorating.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Richard Smith said grumpily, closing — and locking — the door behind me. “Sit down.”
He indicated one of several faux-leather chairs that sat in front of a large wooden desk. They were a little different from the ones I remembered from my last visit, but not by much. I hadn’t gotten to sit in any of them then. Grandma had sent me out before I got a chance. They were comfortable. But I still found myself wanting to fidget.
John had told me not to come back to the cemetery. It’s not safe for you here had been his exact words. Not unless you really do want to end up dead. Forever this time.
Well, I was back in the cemetery. Or at least the office of the cemetery sexton. Was I going to end up dead because of this visit?
I really didn’t think that would be fair.
Mr. Smith must have sensed my agitation, since he lowered himself into a creaking office chair behind the desk and got down to business with surprising quickness. Removing my necklace from a top drawer, he laid it upon the dark green desk pad in front of him.
“Recognize this?” he asked, peering at me over the rims of his glasses.
I’d tried to figure out on the ride over how I was going to handle this.
And I’d decided that, as when dealing with the police about Mr. Mueller, denial was probably the safest way to go.
But it was difficult — with the way the dark green leather pad seemed to show off all the necklace’s best features, the gleaming gold chain, the stormy gray stone. Did it look paler in the middle than usual, or was this a trick of the light? — not to just grab it and go. What could he do if I did? He couldn’t chase me. He was old. Older than the jeweler had been, even. He’d probably have a heart attack on his own, without John’s help.
But I couldn’t do it. Not to him. I wasn’t sure why, exactly. He hadn’t been very nice, not to me or to my mom.
Denial. That was the way to go.
“No,” I said, tearing