Grave Concern Read Online Free PDF

physical presence beneath the ancient woollen coat. How old would Jean–Pierre Marcotte be now, late seventies? Yet hardly Yeats’s “tattered coat upon a stick.” Beneath a few lines and age spots, Marcotte’s face was uncommonly striking: the angled jaw and high cheekbones way too reminiscent of his son’s. Yes, you could say he was handsome. Would have turned heads back in the day, yes indeed. In her mind’s eye, Kate superimposed the son, and her heart did a little flutter. She took a slurp of her Red Rose, dearly wishing it was a chai latte, which would have calmed her right down.
    Perhaps it was the fact of being in her own space. Her office. Her business. Her baby. Kate felt a power she’d never felt before in Marcotte’s presence.
    â€œAh, Monsieur Marcotte, uh, Jean–Pierre! What can I do ya for?”
    But as soon as she’d spoken, Kate regretted her bantering tone. So often, she’d found, men took her attempts at jollity for flirtation. Just because a man had white hair didn’t mean he’d be exempt. And Marcotte of all people … what had she been thinking?
    Marcotte took a seat, neatly placed his gloves and threadbare scarf on his lap and folded his hands on top. He looked at the formal nameplate Kate had finally had made up, having grown sick of being called “Bonnie” by one particularly forgetful client.
    â€œKate — Kate, is it?”
    Kate nodded, but he wasn’t looking. “Yes,” she said.
    Marcotte raised his head. “You looked familiar, you. Have I known you before?”
    â€œI delivered flowers the other day.”
    Her visitor looked skeptical. “ Pis, call me John. No one calls me Jean–Pierre no more.”
    There he stopped. Kate, assuming he was embarrassed to divulge his mission, tried to set him at his ease, rattling on about Grave Concern’s offerings.
    His reply was abrupt, just short of cutting her off. “My Rita passed on three years ago, too young …” He hung his head and shook it despairingly.
    To break the silence, she launched into the usual song and dance about price points on grave services, thinking to facilitate an obviously difficult decision. But, after listening politely, if rather impatiently, Mr. Marcotte waved his hands in the air, as though to clear away all she’d said.
    â€œI’m not here for dat,” he said, the sliver of accent growing broader. “I won’t have my beautiful Rita talking to strangers, with all respect to you, I mean.”
    â€œUh, Monsieur Marcotte,” she said, falling back on the old method of address she had been taught. “Uh, what was it you were, uh, here for, then?”
    Marcotte lifted his still full and striking head of hair, silver with streaks of copper lingering here and there. He looked at Kate with the same sea-green eyes as his son. She felt vaguely feverish.
    â€œI hear you’re out there at the cemetery often.”
    Kate nodded. “Nature of the business.”
    â€œIt’s true you grew up here and just came back?”
    Just. Nearly two years, but never mind. Kate nodded again.
    â€œYou remember, maybe, we have a large family — three daughters, three sons. They were spread along, first two, then the later ones.”
    Kate kept her features as neutral as she could. “Vaguely,” she said. “I believe we went to different schools.”
    Marcotte narrowed his eyes. “J.P., Jean–Philippe, the second, would have been your age, I guess,” he said. The bridge of the nose, the curve of the cheek, the angled jaw — the longer she looked, the more resemblance Kate saw between father and son. “Jean–Philippe and I never did saw eye to eye. That’s why I come here.”
    Kate sensed something bad. Very bad. Her hands began to shake. She tried to speak, but the larynx would not co-operate.
    Marcotte continued. “When J.P. died — ”