Guilty Read Online Free PDF Page B

all secretaries or flight attendants or cocktail waitresses at fancy bars and clubs, all on the hunt for men with money. They stick together because, unlike my mom, they never quite fit into the social circle they most wanted to be part of—the really rich women who grew up in big houses and went to private schools and Ivy League universities, and who look down on people like Tracie. They look down on my dad too.
    Besides Tracie’s friends, I see a bunch of people who work at the club and who probably think it’s good for their careers to show sympathy for the boss in his time of grief. I see some of Dad’s best customers too. Also some neighbors. And my friends—a whole bunch of them. Some are there because they’re my buddies, like John and Geordie. Some are there because it means they get to skip school. But they’re nice about it. They come up to me after the service while I’m waiting for the funeral home people to put the casket in the hearse so we can all drive to the cemetery. They tell me how sorry they are and how horrible it must be to lose two people like that, first my mother and then my stepmother. Some of my teachers are there too. They shake my hand and tell me they’ve been thinking of me. They shake my dad’s hand and express their sympathy.
    All my friends except John and Geordie go back to school after the service. A lot of the people from the club leave too. The rest of us pile into cars to drive to the cemetery. We have a police escort to make sure that all the cars stay together, even when we come to intersections. I ride in the front car with my dad. But as soon as we get to the cemetery, I hang back and wait for John and Geordie. I stick with them when the minister says some more words over the coffin and when the coffin is lowered into the ground. I stay with them until my father breaks down sobbing. Then I go to him and put an arm on his shoulder. I feel like his dad rather than the other way around as I pull him gently away from the grave and tell him that everything is going to be okay.
    That’s when I look up and see her standing in the distance. She isn’t part of the funeral, but she’s there anyway—the girl from the police station, the one whose father died. The one I talked to and thought about afterward. Mostly what I thought about was that I must have sounded like some kind of psycho: I saw two people die. They were shot. Like that made me special or something.
    I wonder what she’s doing here and how she even knew there was a funeral. Then I remember that the cops called my father by name. She must have heard about it on the news or read about it in the newspaper. And here she is. But why?
    â€œFinn? Hey, Finn, where are you going?” John calls to me.
    I tell him I’ll be right back. At least, I think I do.

Ten
    LILA
    D on’t do it, I told myself when I woke up this morning. Don’t do what you’ve been thinking about all night. Don’t go.
    But here I am. It’s like there’s a rope attached to me and someone is pulling it, reeling me in, like a fish on a line. Every step of the way, I tell myself it’s a bad idea. But that invisible rope keeps tugging me until I find myself standing in the middle of a cemetery in the middle of town. The place is so massive that at first I can’t see anything but trees that must have been growing since even before my father was born. It’s so big that after I finally find the right place, all I can hear is the murmur of the man who is standing in front of the open hole in the ground, reading from a small book, and the trill of a bird overhead somewhere in one of the trees. There are no traffic sounds. No city sounds.
    I watch. There are quite a few people here. I wonder if there were more at the funeral home where the paper said the service was going to be held. Probably. I’ve been to funerals before, mostly funerals of some of the old people in