Page 97 of Saint of the Shadows

Annie’s dad said something and smiled weakly. Vincent translated, “It’s hard to feel a broken heart with a full stomach.” Realizing her grief-suppressed appetite may come across as rude, Marisol shoveled the rest of the rice in her mouth, filling her cheeks like a hibernating rodent.

I can’t believe they’re watching you eat. I’ve come back from the dead to die of embarrassment again, she heard Annie say. Marisol choked on the last bit of rice.

“You’re a doctor too?” Annie’s mother asked.

Marisol dislodged rice stuck to the sides of her throat. “No. Nurse.”

“But you help sick people,” Annie’s mother continued. She pointed to the pictures and said something Marisol didn’t understand.

Vincent translated, “She said that food is medicine, but happy memories are like—baegsin jeobjong?—an inoculation. They make a heart stronger, so it cannot break from grief.”

Vincent drew an invisible line with two fingers across the table, a signal that Marisol ate enough food to be polite. Marisol hugged Annie’s parentsand prepared to leave. As Tobias helped her into her jacket, Vincent said something to her parents.

One of Annie’s cousins, who overheard, asked Marisol, “I will find a way, or I will make one. Didn’t Hannibal say that?”

“I’m not sure.” To her, it would always be Vincent’s prayer, guiding him to end the curse. And now? She could accept Annie’s story as written... or make a new one that worked.

Marisol blurted, “I’ll build a clinic in her name!” Annie’s parents froze. “I have the money!” She caught Vincent in her gaze. “Or rather, know someone with money. Her clinic won’t just heal the sick or fix the broken, but inoculate them if you will, so people will be strong enough to help themselves.” She knew the perfect place for it on the Westside. Some real estate that freed up right after Israel Ramirez disappeared for good.

Vincent translated, and Annie’s parents nodded. Marisol continued, “Annie wanted to create a just world. In a just world, no one stands alone. In a just world, we will stand together.”

The trio left the funeral in the town car. Before it rounded the corner, Marisol peered back at the brownstone through the back window. Annie waved goodbye from the stairs. When Marisol blinked, she was gone.

Perhaps Annie’s spirit found its way to the afterlife.

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