Page 75 of After His Eulogy
“Tell me your name.”
I look at him.
“What.”
“Your name. Your real name. The full name. The one on the gravestone. The one Mendez has.”
“Griffin…“
“You haven’t told me. Reed. You’ve told me everything else. About the funeral. About Mendez. About your mother and the soup and the kitchen. You’ve given me the whole inside of it. And you haven’t given me the name. You’ve been carrying it. I want it. I want it before we go. I want it because I’m about to get a different one, and I’m not going to carry yours into the new one if you don’t want me to. I’m not going to write it down. I’m not going to say it again after today. I just want you to give it to me. Once. So I have it. So when I’m old, here, with the new name, I’ll have had your name. The real one.”
I look at him. The wind is in my eyes. I close them. I open them.
“Reece,” I say. “Reece Coletti.”
He looks at me.
“Reece Coletti.”
“Yes.”
“That is your name.”
“That was. That is what is on the stone. That is the name my mother gave me. Yeah.”
“Reece Coletti.”
“Yes.”
He says it once more, quiet, to himself: Reece Coletti.
He nods.
“Okay,” he says.
He puts his arms around me. He puts his arms around me on the beach and he holds me. He holds me hard. He holds me for a long time. The wind is in my hair and his chin is against my shoulder and his arms are around me and I am letting him hold me. After a while I say, into his coat, “Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
“There is one more thing.”
“Okay.”
“It is the thing we have not said out loud. It is the thing Mendez has not said out loud either, and I want us to say it on this beach, before we go anywhere, before any of the rest, so that we have said it.”
“Okay.”
“They are still out there.”
He does not move.
“The people who are looking. The case closed two years ago. Some of them went to prison. Most of them did not. The ones who did not are, as far as the program knows, still there. Still operational. Still the kind of people who, if they came across the right thread, would pull on it. The move to the new town does not mean they are gone. The move means we are harder to find. It does not mean we are unfindable. The new names do not mean unfindable. The new town does not mean unfindable. The program told me this in the second briefing two years ago, and the program told me it again last week. I haven’t been saying it to you because I had been telling myself you knew.”
“I knew.”
“Did you.”
“Reed. I knew. I’ve known for three weeks. I’ve known since the call with Mendez when he saidsignificantly weaker. Since he saideasier to find. I’ve known. I just hadn’t said it.”
