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was a low chunk of beveled granite: tasteful, modest, Midwestern. I liked that. I liked that a lot. I laid my flowers down and extended my hand to Mary.
    While not exactly Father Blaney, Mary wasn’t much for touchy-feely either. She sort of winced when I held out my hand. I remembered her being warmer when we had her to New York, but this was her home turf and this was her brother’s grave. Patrick had been an abstraction to her, someone who only existed in her brother’s phone calls and letters. So his burial, twenty years after the fact, was almost surreal. Jack, on the other hand, had been very real to her.
    “Hi, Jack,” she said, laying down her flowers, “Mr. Prager, Patrick’s brother-in-law, has come all the way out from New York to see you …”
    I sort of tuned out to the rest of her chat. Mary was right, there wasn’t much to see. But sometimes you have to see for yourself that there’s nothing to see. It was like when I looked at the envelope in the office. I didn’t figure there’d be anything on it, but I had to look for myself. Suddenly, I was feeling pretty beat. There’d be time to rest that night. I was going to stay over in Cincinnati and fly out early in the morning.
    When Mary was done, I picked up a pebble and placed it on Jack’s headstone. I did it without thinking. I noticed Mary staring at me and not with a glad expression.
    “Why did you do that?”
    “Habit. It’s a Jewish tradition.”
    “But what is it for?”
    “You know, Mary, I think it serves a lot of purposes. It shows other mourners that the person buried by that headstone isn’t forgotten. I guess it also lets the spirit of the person buried there know too, though I don’t think that’s in the Talmud. But a wise man I loved very much once told
me it was symbolic of adding to the mound, to show that a memorial was an ongoing thing and would never truly be finished.”
    “Oh.”
    “I meant no disrespect. Would you like me to remove it?”
    Her mouth said no, but her body language said yes. I chose to take her at her word. That’s what Israel Roth would have done. For the second time in two days I remembered our visit to the cemetery all those years ago. I was smiling as we pulled away, remembering Mr. Roth. I also saw that Mary could not take her eyes off that pebble.
    I asked Mary if she’d like to go to dinner, on me, of course. She said no. I tried to contain my disappointment. It meant I’d have time to get a lot of rest and maybe call one or two of Jack’s old students. Not that I thought talking to them would get me anywhere, but again, I just wanted to hear it for myself. At first, Mary was reluctant to share any of the names or numbers with me, though she eventually relented. Again, I understood. Mary just wanted this over with so she could get back to the way things were. She liked her routines. The older you get, the less you like change. And the disturbance of her brother’s grave was a little more serious a change of routine than her dry cleaners moving to a new location.
    I thanked her for her putting up with my visit. And when she said she was sorry for what had been done at the Maloney family plot, Mary got that sick face again. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that bothered her more than having Jack’s resting place messed with. She was tired and we kept our goodbyes brief. Tired as she might have been, I was willing to bet that the second I turned the corner, Mary would be heading back to the cemetery. That pebble I left on Jack’s headstone would have to go.
     
    I RETURNED THE rental and caught a shuttle bus to my hotel. I got back early enough to have ventured into Kentucky or Cincinnati, if I was so inclined. I was not. I felt the allure of a quick meal and a long stretch in bed more than the need to feel blue grass between my toes or … What was Cincinnati famous for, anyway? Chili, right? I could get some of that from room service. But first I ordered a double Dewar’s on the