Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

myriad comforts that supremely wealthy travelers are accustomed to. But she scarcely registered the taste of the perfectly pink roast beef sandwich that the steward had presented to her on a china plate. Although she’d missed both lunch and dinner, she ate without enjoyment, fueling up only because her body needed it.
    Daniel Brophy did not eat at all. His sandwich sat untouched as he stared out at the night, his shoulders sagging under the weight of grief. And guilt, too, surely. The guilt of knowing what could have been, had he chosen love above duty, Maura above God. Now the woman he cared about was charred flesh, locked in the hold beneath their feet.
    “When we get back to Boston,” said Gabriel, “we have decisions to make.”
    Jane looked at her husband and wondered how he managed to stay focused on necessary tasks. In times like these, she was reminded that she’d married a marine.
    “Decisions?” she said.
    “Funeral arrangements. Notifications. There must be relatives who need to be called.”
    “She has no family,” said Brophy. “There’s only her mo—” He stopped, not finishing the word
mother
. Nor did he say the name they were all thinking:
Amalthea Lank
. Two years ago, Maura had sought out her birth mother, whose identity had been a mystery to her. The search had eventually brought her to a women’s prison in Framingham. To a woman guilty of unspeakable crimes. Amalthea was not a mother anyone would want to claim, and Maura never spoke of her.
    Daniel said again, more firmly: “She has no family.”
    She had only us, thought Jane. Her friends. While Jane had a husband and daughter, parents and brothers, Maura had few intimate connections. She had a lover whom she saw only in secret, and friends who did not really know her. It was a truth that Jane now had to acknowledge:
I did not really know her
.
    “What about her ex-husband?” Sansone asked. “I believe he still lives in California.”
    “Victor?” Brophy gave a disgusted laugh. “Maura despised him. She wouldn’t want him anywhere near her funeral.”
    “Do we know what she did want? What her final wishes were? She wasn’t religious, so I assume she’d want a secular service.”
    Jane glanced at Brophy, who had suddenly stiffened. She did not think Sansone’s comment was meant as a barb at the priest, but the air between the two men suddenly felt charged.
    Brophy said, tightly: “Even though she fell away from the Church, she still respected it.”
    “She was a committed scientist, Father Brophy. The fact that she respected the Church doesn’t mean she believed in it. It would probably strike her as odd to have a religious service at her funeral. And as a nonbeliever, wouldn’t she be denied a Catholic funeral, anyway?”
    Brophy looked away. “Yes,” he conceded. “That is official policy.”
    “There’s also the question of whether she would have wanted burial or cremation. Do we know what Maura wanted? Did she ever broach the subject with you?”
    “Why would she? She was
young!
” Brophy’s voice suddenly broke. “When you’re only forty-two, you don’t think about how you want your body disposed of! You don’t think of who should and shouldn’t be invited to the funeral. You’re too busy being
alive.
” He took a deep breath and looked away.
    No one spoke for a long time. The only sound was the steady whine of the jet engines.
    “So we have to make those decisions for her,” Sansone finally said.
    “We?”
asked Brophy.
    “I’m only trying to offer my help. And the necessary funds, whatever it may cost.”
    “Not everything can be bought and paid for.”
    “Is that what you think I’m trying to do?”
    “It’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Why you’ve swooped in with your private jet and taken control? Because you can?”
    Jane reached out to touch Brophy’s arm. “Daniel. Hey, relax.”
    “I’m here because I cared about Maura, too,” said Sansone.
    “As you made so abundantly obvious to both of us.”
    “Father Brophy, it was always clear to me where Maura’s affections lay. Nothing I could do, nothing I could offer her, would have changed the fact that she loved you.”
    “Yet you were always waiting in the shadows. Hoping for a chance.”
    “A chance to offer my help if she ever needed it. Help that she never asked for while she was alive.” Sansone sighed. “If only she had. I might have …”
    “Saved her?”
    “I can’t rewrite history. But we both know things