บท 28: Chapter 28

After the service, limousines took us to the cemetery, and while the piper played “Amazing Grace,” Alyonawas laid to her eternal rest.

As we drove away from the cemetery, I could feel the sorrow leaching out of Quinn’s muscles, but even so, that night, in bed in our hotel room, I just held him as he talked of Alyona, of how she’d made black Russian bread for him, even though she was Czech; how she’d watched while he rode his pony over those first jumps and afterward scolded him for scaring the life out of her; how she’d commiserated when he’d lost the opportunity in 1980 to ride in the Summer Olympics; how she’d comforted him when he’d returned home from France that same year, leaving behind his first love—the fat French fuck—although Quinn was certain she was unaware that love was a boy.