"If I'd known that, I'd have laid a paper trail—Blast!" Kintyre checked himself. "Now it's my turn to ask your pardon. I wasn't thinking."
"It's all right," she said gently.
"No, but—"
"Really it is. Now that the requiem Mass has been held, the solemn one Mother wanted—it was almost like a real funeral. Everything looks different now."
"Yes, I saw the announcement. I couldn't come, I had to finish his work."
"I could envy you that," she said. Then, with a lifting in her tone: "I came back and slept. I woke up only an hour ago. It's like a curtain falling. Bruce is dead, and that will always hurt, but we can go on now with our own lives."
He hovered on the edge of decision, wondering what to do, afraid of the ghoul she might think him. A line from The Prince came: "... it is better to be impetuous than cautious, for fortune is a woman—" All right, he told himself.
"There's one thing, Miss Lombardi."
"Yes?" She waited patiently for him to sort out his words.
"I haven't forgotten what you did say last night. I went ahead and looked into it, your ideas, I mean."