Free The Illumination by Karen Tintori

. . . impossible.”
    â€œI’m very sorry, Dr. Landau. Dana has been killed. Her body was discovered less than twenty minutes ago. I don’t have all the details yet, but I wanted you to know before it leaked to the media.”
    Killed?
Natalie’s mind balked, refusing to absorb the words. She felt like she was going to throw up, and she pressed her midriff against the granite countertop.
    â€œShe can’t be dead. I saw her on TV yesterday.” She was babbling. But she couldn’t stop. Just as she couldn’t stop her knees from shaking. “There must be a mistake, tell me there’s been a mistake.”
    â€œDr. Landau, is there anyone there with you? Are you all right?”
    â€œMy sister can’t be dead.” Her voice broke then. “She’s all I have left. Was it a car bomb? I didn’t hear anything about a car bomb—”
    â€œNo, it wasn’t a car bomb. It . . . she . . . I’m sorry, there’s no easy way to say this, but it appears she was murdered. In her room at the villa. It happened sometime between her return last night from Kirkuk and early this morning. Her crew became concerned when she didn’t meet up with them. The military is investigating—”
    The wineglass slipped from her fingers and cracked into a thousand pieces on the floor.

12
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    A fierce March wind whipped through Salem Fields Cemetery as Natalie lifted the shovel and heaved the first mound of dirt onto her sister’s casket. Hearing that dull thud, seeing the dirt scatter across the simple wooden casket, she fought back the sob that burned in her throat. The last time she’d done this, it had been a mellow autumn morning. She and Dana had been teenagers standing shoulder to shoulder, ceremoniously scooping the earth onto their parents’ caskets.
    The rabbi had told them back then that the
mitzvah
of helping to bury a loved one was the most unselfish good deed of all, because it was an act of kindness that could never be repaid.
    But this was wrong. It was wrong that she should be burying Dana. Her sister should be on the air tonight, her hair tousled by the dry desert breeze, her voice crisp with authority. Instead, she was here in the ground beside their parents, and Natalie was watching in numb disbelief as friends and relatives stepped up, one at a time, to grasp the shovel and toss dirt into Dana’s open grave.
    Afterward, she stumbled toward the limousine, barely registering the murmurs of sympathy echoing around her. She was chilled and empty and had never felt so alone in her life. Firsther parents had died too young, and now Dana’s life had been cut short, too.
    Aunt Leonora took her arm as the crowd of mourners began to disperse. “Rosalie has everything set up at your apartment, dear. Your neighbors, that nice Peter and Juan, brought over some extra folding chairs.”
    Rosalie was Natalie’s older cousin, Aunt Leonora’s daughter. As kids, Rosalie, Natalie, and Dana had been inseparable. Of all her cousins, Rosalie was the most family-oriented, the one who knew how to make matzoh balls and brisket and noodle kugel, who hosted all the Passover seders and remembered everyone’s anniversaries and birthdays.
    â€œSo many people,” Natalie muttered. “I hope they’ll all fit in my apartment—”
    Her voice trailed off as she felt a tap on her arm and turned. She didn’t recognize the tall lean man of about forty who stood beside her.
    â€œSorry to meet you under these circumstances, Natalie. I’m Jim D’Amato—I was a colleague of your sister’s at MSNBC. I wanted to offer my condolences.”
    D’Amato.
Natalie knew the name well. She’d never heard Dana, or anyone else from the network, call their bureau chief by his first name, and had always pictured him as graying and avuncular. Yet the hard-driving superior Dana had been desperate to