The cemetery was only a short walk away, and for a small town where most of their young residents had left in search for greener pastures, most of the people buried there were of the previous generation, although some were babies. As they walked alongside the tiny markers, Alma told him that some were probably born premature but with medical intervention coming too late. After all, the nearest hospital was a boat ride away.

A warm wind rustled the leaves around them, and Seymour wiped his brow with his handkerchief again. Maybe he should have waited until tomorrow to visit his wife's fake grave. Fake. It almost made him laugh for he knew exactly where her grave was, and it was half a world away.

But he needed to get this over with. He hadn't told them he was leaving in two days. The original plan was for him to stay for two weeks to help his son get acclimated to his new home, and set up the therapy sessions with whoever he found in town. At this rate, he'd leave it up to them to set that up. Besides, he couldn't stop thinking about this grave. Learning they'd 'buried' Mina in some mock burial creeped him out. Who the hell did that?

They stopped in front of a marble grave marker that bore his late wife's name although it was too high up on the plaque to just be for herself. There was room for at least two more names and dates.

"Mina paid por the plaque apter she went to de States." Nanay wiped fresh tears from her face, her other hand reaching out to touch the engraved letters.

One of the cousins explained that family members often shared the same plot, one buried on top of the other. It was how they did things on the island since there wasn't much land left that hadn't already been sold to greedy developers who'd run out of beachfront properties to buy. So now they were making their way inland, snatching up whatever they could find and calling them hilltop residences. Thankfully, Mina's hometown was too far inland for the developers to build anything profitable.

"So who is buried here?" Seymour asked, frowning. Why would they go through something like that when there was no body to bury in the first place? And why was it so infernally warm all of a sudden? He could feel sweat slide down the middle of his back.

Alma shrugged. "Nobody. We just bury an empty copin in der. Maybe when dey pind her, den we can do da ceremony." Her English was breaking down as she spoke, and Seymour wondered if she was just too tired to think of the words or too flustered. She looked up at him. "She was happy with you, no?"

Seymour glanced at his son staring at the plaque in front of him. "Yes, she was. I still cannot believe she's gone."

"It must hab been hard, being in jail when you were innocent," Alma continued.

He nodded, feeling beads of perspiration drip down the sides of his face. "Yes, it was. I loved her, but to be accused of her disappearance...her alleged murder...it was too much sometimes."

Alma lifted Junior in her arms. "Tank you por bringing Jun home. We wait a long time, you know."

"I think it's going to rain," one of the cousins muttered. "Can we just return home already?"

As they all agreed that it was time to say goodbye to Mina, Seymour couldn't stop looking back at the grave. Creepy, he thought. Why would they hold some mock burial for a body that would never end up there?

Seymour had almost opted to stay at one of the beachfront resorts, and if he had, he'd have had a woman sharing his bed by now. Twenty bucks, US... or maybe twenty-five, accounting for inflation. He could still do it, grab a tricycle cab and have it drop him off at the resort. He'd come back to spend time with Junior in the morning. But they convinced him to stay at the house, looking affronted at the mere mention of him needing to stay somewhere else when he'd paid to have that house built.

It poured as soon as they all returned home. And it was even more humid, a curse of the monsoon season. As Seymour settled into his room on the second floor, he could hear the women still talking downstairs, their voices interrupted by Junior's grunts. What was the little turd trying to say now?

Seymour yawned and stripped off his shirt. He needed to hop in the shower even though the water pressure sucked in the second-floor bathroom. But he didn't want to use the downstairs bathroom that everyone was using. He quite liked the master bedroom of the house that Mina built with all the money she - and he - sent home every month for five years. It was really a small price to pay, her being his personal punching bag when things weren't going so well with his business, but she knew that before marrying him. It had been part of his kink. And before she discovered all the opportunities available to her in the US, she'd been fine with it.

Until one day, she wasn't fine with it anymore, claiming later on that it was domestic abuse. Seymour still remembered how it all started, how she suddenly came home with a huge chip on her shoulder.

I will divorce you, you cruel man.

He'd laughed then because she still couldn't pronounce her V's very well, so divorce came out as dibors. But he couldn't dwell on that anymore. She had tried to leave him, carrying little Junior in her arms and making her way to the garage where the car was parked. She was going to stay at the women's shelter. The hell she was, he had thought then. And then what? She'd extort money from him to support the little turd for the next sixteen years?

Seymour shut his eyes and rubbed his temples. Man, but this humidity was doing a number on his nerves. Why was he thinking of her all of a sudden?

He stepped into the bathroom, determined to take his shower and then take a nap like everyone else in the house was going to do. He could also feel jet lag coming on, his eyes already feeling like lead. As Seymour stepped under the weak water spray, he could hear them downstairs talking and laughing, and little Junior grunting.

Yup, that was his Junior. Grunt, grunt, grunt, just like a little pig.

And ever since Seymour got out of jail, that's all he heard - the damn grunting. I'm hungry (grunt). I'm tired (grunt). Always the damn grunting, although, before the murder, the turd had just started talking. Mama. Baba. Sweepy. Never Dada, and as much as Seymour didn't much care for the kid, it still hurt.

Well, maybe a little.

But now the turd was home where he belonged, and soon, he would be where he belonged, too, between a woman's legs, taking everything he could from every single one of them.