The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two by Leonard Foglia, David Richards

all but certain in her mind. It was also certain that if she pushed the Toyota to the limit, she could get there before he did. Without pausing, she pulled out onto Highway 57 and headed south, along with the trailers carrying pigs and produce to market.
    She was waiting in the docking area, where the Premier Plus buses pulled into their respective berths and unloaded their passengers, who were then carried by escalator up to the main airport promenade. The area had the bustle of a small port, with people scrambling for their baggage and porters soliciting their business – all of them pressed for time. Claudia stood off to the side, behind a concrete column, until the young man had located his satchel and pushed his way onto the escalator, muttering the odd “ Disculpame ” to those whose plodding pace obliged him to elbow past them. Several persons behind, Claudia followed after him, as he strode down the polished hall to the AeroMéxico desk. The illuminated screen above the clerk invited passengers to check in to Vuelo 06. The young man walked up without hesitation, bought his ticket and checked his baggage.
    It all made perfect sense to Claudia. She felt she could understand the young man’s thinking and decipher his motives. Of course, that’s where he’d be going. Things, she thought, were following a logical progression. Inevitable almost.
    Reassured, she let the young man disappear into the labyrinth of airport security, then approached the counter and also bought a ticket on Vuelo 06.
    “Window or aisle seat?” asked the clerk, as he returned her credit card.
    “Window,” she said. “Near the back of the plane, please.”
    Ticket in hand, she had one last task to perform before boarding and went in search of the airport post office. It was closed, but that didn’t matter. Claudia had already affixed postage to the thick manila envelope she inserted in the letter drop. She heard it land inside the box with a light thud and knew that in a couple of hours, it, too, would be on its way. Once on the plane, for the first time in months she let herself relax and instantly fell asleep.
    The young man didn’t sleep, however. He stared out the airplane window and watched as Mexico City turned into a vast sea of yellow and blue lights, contained by the dark volcanoes that ringed the metropolis. It was like soaring over a field of budding wildflowers, then suddenly nothing, just the blackness of night, of lava congealed. The plane was mostly filled with tourists, eager to begin their holiday. It was Semana Santa, Holy Week, the holiest of the Christian calendar. Beginning with the triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, proceeding inexorably to the barbarity of crucifixion, the week ended gloriously seven days later with the miracle of resurrection and redemption. A fusion of joy and agony, each step of the way was marked in Mexico by processions and ceremonies, a profusion of flowers and, because the body, not just the soul, must be fed, an abundance of food, as well. But the young man’s mind was not on what lay ahead. It had retreated to a past Semana Santa. He was fourteen at the time, but the events were still sharp and clear in his memory, like a movie unfolding against the screen of blackness just outside the airplane window. His family usually took a vacation during Semana Santa. “To escape the madness” was how his father put it. The streets were filled, not with tourists who might have contributed to the shop’s prosperity, but with religious fanatics, bent on paying for a year’s sins and wiping their consciences clean.
    On Palm Sunday vendors in front of every church sold fanciful crosses woven from palm fronds that were teased into rococo patterns, a guarantee for those who saved them for a full year and then burned them on the following Palm Sunday that good fortune, or possibly a new refrigerator, would be theirs. On Holy Thursday it was thought mandatory to visit seven different church