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He holds me at arm’s length. “That was twenty years ago, Brek.”

“No it wasn’t,” I insist. “It was the day before yesterday. Remember? You had just finished your jog, and we put Sarah on the swing. You told me how you’d been staying with David and that things were starting to get back to normal. You were looking for a job in New York.”

“I remember. That was twenty years ago, look-”

He walks back to the grave, pulls a copy of the Centre Daily Times from beneath the serving tray, and shows it to me. The headline reads, “BOWLES EXECUTED.” The dateline reads, “July 21, 2009.”

Bo leads me to the trunk of a large oak tree at the end of the row of gravestones, and we sit down together. He’s wearing wrinkled slacks and a polo shirt that looks as if he’s slept in it; his face is covered with gray whiskers. “I got the job in New York and lost it,” he says dejectedly. “I haven’t been able to keep a job for more than six months at a time since. No television station will touch me; they’re afraid of people who tell the truth. Maybe I drank a little too much and missed a few deadlines; but television is a sham, Brek, and the news is a sham. It’s all make-believe. I’m doing fine though. I’m a counselor at a homeless shelter now; they let me stay there while I get myself together. Good people. I run an AA meeting and keep an eye on things; I’m thinking about doing a documentary. I’ve been talking to some old friends at the station. People think the homeless are animals, but they’re just like everybody else; they had normal lives, just something went wrong.”

Bo reaches out to hold my hand, but I pull it away.

“Have I changed that much?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“I’ve missed you, Brek. When I heard they were executing that bastard at Rockview this morning, I had to drive up to see it. He asked the guard to read a Bible verse and that was it. No apology. No remorse. Nothing. I loved seeing him shake when they fried him. You saw it all, though; I knew you were there. I could feel you in the room.”

“Who, Bo? Who are you talking about?”

“Ott Bowles. That’s why you came back, isn’t it? Because it’s finally over and justice has been done? We can finally rest in peace. I’m gonna make a fresh start now. Clean myself up. I’m not that old. Maybe I’ll even get back into the news. I’d be a great producer. I’ve been talking to some old friends at the station-”

“Where’s Sarah?”

In the distance, I see Elymas slowly climbing the steep gravel road that severs the graveyard in two. His feeble body assimilates each small step before taking another.

“It’s time.” he calls out in a dry, hacking voice. Bo doesn’t see or hear him. “It’s time, Brek Abigail Cuttler. Come with me. It’s time.”

“What do you mean, where’s Sarah?” Bo says.

“Where is she? I want to see her?”

Bo’s face purples as if it’s been bruised by a punch. He jumps up from the grass and starts running away, weaving through the gravestones with his hands gripping his head as if he’s in pain. I chase after him.

“Wait, Bo, what’s wrong?”

“Why are you doing this?” he yells. “Please, please just leave me alone.”

He makes a loop and staggers to the ground beside the upset tea service. Tears streak down his cheeks. Except on the day Sarah was born, I have never seen him cry.

“Come with me,” Elymas says. “It’s time.”

“Bo,” I say, kneeling beside him, “it’s all right. Everything’s all right. Just tell me where Sarah is?”

“What do you mean where’s Sarah?” he yells at me. “Don’t you know?” He points at the gravestone. Engraved into the top of the monument is a crucifix superimposed over a Star of David. The sight of this heresy startles at first, but the symbols look somehow correct together, as if the perpendicular lines complete the thought of the interlocking triangles and are their natural conclusion when manipulated properly, like a Rubik’s cube. Engraved beneath them in large block letters across the polished surface of the stone are the words CUTTLER-WOLFSON. Beneath these, in smaller letters, is this:

BREK ABIGAIL

December 4, 1963-October 17, 1994

Mother

SARAH ELIZABETH

December 13, 1993-October 17, 1994

Daughter

Hot tea and bees honey, for two we will share…

22

I found Nana Bellini in the garden behind her house, stooped low over a row of tomato vines sagging with ripe, red fruit. Her silver hair, pulled back in a bun, shimmered under the cloudy skies of an approaching summer storm. She hummed a tune while filling a small basket with fresh produce, aware that I stood nearby in the cool spring air watching her. Reaching the middle of the row, she twisted off a huge beefsteak tomato, so large and swollen that its skin had split open exposing its tender pink meat inside. She held it up for me to see.

“Even vegetables suffer as much from abundance as from want,” she observed. “Some, like this one, are bold and flashy, taking everything they can; others sip only what they need, content to share with the community.” She pulled apart a snarl of average sized tomatoes and pointed to a stunted tomato vine off by itself in a patch of cracked, barren dirt. “And then there are the ascetics, joyfully suffering without any hope of bearing fruit themselves, secure in the knowledge that their sacrifice will make the soil richer next season and they’ll become the fruit of future generations.” She turned around to me. “The wise farmer values them all, equally. If one is favored over the other, the entire garden suffers.”

I drew closer. I wasn’t there to talk about gardening. “Why didn’t you tell me Sarah was dead?” I asked. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

Nana stopped picking and slid her arm through the hoop handle of the basket so that it swung from her elbow. Flecks of black soil clung to her wrinkled fingers and denim blue skirt. “There was nothing to tell, dear,” she said. “You knew it all along. You didn’t want to remember, you weren’t ready.”

I left her in the garden and walked through the woods to the entrance of the train station. Flinging the doors wide, I shouted to the souls inside: “Run! Run now, while you still have the chance!” They didn’t dare move. They looked at me with the same suspicion my grandfather’s cattle looked at him when he was trying to do something for their own good, then they lapsed back into their catatonic march back and forth across the train shed floor. There was a time when they would have rushed through those doors, but that was when they still believed mortality was the fantasy; how very real it had become, and how very soon would the final judgment be passed on their lives. Cattle. It was the proper metaphor; like my grandfather’s herd, the great herd of souls arriving at Shemaya Station each day moved obediently up the loading chute and into a packing plant for slaughter, submitting themselves to what was to come and living in the memory of what once was.

I had entered the train shed without a blindfold because I was searching for Sarah. This was a grim task. There were infants, children, and adults in every horrifying shape and condition of death: wasted away by starvation and disease, blistered and burned, gnawed and digested, shot through with holes, stabbed and sliced, blue from drowning, bloated from rotting, blown apart, hacked, crushed, poisoned; suicides, murders, accidents, illnesses, old age, acts of God. Their stories no longer affected me. Only one story concerned me now. I looked everywhere, but Sarah was not among them; although I wanted desperately to see her, like a parent searching a morgue after a calamity, I was relieved. And then terrified.

What if her case had already been called? What if she had already been judged and gone on without me?

I ran from the train shed, frantic to find her. The golden key Luas had given me turned the lock, depositing me inside the Urartu Chamber. There was no one, just God and me, alone, inside the Holy of Holies. He had taken my daughter. I had come to take her back. I was not as trusting as Abraham with Isaac. I moved to the presenter’s chair and looked up at the sapphire monolith, searching the smooth surface for the slightest blemish that might indicate a hint of acknowledgment or compassion. When I found none, I asked meekly in my nakedness: