“Maybe he’s received some kind of bad news, a friend is ill or someone that he loved died.” Bitsy turned her head nearly upside down thinking about it.
“Nola,” Athena said.
“Ah, all the men his age loved her, didn’t they? That’s what I hear.” And Bitsy heard quite a lot sitting in trees or on a crossbeam in a hayloft.
Ralph coughed, snuffled loudly, coughed again, and wiped his eyes. He spit out the open car window. He wiped his eyes again, then reached into the glove compartment, pulling out a white aspirin bottle. He popped three into his mouth, swallowing them without water. He turned on the engine and drove off.
“Been almost a week since she was found. Why is he crying now?” Inky thought it strange.
“Maybe it’s just hitting him,” Bitsy opined.
“No,” Athena crisply replied. “It’s worse than that.”
They sat there for another fifteen minutes chatting, then the two owls flew toward the Chandler barn.
Inky crossed the road, trotted up Hangman’s Ridge, and walked along the flat ridge toward the huge old tree, well over three hundred years old.
A whisper drew her eyes to the tree.
Inky thought she saw a ghost, a man in his mid-thirties dressed in fine clothes although his neck had been unnaturally stretched and his tongue hung out.
“ ‘For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.’ Romans, chapter twelve, verse nine.” His anguish was palpable.
Inky knew spirits existed. Just like Hamlet told Horatio, there were more things in heaven and earth than we knew, but that didn’t mean she wanted any part of them.
She raced back toward her den, deciding not to visit Diana tonight. A whippoorwill disturbed by her passing let out its characteristic call.
She dashed into her den, snuggling in the fresh hay she’d lined there.
“How sad humans are,” she thought to herself. “They hurt others and they hurt themselves and their misery flows down through the centuries. Maybe there really is original sin for them.” She closed her eyes and prayed to God, who, for her, looked like a beautiful gray fox. “Thank you, dear God, thank you for making me a fox.”
CHAPTER 11
“I’ve always loved this spot, but now . . .” Sybil’s voice trailed off. Tears rolled down her cheek.
“Honey, try not to think about it.” Ken Fawkes thought that idea comforting, but it was impossible for either of them not to stare at the newly packed earth and not think about where Nola had lain for two decades and one year.
“When we were little girls, we’d sit up there, where Peppermint is buried now, and we’d look back over the creek and the meadows. I loved this time of year because it was cooler here and the cornflowers bloomed. Nola’s eyes were cornflower blue. She said I had iris eyes. Most times they’re pale blue, so that was nice of her.” Sybil sobbed harder.
Ken wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on her head. “You have lavender eyes. The most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.”
“Ken, what do we do now?”
He couldn’t answer right off. “Well, we keep on keeping on.”
“Did you notice Mother wearing the sapphire?”
“Yes.”
“I asked her why. She said she’d made a promise. The sapphire would remind her to keep it.”
A horsefly buzzed near Ken’s head, then moved away as he slapped at it, releasing his grasp on his wife. “Bad luck, that ring.”
Sybil smoothed her glossy hair. “I wonder. Maybe we just invest objects with our emotions. They’re neutral.”
“Well, don’t you wear that goddamned ring.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t.” She noticed color coming up on his cheeks.
Ken stuck his boot toe in the turf, scuffing at it like a petulant child. “Talked to this new sheriff guy who hardly inspires confidence. I’m starting to think if his brains were BBs they’d be rolling around a six-lane highway.”
“Paul Ramy must have had one BB, then,” Sybil ruefully replied.
“A good ol’ boy in the good old days. Shit.” Ken grimaced. “Things are supposed to be different. I don’t know if this Sidell is able to investigate roadside kill, much less this. The questions he asked me were pointless.”
“Twenty-one years. I guess from his standpoint it’s not pressing. No one else is in danger. If they were, more blood would have been spilled back in 1981.”
“You’re right.” Ken slapped at another fly. “Biting. Must be rain coming up.” He smiled. “Tuesday’s a good day for rain. Better now than the weekend.”
Domino and Merry Andrew trotted up from the other side of the hill. After nuzzlings and pats on the neck, they left the two humans.
“Ken, I don’t think we should let Mom or Dad collect Nola. What’s left of her.” A dark note of bitterness and loss crept into Sybil’s well-modulated voice. “They’ve been through enough. You and I should go get her. I didn’t ask Sidell when they’d release her remains to us.”
“Shouldn’t be much longer. They photographed the grave, her position in the earth. They’ll measure the bones. Scrape whatever they can scrape and send it to the lab. Guess it will tell them something. I’m not a scientist.”
“She was healthy as a horse.” Sybil scanned the western sky; a few gray cumulus tops were peeping over the mountains. “The horseflies watched the weather report.”
“They always bite before rain.” Ken checked his expensive watch, tapping the crystal, a habit. “Still time to call the sheriff today. I’ll see if I can make arrangements to get her.”
“I think you’d better call the funeral director first.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think family members can pick up corpses. I think the law is, a funeral director or employee has to do it. I’m pretty sure. You can’t just carry her out in a bag.”
“No.” Ken’s voice became a bit indignant. “I was going to get a proper coffin and put her in that. There’s nothing but bones. It’s not, well, you know . . .”
Sybil acknowledged with a nod that she did know. One doesn’t grow up in the country without a good sense of the disintegration of dead things. She knew, intellectually, that buzzards, worms, and beetles had their work to do. Without them the whole earth would be piled miles high with corpses. But why couldn’t the Lord have made it a tidier process? The stench alone was horrible. To think of her sister’s body decaying in the earth . . . she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. She struggled to remember her sister’s staccato laugh, to snatch at something lovely.
The backfire of an engine drew their attention to the farm lane leading to the covered bridge. Jimmy Chirios coasted over the small rise, the farm truck emitting small puffs of dark smoke.
“That truck burns too much oil.” Sybil was glad to switch to another subject.
“Your father refuses to buy a new one.”
Edward, despite his wealth, was no more sensible about personal expenditures than the rest of humanity. He would squander money on some things, yet he was tight as a tick about others.
The dark green Dodge rattled across the bridge.
Jimmy pulled up to the couple. “Storm’s coming. Heard on the radio. Coming fast. Flash floods.”
The minute they hopped into the cab the wind shifted gears. The willows by the creek swayed like geishas.