They May Not Mean To, But They Do(50)

“No,” Molly said. “Do you think my mother does?”

Freddie chose to say nothing, which Molly seemed to find reassuring, because she smiled as if at her own foolishness and said, “Of course not. Of course she doesn’t.”

*

At first, Cora did not want to be left behind.

“Do you really want to watch Aunt Molly dig up an old dead horse?” her father asked.

She thought about it. The horse might smell. It was probably a skeleton, which was bad enough, but it might look like the Mummy or a horse zombie. And the digging was slow, which could be boring. “Joanie and I were going to have a lemonade stand outside the building. It’s not very warm yet, but you can do good business that week because of tourists.”

“So you’d rather stay home?”

Cora nodded. “You write the e’s on the sign backward. To make it look childish. It draws customers.”

He was glad at least one of them would be home. Daniel had never understood that you could love anyone as much as he loved Ruby and Cora. This love was new, born when they were born. Now life without that love coursing through him was unimaginable. Their voices were like birdsong, their movements like dance.

“Every morning when I see them my heart sings, it really sings,” he said to Molly. “I don’t want Ruby to visit you. I’ll miss her too much.”

Molly felt a pang of longing for Ben. “It never goes away, missing them.”

“Like Mom and you.”

“Not what I was thinking of.”

“I, on the other hand, am the good sibling who stayed home,” he said happily.

“The oceans are rising,” she replied.

*

Molly stood with Freddie and Ruby waiting for Ruby’s suitcase.

“In Japan they have sushi that goes around just like this, on a conveyor belt, but smaller, obviously,” Ruby said.

“You’ve been to Japan?”

“No. But I like sushi. But Daddy says overfishing is ruining the ocean.”

“We’ll get you some sushi.”

“Thank you, Aunt Freddie. And thank you, Aunt Molly, for inviting me to your dig.”

“It’s not the walls of Troy,” Molly said. “But it’s good practice for the students. The horse died of colic very suddenly. They didn’t even mark the grave properly, so we’ll have a bit of a search.”

“Did they shoot him?”

Ruby did not look like a morbid child. She was dressed in pink and sparkles and frayed denim like every other little girl in the airport.

“I don’t think so. I think they give them shots or something.”

“Cora’s scared of dead things. But I don’t see why. They’re dead. I don’t mind them. I like to know that things happened before I came along. I don’t know why, but I do.”

The purple camouflage suitcase appeared on the belt.

“Maybe it helps you realize that things will come along after you, too.”

“I think I’m too young to think that.”

*

They found the rib cage first. Ruby dusted off the dirt with a paintbrush, following the curves that outlined the commanding chest. The mighty horse’s legs seemed to be galloping even now. The students were silent when they saw all of him, a bas-relief of bones rising from the sandy soil.

Ruby lit a candle for him when they got back to the house. “Yitgadal v’yitkadash,” she said. She shrugged. “That’s all I know of that one by heart. You’re supposed to have ten people, and I’m sure you’re not supposed to say it for a horse, but I don’t care. And I say it every night for Grandpa.” She looked at them defiantly.

Molly wiped away a few tears. She did not sleep that night. Her mother was right, it was too soon after Aaron’s death to dig up a body. Ruby was fine. It was Molly who had nightmares.

“You were crying in your sleep,” Freddie said. “I couldn’t wake you.”

Molly didn’t want to talk about it. And she certainly didn’t want to talk about her bad dreams to Ruby, who looked as chipper as ever when they went into the kitchen. She had helped herself to a large bowl of the neon-colored cereal her parents forbade her.

“Guess what my father said to his ex-girlfriend,” Freddie said. She read aloud from an email sent by Green Garden: “‘Thou wouldst eat thine dead vomit up and howlst to get it.’”

Ruby looked up happily from her cereal bowl. “Dead vomit! Can I meet him?”

They went to Santa Anita. Molly and Ruby sat in the backseat, Freddie and her father in the front. Ruby nudged Molly, then pointed to the back of the father’s head and the back of the daughter’s head. They were shaped identically.

“Molly and her students and Ruby dug up a racehorse and moved him to Santa Anita, Dad.”

“Your friends always were peculiar.”

“We didn’t move him, actually. Just dug him up. Not too many opportunities to dig things up in Los Angeles. It’s great experience for the students.”

“Students?” Duncan said. “Students of what? Grave-robbing?” He chuckled. Then, “Don’t go digging me up, you girls.” Then, “Where are the flowers?”

“What flowers?”

“For your mother. I always bring flowers.”