Snow Creek(43)

Before I shut my door, I smell wintergreen.

Ruth Turner is standing next to me. Behind her, a young woman of about twenty. She has long dark hair parted in the center. Her eyes are blue like her mother’s.

“You must be Eve,” I say.

She gives me a shy smile. “That’s me.”

Her mother surprises me and hugs me. I feel her body wilting in my arms. It’s uncomfortable because I don’t know her, but she needs it.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Ruth,” I say. “I know that words don’t fill an empty space. I know that from experience.”

“Thank you, Detective Carpenter. I prayed all last night you’d be here. I’m so grateful that it’s over. Thank you for finding her. Ida is in our heavenly Father’s loving arms. No more pain. Only the joy of being with Him.”

I look up. “Damn, you, Bernie!”

A news crew is setting up.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Ruth and Eve. “Let’s go inside.”

“I had no idea so many would come,” Bernie says.

“I doubt that.”

She glares at me. “Excuse me, Detective?”

I want to say there’s no excuse for you, but I don’t. Given the occasion and the fact that I’m in my almost, not quite mid-thirties.

Sheriff is drinking lemonade.

“Hey,” I say, standing close. “I think I’m on to something.”

“What?” he says, reaching for Sarah’s homemade taffy.

“We need to go back to the Torrance place.”

He wants to answer but his teeth are stuck.

He’s going to lose a filling for sure.

“Later,” I say.

On the beautiful cherry table her husband built is the shroud-wrapped body of Ida Wheaton. Joshua and Sarah are talking with their aunt and cousin. I approach and don’t interrupt. Instead I look over the white muslin used to wrap her. The sad irony of it all comes to me. She was wrapped up after she was murdered. And wrapped a second time the morning of her memorial. I thought it would feel odd, burying someone among trees. Creating an environment that would break down a human body for the good of the earth. It didn’t. In part because of the strange beauty of it all. Ida’s children have decorated the outside of the shroud with orange and yellow nasturtium blossoms, bright green sprigs of spearmint and the dusty green of rosemary. It is needed and so is the fan on the window. It faces out, spewing the underlying odor of their mother’s decaying body. It had been super-chilled at the morgue, but that can only slow decay. It can’t stop it.

I look at my phone. No signal. In ten minutes the memorial is due to start.

“Sarah. Joshua. I’m very sorry about what you two are going through. I heard that the judge will let you stay together.”

“Bernadine already told us,” Joshua says. He looks at his sister. “She is really all I have. We both need each other.”

Next, I say something that I never thought would pass from my lips.

“I love what you did with your mother’s shroud.”

I stand there for a second, thinking that while my words were sincere, they sounded like I was commenting on a pair of club chairs.

“She loved the garden,” Joshua says.

Sarah looks at her mother. “I’ve never done anything like this, Detective.”

“You two can handle it,” I tell them. I want to say that there are lots of people here to support you. But there aren’t—a couple of cops, an attention seeker, an aunt and cousin.

“Okay,” he says. “We’re going to carry our beloved mother to the orchard where Sarah and I prepared a symbolic resting place.”

“Symbolic?”

Joshua shakes his head. “We can’t actually bury Mom here. We’re ahead of the laws, I guess. She’ll go back to the funeral home and then be buried in a green cemetery.”

“Sheriff Gray?” Sarah asks, indicating the table. “It’s time.”

Sheriff makes his way from the taffy bowl to the table.

He’s going to help. Good. This will be interesting.

Ida’s body lays on a cotton tablecloth, and Sheriff and Joshua each take an end. Joshua has his mother’s head, all festooned with nasturtiums, and Sheriff hoists the tail end, which at once seems like a struggle for him.

I hope he can manage.

As we walk from the house to the orchard, I hear Eve talking about how hurt she is that Sarah has forgotten how close they were when they were little. If their relationship is anything like her mother and aunt’s, I can’t imagine they were that close at all. She’d probably seen her two or three times in their entire lives.

I hear Sheriff asking Joshua if he wants to set his mom down and rest a little.

He says no.

I know that Sheriff is the one who wants to take a break.

Next, he asks Joshua if he wants someone to ask the media to leave.

“We’ll be done before you can do that.”

We encircle the space where grass leads up to a rectangular space neatly cut into the black soil.

Joshua and Sheriff gently lower her on to a trestle, while Sarah brings two shovels; one’s a square edge, the other rounded.

“Like I said,” Joshua starts, looking around, “never done this before. I know it’s what my mom would have wanted. I mean, she would have liked to actually be buried here, but she’ll still be able to be part of the earth. Just not here.”