He’d washed the frail, shrunken corpse using water that lay in the pool, wiping her with an infinite tenderness, then dressing her in a clean nightdress. Pink, with small yellow flowers, edged with white lace around the hem and across the bodice.
The hair was matted, and he’d brushed out the tangles, parting it and putting in a tortoiseshell clasp that had belonged to his great-grandmother.
Jim couldn’t bear the thought of dirt falling on the still, placid face and he’d taken a sheet from the linen cupboard and wrapped her very carefully in it. He planted a last kiss on the cool cheek before covering her head.
He knelt to place the first handfuls of dusty earth in the grave, sprinkling them as gently as he could, the shrouded skull disappearing from sight. Then he stood and shoveled in the rest, working quickly, aware that Carrie was watching him from the open french windows at the back of the house.
She’d already packed for both of them so that they could get moving again.
Ramon Hernandez had gone to the spare bedroom, to lie down to rest. It was obvious to Jim that the old man was at the end of his own road. The death of his wife, Maria, had finished his own interest in living. He had only stayed in the house to keep an eye on the dying girl.
Now that task was finished he was ready for his final sleep.
Jim had tried to persuade him to accompany them south.
“No, but thank you, Captain. I lie here and soon go be with Maria.”
“What if Heather comes back here?”
“You leave letter, Captain. Tell little lady where you gone.”
Before being tugged out of hypersleep on board the Aquila, Jim Hilton would have found the scenario absurd. Utterly ridiculous and completely beyond his belief.
To bury his daughter in his garden, alongside his wife, while his other child had vanished into the Hollywood hinterland… and now to be ready to leave Ramon Hernandez to finish starving to death, alone in the spare bedroom…
“No,” he said, closing his eyes, hands clasped in front of him.
Lori would have wanted him to say a prayer. She’d been born and raised as an Episcopalian, though living high on Tahoe Drive had relaxed some of her beliefs.
Jim cleared his throat. His voice hardly reached his own ears.
“Lord, this is my daughter Andrea. I was away from her for a long while and I missed a lot of good things. Least I was here at the closing of the day. Don’t know what would have become of her if she’d had the chance to grow up tall. Now we’ll never know.”
He began to cry.
Silent tears were running across his cheeks. He’d managed to shave before beginning the burial, and change his clothes. His pants were loose around the waist and hips.
“And now she’s sleeping alongside my wife, Lori. Can’t pretend we didn’t have ups and downs. Most couples do. But we had a lot of laughter together. And they’re here together. Keeping an eye on each other. Telling each other secrets.”
He heard a faint rustling in the dead undergrowth behind him, beyond the wire fence.
“Got to go now, Lord. Wish my other little girl was here, Heather. Understand why she couldn’t stay any longer. Somebody said something about mankind not being able to stand too much suffering. Just wish, wish I could…”
Jim dropped to his knees, by the two mounds of earth, his hands to his face, sobbing uncontrollably, all of the horror and tensions of the past month flooding from him.
There was the lightest touch on his shoulder, and a soft voice, choked with emotion.
“I’m back, Daddy. It’s Heather. I’ve come back to you.”
Chapter Thirty
The group of grinning, chattering boys had tracked Jeff down, scampering through the echoing vault toward him. They were calling out to each other, giggling and whooping as though they were on a church egg hunt on an Easter Sunday. They served as beaters to flush out the game while the older males were ready to move in for the kill.
He’d found a corner near a window, in what had once been a tofu eatery, put his pack on the glass-strewn floor behind him and gripped his knife in his right hand.