15

MOURNING BROKEN

Murderer.

The voice inside Eureka’s mind that night was full of loathing. It had taunted her all day as she prepared Dad for a burial he wouldn’t receive.

There was no soil in the Bitter Cloud, and Solon wouldn’t let them venture farther than the reaches of the witches’ glaze. Instead, he suggested they give Dad a Viking funeral, sending his body out to sea in a blazing pyre.

“But how—” Eureka had started to ask.

Solon pointed at the watery tunnel Eureka had paddled down the night before. The aluminum canoe bobbed inside. “This channel is many-fingered,” he said, and spread the fingers on his hand. “This finger leads swiftly to the ocean.” He wiggled his ring finger. “It’s really very dignified.”

“You just want everything to be as morbid as possible, all the time,” Cat had said, helping Ander line the canoe with collapsed wooden prosecco crates. She had been raised to be superstitious about rites of passage, mindful of the fate of spirits, wary of forlorn ghosts.

Murderer.

Ander tried to catch her eye. “Eureka—”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t be tender anymore.”

“You were avenging your father,” he said. “You lost control.”

She turned away from Ander and envisioned Dad’s imminent conflagration. She liked that there would be no claustrophobic coffins involved, no dishonest formaldehyde embalming. Maybe out in the ocean Dad’s ashes would find a piece of Diana and they would twirl together for a moment before drifting on.

If Dad had known he was about to die, he would have written out a menu and started a roux. He would have wanted no memorial without an accompanying good meal. But they were down to two carafes of water, a small bag of bruised apples, a tub of salad dressing, a box of Weetabix, and a few bottles of prosecco that Solon had stashed in an ice bucket in his bedroom. Eating out of ceremony was impossible now that Eureka had met her starving neighbors.

At least she could clean Dad up. So she started with his feet, stripping off his boots and socks, scrubbing his skin with water from the salty spring. The twins sat next to her, watching, silent tears cleaning their dirty cheeks as Eureka carefully groomed under Dad’s nails with a knife. She borrowed an ornate Victorian razor from Solon and shaved the stubble on Dad’s face. She smoothed the frown lines around his mouth. She cleaned his wounds, working lightly around the bruise at his temple.

She found it easier to focus on Dad than on William and Claire or Cat and Ander. The dead let you help them any way you wanted to.

When she’d made Dad look as peaceful as she could, Eureka turned to the woman she had killed. She knew the Celans would be back for the body and she wanted to show her respect. She removed the woman’s filthy apron. Blood drainedin a long red wash along the mosaic tiles on the floor. It became a gentle river, mingling with Dad’s blood. Eureka mopped it up, as careful as she had been wild when the blood was spilled. She straightened the woman’s hair, hating her for killing Dad, hating her for being pretty, hating her for being dead.

A blaze of light drew near Eureka. She ducked to the left to avoid being singed as a sphere of fire the size of a baseball swerved past her face and struck a skull on the wall behind her.

“Don’t touch Seyma,” Filiz said. A second sphere of fire burned at the tips of her fingers.

“I was just—”

“She was my grandmother.”

Eureka rose to give Filiz space with the dead woman. After a moment, she asked: “Do you believe in Heaven?”

“I believe you have made it very crowded.”

The Poet appeared and slipped one hand under Seyma’s back, another beneath her stout knees. He lifted the old woman up, and Filiz followed him out of the demolished cave.

Cat stood over Dad’s body. “We don’t have a rosary.”

“Any necklace will do,” Solon said.

“No, it won’t.” Cat’s brow was damp. “Trenton was Catholic. Someone should say the Lord’s Prayer, but I can’t get my teeth to stop chattering. And we don’t have holy water for the blessing. If we don’t do these things, he’ll—”

“Dad was a good man, Cat. He’s going to get there no matter what we do.”

She knew Cat wasn’t really upset about the rosary. Dad’s death represented all the other losses they hadn’t had time to mourn. His death had become everydeath, and Cat wanted to make it right.

“Is Dad going to Heaven?” William tilted his head as he looked at his father.

“Yes.”

“With Mom?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Will he come back?” Claire asked.

“No,” Eureka said.

“Is there room for him up there?” William asked.

“It’s like the country roads between New Iberia and Lafayette,” Claire explained. “Wide open and full of room for everyone.”

Eureka knew the reality of Dad’s death would bloom slowly and painfully for the rest of the twins’ lives. Their bodies caved the way they did right before they cried, so she enveloped them—

Murderer.

She hummed an old hymn to silence the voice. She stared at Dad’s restful expression and prayed for the strength to take care of the twins with as much courage as their parents had.

“ ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,’ ” Solon said. “Isn’t that how it goes?”