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.Often it’s important in religious ceremonies.When gathering her flesh, they are instructed to move with quiet dignity, keeping her realm pure.But often, in the stories, she is disrespected by those who should revere her.Refused food and lodging, polluted, her gifts squandered without thought.So she leaves the people she loves.She turns her back and walks deep into the desert.Can I do any less?—Final entry (undated)Angie’s sobriety journalDana stared straight through the grimy windshield without registering the rocky slope before her.Once they’d heard the slam of a truck door, Jay had ventured outside the cavern and then called down the hill to Wallace.Afterward he’d taken Dana down to sit inside the Suburban with its engine idling while she waited out Those Things That Must Be Done.He hadn’t let her see the body, though he had promised that he would once it was recovered.First, though, would come the photographs, the measurements, the collection of whatever trace evidence remained.Jay had used his radio to contact someone, perhaps Estelle Hooks, at the courthouse.He had asked the woman’s husband, the county judge, to collect and bring out the supplies they would need.Dana couldn’t recall what he had wanted, other than a stretcher and a body bag, and perhaps a camera.She was horrified to realize that other men would see the corpse the way Jay had described it: curve-spined, withered, and entirely unclothed.The thought of Angie so heartbreakingly helpless and exposed in death seized Dana with a desire to protect her sister’s dignity—to race back and demand that they turn away their prying gazes.Yet she sat shivering in the AC vents’ arctic blast.When Abe Hooks pulled up and climbed out of his old pickup, he glanced curiously in her direction, but she couldn’t meet his eyes.Couldn’t do a damned thing except stare numbly while her brain spun desperately through possible explanations for the presence of a blond female corpse inside the remote cavern Angie’s journal had described.Even so, when her satellite phone rang perhaps fifteen minutes later, Dana answered without thinking.“Hello.” The word was listless and mechanical, more a reflex than a greeting.“I just called to say I’m so, so sorry.”Dana jerked to awareness at her mother’s words.How could she know? Who on earth would have told her before the body was officially identified?“Sorry?” she asked cautiously.“Yes, about that stupid Regina—who is no longer any friend of mine.Jerome says I should have my head examined for crying on her shoulder, that the only reason she listened in the first place was to come up with some angle to turn to her own advantage.Now it seems he was right, and you know how I hate that.”“Regina called and pestered me in El Paso.I told her not to come,” Dana said flatly, while inside she screamed and wept and wondered, What the hell does any of it matter now?“That’s just it.Regina said that when it comes to the news, she doesn’t need anyone’s permission.”“Regina Lawler’s not the news.She’s just some flipped-out has-been.” Dana knew it was a harsh assessment, but she had no energy for tact now, not while she was bleeding inside and helpless to tell her mother what was happening at that very moment beneath the desert’s blank face.As she thought about the withered corpse there, hot tears hazed her vision.“She’s on her way,” said Isabel.“That’s what I called to warn you about.She’s found a freelance cameraman, and they’re coming out to get the story.That’s all this is—a story to her.My daughter, my granddaughter—everything you’re doing.She’s already shown up at the hospital and gotten footage of Nikki’s birthday party from the doorway.She turned seven the other day, and there was cake and ice cream with her parents and the nurses.They didn’t want the extra visitors, but Nikki got so excited when she saw the microphone and TV camera, they didn’t have it in their hearts to tell her no.”Say something.Just say it, Dana thought.Don’t let her sit there thinking that anything we do or don’t do will make one damned bit of difference.Not for Angie, not for Nikki, not for any of us in the end.Because she couldn’t force out those words, Dana settled for a stammered, “For-forget about Regina.I-I’ll handle her when she gets here.”“Is something wrong?” Isabel asked.“You sound terrible.Is your nose clogged? I knew you’d catch something in that horrible place.Did you remember your antihistamines?”“I’m fine.It’s just…let me call you later.”“What’s going on? Dana? Is there anything you need?”A mother who could stand to hug me.A mother who was willing to accept Angie as she was.But her anger was only a thin shroud draped over a monolith of sadness.“Just to say I love you,” Dana managed.And I’ll be home sooner than I thought.Once the call was over she shut off the Suburban and stuck Jay’s keys in her pockets.Rubbing her arms for warmth, she stepped out into the already oppressive heat and started up the hill.How far have you gone this time, Angie?The answer came back to Dana on a moan of wind across the cavern’s mouth: Far enough to finally break your heart…“She’s lighter than I would’ve thought,” said Wallace Hooks as he and the sheriff carefully maneuvered the stiffened figure inside the body bag.The deputy was mouth-breathing and trying not to look down.Jay suspected he’d appear green when they stepped out into the daylight.No surprise there.The odor, while not as harrowing as wet-rotted putrefaction, was plenty strong in the enclosed space.And besides that, Wallace had already told him this was only his second corpse, after the charred remains of the sheriff with whom he had worked for more than three years.Wallace’s father, who held the flashlight where he stood at the portal, looked unhappy but resigned to the morbid tasks at hand.He had clearly left his grill in a hurry, for his thick white hair stood up in clumps, probably from where he’d hurriedly pulled off his apron.“That’s what happens when they dry out.Henry Schlitz and I went out with the last sheriff, when a couple of illegals got found by Weevil Jenkins’s stock tank.Guess they didn’t make it to the water soon enough, ’cause they were light like this, too [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]