Before, she had thought about sorting Gary's and her mother's things as an ending, as a means of putting her house in order in preparation for yet another catastrophe.
Now, for the first time, she saw the other side of the coin.
It could go either way. She might just as easily be doing it as a beginning, as a way of putting the past behind her and finally getting on with her life.
I'll do the dishes first, she thought, then I'll get started.
It is said that on the Third Day, l'itoi gave each tribe a basket.
When all the women were busy learning how to make baskets, I'itoi saw that it would be good for each one to mark her baskets in a different way so they would know who had made each different basket and what it should be used for.
So 1'itoi brought the women seed pods from the planting, which the Mil-gahn call devil's claw. He showed all the women how to weave the black fiberfrom the seedpods into their baskets to make a pattern to mark their baskets, and by each pattern, the baskets would be known.
Now while all the women were working so hard learning to make the baskets, many of the Little People were watching as well. The birds especially, watching from a big mesquite tree, were curious about what I'itoi and the women were doing. Finally, u'u whig, the birds, came down from the tree and stole some of the fiber for making baskets.
They flew back to the tree with it and tried to make a basket of their own. But they had not watched Fitoi closely enough, and when their basket was finished, it slipped around and hung upside down on the bottom of the branch.
When this happened, the birds began to laugh. I'itoi heard them laughing and came to see what was so funny.
When he saw what they had done, Titoi was very pleased.
He told the birds that they might make baskets for themselves. He said they should call their baskets nests and use them for homes.
And that is why, my friend, the u'u whig, the birds, make nests even to this day, and all this happened on the Third Day.
Diana had barely moved the first stack of boxes out of the root cellar and into the kitchen when the phone rang. She looked at it warily, afraid of who might be calling. Her number was unlisted, but there were probably ways to get unlisted numbers if you knew how to go about it.
'Hello,' she said.
'Diana Ladd?' questioned a strange male voice.
'Who's calling please?' she asked, while her heart hammered in her throat and her knees wobbled.
'My name is Father John. I'm the associate priest, semiretired actually, out at San Xavier Mission on the reservation. Is Diana Ladd there? I need to speak to her.'
A priest? She didn't know any priests, not any at all.
Why would a strange priest be calling her? Was this a trick? Was it Andrew Carlisle pretending to be a priest?
She wouldn't put it past him.
'This is Diana,' she said at last.
'Good. I'm sure this is all going to sound very strange,' the man continued, 'but I was wondering if it would be possible for me to stop by and pay you a visit?'
Pay a visit? At the house? Did he know where she lived?
'Why?' she asked.
'We have a mutual friend,' he said mysteriously. 'Rita Antone, the lady who lives with you.'
Funny, Diana returned. 'I don't recall her ever mentioning your name.'
'I'm not surprised. We had a falling out years ago. I'm just now getting around to mending fences.'
'Look,' Diana said impatiently. 'Rita isn't here. If you want to talk to her when she gets back. . .'
'It's you I need to talk to, Mrs. Ladd,' the priest interrupted.
'It's about Rita, but I don't need to see her. In fact, it would probably be better if I didn't. I saw her in the hospital yesterday.
I'm afraid my visit upset her.'
He sounded priestly. The inflections were right, the tone of voice, the attitude. 'Father,' Diana said, 'I'm very busy right now.
Couldn't this wait a few days?'
'It's a matter of life and death,' he insisted. 'I must see you today.'
'Where?'
:'I could come there.'
'No,' she said at once. 'Absolutely not.' She wasn't dumb enough to invite a strange man into her home. 'I could come out to the mission, I suppose,' she suggested.
If the caller had been Andrew Carlisle posing as a priest, that would have been the end of it. Instead, he
