Behind her, Navid said, I never should have got him the job. I’ll try to get you a payout but he wasn’t on the books. So. He shifted painfully. How will you bury him?
She saw that the bed was facing out towards the Gulf. East, where Frank would never go now. Whatever Teresa wants, she said.
He moved towards the door. I’ll get some of the boys to help put him in the van.
Li spoke with her back to him. Can you get us on a boat? She heard him release the door handle. Stood up and turned to face him. Navid. You do that, don’t you? You and Teresa? That’s what you do. Can you do it for me and Matti?
He met her gaze finally and she saw he was angry with her for knowing when to ask this of him, for seeing that he had no choice.
She went back to the salvage depot. Her shift manager had told her that if she walked out there would no job to come back to, but he owed her two weeks’ pay and she would need cash where they were going. There were still a few hours before school finished. She thought of those hours as a gift for Matti.
On the bus to the the depot, and while she waited for the manager to see her, and while they argued, and on the two buses from the depot to the school with the money in her jacket, and waiting outside the gates with the others, she kept searching for the right words, shaking them out and stacking and rearranging them, dumb and persistent, looking for the combination that would cut cleanly and not scar.
She watched Matti crossing the playground with a group of other children. Not one of the kids who dragged their backpack along the ground but one who carried it carefully because she knew exactly what it had cost. When she saw Li waiting she slowed and peeled off from the others. She usually walked back to the flat on her own. Li wanted to take it back, give her another hour another minute, but it was too late.
When she told her, Matti looked at her carefully, not speaking. Li tried to hug her but that was wrong already, shaming, so they just stood there while the crowd dispersed, and then they sat on the school wall.
Matti touched Li’s mouth, testing for truth. She said, But he didn’t tell me he would go.
Li shuddered. Matti took her hand away and stared at her. A grown-up crying was proof. Li watched the death go into her, this unbelievable thing, saw her pupils soak it up and darken with it. She pulled her in and Matti pushed her face into her neck and a wounded sound came out, muffled against her. Li rocked her like she had rocked her when she was a baby, when her crying protested all the things she hadn’t asked for and was helpless against. But when Li was too tired to hold her anymore, when she felt desperation boiling up inside her, then Frank had lifted Matti and carried her through the dark, his body like a boat, a promise, and that low creaking sound he made over and over until she quieted and slept on his chest.
She looked up at Li out of a face that was already remade by loss. And now where is he?
What had Frank said about Robbie? Had he just lied? I think he’s in here now. She touched Matti’s chest and then her own.
Matti concentrated, face screwed up. I can’t feel him.
Li was so tired. What’s the last thing you remember?
The last thing of Dad? Matti thought back, lips sifting quietly through the night before. He was late, so he hung me upside down to shake out being late.
Li nodded, seeing them in the crush of bags and shoes by the door, before Frank headed out for the night shift. Did he say goodbye?
Matti’s face opened a little. I said, I love you be safe, and he said he loved me and he would be and have fun at school tomorrow.
Can you feel him now?
She hesitated. Yes? But not inside.
Okay, not inside. In Li’s mind the ruin of Frank, plastic-wrapped.
They were nearly home before Matti had another question. Will he wait for us?
Yes.
Where will he wait? In the Best Place?
She didn’t want to keep lying to her. She wanted to pull them both down into sleep and sleep through everything that was coming. She wanted Matti to stop asking. Yes, she said, in the Best Place.
She lived through the night. When she crawled out to pee before dawn, the salt was pink and phosphorescent, a paler crust of stars. She looked north and saw the whole horizon blink.
The sun swelled up molten over the flat edge of the world. She waited for it to reach her, to heat the plastic. Then she slept.
In the thin warmth of the twelfth day Li stood in the abandoned campsite with the dunes at her back and looked out at an immense, low flatness, veined pink and white, a glare off the salt, back and out as far as she could see. The horizon was low and the sky filled all the space with clouds. A long way north there was smoke.
The cold and the rest had eased her ankle and she could walk a little with the stick. She started looking for proof. The campsite wasn’t enough; how many big road camps had she passed along the highway? But there were other things. Shallow toilet holes and uncovered shit too close to camp. The distance
