How was I supposed to explain all this to Ruby?
As I was taking everything out of the suitcase and sorting it out on the bed, a second letter fell out of Connie’s jeans, and this one already had a recipient. I frowned. The name meant nothing to me, I was confused and unsettled.
Who the hell is Billy?
I put my finger into the envelope, ready to tear it open.
“Grampa?” came a voice from the next room, and I only just realised that it was getting brighter outside.
“Grampa, why are you crying?” Ruby’s innocent, huge eyes were looking at me across the table. “Did your corn flakes get all soggy too?”
I hadn’t even touched my breakfast. An unappealing blob of cereal was floating in a bowl of milk in front of me, no wonder Ruby thought that it was the source of my sombre mood. How could I explain why I was sad to her without wounding her, scarring her for life?
“How about we read some books?”
“Cinderella?”
“I’d like to read you some new stories, ones you haven’t heard before. What do you say?”
“Are there any unicorns?”
“I don’t think so…”
“What about elves?”
I didn’t answer.
“Or at least princesses?”
I was trying to remember some character that would fit this description, but I hadn’t even flipped through Connie’s books. The only character I could remember was… “A mouse! There is a little mouse.”
Ruby put on an expression which clearly stated: What kind of a story is it if it doesn’t have unicorns? But she went with me to fetch the small pile of books her Mum had wisely prepared.
Despite the books, it wasn’t an easy task. We read stories about death, loss, grief, and if I was upset, what must it have been like for Ruby?
I closed the last book and took a deep breath. “You know how the little mouse had a Mummy and a Daddy?” I couldn’t believe that I had to do this again. First with Connie and now with her daughter. “And then one day Mummy didn’t come home and the little mouse only had a Daddy?”
She was listening to my explanation very closely, pressing her elephant to her nose, and she looked completely confused. After the fateful words, “Your Mummy won’t come back either, Ruby,” she put her thumb in her mouth. It had been years since she last did that, it was devastating to watch her trying to soothe herself the way she used to when she was a toddler.
I dropped the books on the floor and kicked them under the bed, out of sight. Then I reached for Cinderella and Pinocchio and started reading the girl’s favourite stories. Her attitude was nothing like the usual; normally she’d jump in, adding words and extending the story using her imagination. This time, she sat completely silently, sucking her thumb, staring into the book, which she clearly wasn’t paying attention to, in deep thought.
“Where is Mummy?” she asked again.
It was like an echo. Two voices, my daughter and granddaughter. Even though over twenty years had passed between the individual questions, it felt like they were spoken at the same time. I couldn’t answer, I only had so much inner strength.
“There’s a box of LEGO in the living room,” I suggested in a strained voice, holding on by a thread. “How about we build Cinderella a nice castle?”
Without so much as a word of response, she jumped up and moved to the LEGO. It took a while, but in the end she started talking again, although her elephant stayed in her lap. She was giving out orders about where to put each piece, and spinning stories about Cinderella and the castle I was helping her build. We spent much longer on this activity than I would have thought. The girl didn’t even mind when I left to cook lunch. She was probably still processing the stories we’d been reading earlier.
After putting Ruby’s favourite baked rice pudding into the oven, I took advantage of her absorption in the LEGO to go check on Darlene and Hugh.
How long had it been since I last saw them? Two days, or more? I’d lost track of time.
It was possible we’d been missing each other, I spent a lot of time in the bedroom or out behind the house, partially hidden from view. But given that they were our hosts and should have been providing breakfasts and dinners, I would expect them to be around a little more. If they were still able to, that is…
I knocked on the door of their bedroom, but my only answer was silence, so I entered. Normally I would never be so forward, but my manners had suffered somewhat after Connie left us to die in a forest. I assumed Darlene and Hugh had an understandable reason for not looking after their guests.
The stench of bad meat, excrements, and rotten eggs hit my nose. My stomach turned, I struggled not to throw up. I stepped back and closed the door behind me without looking at their bodies, but I couldn’t get rid of the smell. It clung to my clothes, my hair, even the hairs in my nose.
I immediately went to the shed for a shovel and looked around outside to find a good spot, not visible from the house, but not too far either, since I had to carry the bodies over. Leaving them in the bedroom was unthinkable, the stench would soon permeate the whole house.
I felt guilty for neglecting Ruby, especially when she was so vulnerable after the morning stories, but I had no choice. I was checking on her every ten minutes, and when she got bored of the LEGO, I put a cartoon on for her on TV. I dug a deep hole wide enough to fit
