Twenty Years Dead by Richard Farren Barber & Crystal Lake Publishing

Author:Richard Farren Barber & Crystal Lake Publishing [Barber, Richard Farren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, Ebook, QuarkXPress
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Published: 2022-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Helen and Billy had already carved a deep hole by the time David backed away from the corpse and went over to the Family Director. “Do you want me to take over? There must be other things you have to do.”

Billy climbed out of the shallow pit and held out the handle of the spade. David took the Family Director’s place in the hole. Helen was only a few centimetres away from him, diligently hacking through the dirt and flinging it into the pile of spoil to one side of the grave. She didn’t seem to notice he was there, or if she did, she didn’t care.

“Hey!” David said. When he received no response, he tried a little louder and put a hand out to interrupt Helen as she plunged the shovel down into the black earth. “Are you alright?”

She looked up. Even in the gloom her tears were visible. David pushed his spade aside and held out his hands to embrace her. She fell into his arms and he smelled her sweat and traces of the scent from her shampoo. “It’s going to be alright,” he told her.

“No, it isn’t.” She spoke into his shoulder, her words muffled. Her voice was strained; a sound David was most familiar with from the times when they had an argument and were in the slow, tentative stages of making up.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s just . . . ” Helen’s voice hitched and her words dried up. David didn’t need to see her face to know the tears had started to roll down her cheeks again. This was Helen. It was how she reacted to grief. He had seen it when she was reading A Monster Calls or The Grapes of Wrath. When they had attended the funeral of her aunt she had sobbed silently for hours, her body trembling as he held her.

She leaned away from him and used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes, even though it only had the effect of smearing grave dirt across her cheeks. She looked like a child playing soldiers with camo paint.

David felt his heart ache. It was like Helen had reached into his chest and squeezed his heart in her fist, hard enough to stop it from beating for a couple of seconds. Love. There was no other way to describe the feeling. He considered telling her, but it wouldn’t help. She didn’t need him getting soppy and romantic, she needed his help to get the grave dug and Reginald Wooley reburied so they could move on. They just needed the night to be over.

She caught him staring at her. “What?” Helen said.

“Nothing.” He returned to his task; the sound of the shovel cutting through the soil masked his heavy breathing. Billy’s well-developed muscles began to make sense; caring for those rising was more physical than David had appreciated.

They worked without talking; the activity punctuated by the sound of the shovel hitting the dirt and their laboured breathing. David wiped sweat from his brow but as soon as he did, it was replaced with more.

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