Valencia nods. “He’s waiting on the perfect boat to put in there. But not a sailboat. That won’t fit.”
I think about asking how much it cost. I know the answer because I’ve seen the invoice upstairs. It was almost half of Nate’s life insurance policy. Which means there was plenty left over to buy a boat—I think? But now that they have to pay back the money, maybe that’s changed.
Something in the dirt catches my eye. It looks like a root—small, thin, and brown with dirt—but it’s harder than a root would be. I pick it up. Maybe it’s a broken piece of rock?
I throw it into the grass behind me and dig a little deeper.
But my shovel catches on something. This time it’s fabric.
Old, dirty, and shredded. Maybe it’s burlap that Valencia put down for the garden and forgot about?
I try to pull it out but it’s lodged under the dirt, so I dig around it, following the fabric until it stops. I pull a little more and it starts to come out. It’s not burlap, but maybe cotton.
Something rattles around inside as it unfurls.
And out tumbles a mess of dirty bones.
Thirty-One
“Eugh!” I jump back, dropping the cloth and shovel. Valencia startles and looks back at me. Then at the piece of fabric that’s covering the bones. I point. “Dead. There’s bones, a skull, something dead.”
Valencia reaches out and pulls up the cloth. And there it is. The bones are smaller than my brain originally recognized. All I saw were the eye sockets and teeth of whatever animal it was and my brain panicked.
But now I feel ridiculous, because it’s obviously some rodent. Maybe a squirrel that a cat killed, then buried? Do cats bury their food to save for later? I’ve heard horror stories about people waking up with dead presents from their cat on the front porch or on a pillow.
“Aw. It’s one of your guinea pigs.”
“Oneof?”
“Yeah. You had a guinea pig phase when you were in kindergarten. Your teacher, Ms. Rafkin, brought one in as a class pet and you wanted one so bad. I wonder if this is Frank. Or was it Murray?”
My skin crawls looking down at the bones of one of Nate’s first pets. “Murray?”
“I think Murray was your second. Frank was first, because thatwas also the class pet’s name. And then I think after Murray died we let you get one more, but I forget his name. After the third we stopped getting them for you. I thought those things would have lived a little longer, but apparently they only live five to seven years, and who knows how long the pet store had them before we came in.”
“They all died?”
“Peacefully in their sleep like old guinea pigs do. But honestly I probably should have let you learn that lesson once and called it a day.”
“I guess every kid learns that sometime.”
My pet was a little turtle my dad bought me on my sixth birthday. Looking back, I think it was because he and my mom might have forgotten my birthday that year. I remember my dad coming home from work and him and my mom talking quietly before he had to go back out for “something from the store.” He came back with a green plastic water tray with a little island in the middle and a turtle sitting on top.
I got lectured about keeping his habitat clean, how to feed him, and a number of other things.
Kept him alive for a few months, too. But then one day when I was at school, he escaped from his shallow green prison, and the next time I saw him he was dead behind the couch.
From there I got another lecture on responsibility and eventually, from Mom, I learned that animals have no souls, which means they don’t get into heaven. That was when I started thinking this religion thing was a little suspect. Why wouldn’t innocent creatures get into heaven? Adam and Eve were supposed to be in paradise until they atethe apple and realized they were naked—something that I learned in seventh grade was a metaphor and there was never a literal apple. But animals were “pre-apple,” and they weren’t aware they were naked all the time, so why wouldn’t they always have a place in heaven?
Asking those questions only got me more lectures, and once I started looking into it all myself, I turned to the dark side: agnosticism.
I wonder how Nate was raised on the subject.
“Are we religious?” I ask.
Valencia stutters a moment, then says, “We... Not really, I guess, is the short answer. Marcus was raised Catholic, I was raised Presbyterian, but we never took you boys to service. Gramma Sharon doesn’t really do church anymore either. Why? Do... you want to go to church?” She asks it like she doesn’t want the answer.
“No,” I say, maybe a little too quickly.
