“We have to. If they dig a firebreak, they will find Elwood. We have to move him!”
A second of silence hung between them before Melanie pivoted to move past her. “I can’t believe you’re suggesting this.”
“But we can do it. I know we can. I have already been thinking how to do it if June loses the house. Elwood can’t stay here if she does. You know that, right? What if the new owners want to take out the rose garden? What if they want to put in a pool?”
“Are you out of your mind? Absolutely not!” Melanie started for the house.
Eva put out her hand to stop her. “Melanie. Those firemen will call the police. And the police will arrest June. Can’t you see that? It wouldn’t be right. She loved Elwood. She did nothing wrong. Surely you of all people understand how unfair that is.”
Melanie yanked her arm out of Eva’s grasp. “Now, wait just a minute. June did all kinds of wrong. She broke several laws, I’m sure, not the least of which is burying a man in his backyard!” Melanie punched out the last six words with force.
Could Melanie really not see they were the only ones who could help June?
“But she was not trying to break any laws,” Eva said. “She was desperate. She was not thinking clearly.”
“Well, neither are you right now. I don’t really want to see June go to prison, either, but we’re not digging up a dead man, Eva. We’re not. We only have five minutes—we’d be caught red-handed, and who would that help? We’re not going to compound the mistake June made by making a huge one of our own. She wants this house. I get it. But that’s not a reason to bury someone in his backyard. Sometimes you don’t get what you want. Surely you of all people understandthat.”
Eva winced but shook it off. She had to make Melanie see reason. “June was grieving and afraid, Melanie. She meant no harm. She’s a good person. But we have to hurry. We have to do it before the firemen come back.”
For a second Melanie seemed to waver. But for only a second. “You seriously want to dig up a body that’s been in the ground for nearly three weeks and move it? Even if we had the time, you want to, what, put it in the trunk of June’s car and drive it somewhere?Did you not study biology in high school? Are you telling me you don’t know what happens to the human body when it’s dead? Honestly, Eva! And where in the world would we take it?”
“I have already thought of a place. We can bring Elwood to the desert outside Palm Springs. He loved it there, yes? We can rebury him somewhere far off the main road where he will not be found for perhaps years, if at all. He will have a resting place like this one, one that meant something to him. It will fit the story June is telling if the remains are ever found. June need never know where we buried him. If she’s ever asked if she knows where Elwood is, she can honestly say she does not.”
Melanie was staring at her as if Eva had gone mad.
“What in God’s name happened to you in that war that has you thinking this plan of yours is a good one?” Melanie said. “A reasonable one? A feasible one! Eva, this is insane, what you’re suggesting.”
Was it? Was it insane? Was she insane? Had the war—and everything that had happened to her before it and after it—turned her into a madwoman?
She didn’t feel crazy, but was she for wanting to dig up a body like one digs up tulip bulbs? Was she crazy the first time she’d done that?
No. Ernst was not Elwood. And Louise? Had Louise also made a terrible mistake when she wanted to bury that monster of a husband in her backyard?
Eva didn’t know. All she knew was that Ernst would have killed Louise. Eva had to do whatever she could think of in that fear-filled moment. And so she had.
There was nothing similar about the two men. Nothing at all except where their bodies had ended up. But there was much that was similar about Louise and June, including what they wanted and deserved to have.
And what they both meant to her.
“Eva,” Melanie said in a gentler voice. “Listen to me. You’re not thinking clearly. Elwood has been dead for three weeks. That body of his is not the one any of us knew. It isn’t Elwood anymore. June should have called the authorities when she found him dead in his room. He should have been properly taken care of. Do you understand what I’m saying? He needed to have been properly cared for. He wasn’t.”
Eva was tearing up as if she had known Elwood herself, though the two of them had never spoken to each other. The tears were not for Elwood, however. They were for June. They were for the undeserved cruelties of life. They were for the ache of loss that was never far from the surface no matter how many years had passed. “She took him to his rose garden. How is that not taking care of him?”
“Because now June is facing the possibility of his body being discovered by those firemen,” Melanie said, still gently but with authority. “If it was caring and proper to do what she did, you wouldn’t be worried right now. But youareworried. Because it wasn’t the proper thing to do. You know it wasn’t. You and I are helping her live with what she did when she wasn’t thinking clearly, but that doesn’t make what she did right.”
“But we’re her friends!”
“And if she’s charged with murder, we can decide if we want to vouch for her that Elwood committed suicide. But it’s not always a fair world, Eva. You and I can’t prove what really happened the night Elwood died. I know June wouldn’t have deliberately hurt him. But I can’t prove that to the police or to anyone else. And neither can you.”
Eva turned to look at the roses. Smoke in the grip of the Santa Ana was swirling above the bushes like a filmy shawl being tossed about on a clothesline. She could taste ash on her tongue.
“We need to go,” Melanie said.
Eva said nothing though she knew Melanie was right. About everything.
“Eva. Come on. We have to go.”
“June did not want the house, you know,” Eva said, still looking at the place where Elwood lay.
