Road to Paradise (53 page)

The eight hours on the rattling bus back to Reno were the longest eight hours of my life.

The longest, that is, until the three days I spent in Motel motel, pacing, and cursing, helpless and alone, without Gina, without my car, without Candy, my hands fully emptied. The money left with Candy was gone. She must have taken it. I began to suspect that she, knowing I would not do what I told her I’d do, and not having any other way to be rid of me, sent me on a fool’s errand, while she packed her things, took the money, sold my car, and was now headed to Paradise herself, to do what I could not do. I drank water out of the tap, and read Gideon’s Bible.

Lift up thy hands that hang down, and thy feeble knees
.

The longest three days, that is, until the five-hour ride in the back of the police car to Paradise. No strawberry fields for me, this time, no sunsets, hills or blue skies, no ascensions. Distinctly, I felt like Judas, desperately clawing his way back up to the small light.

By the time we reached Paradise it was late and dark. Yeomans and Johnson asked if I needed anything, and I said no. Like what? Look, Detective Johnson said, you look real beat up and scared, but this is the thing. You reported your car missing in Reno. You said your friend might have taken it. The guy at Moran’s junk-yard confirmed that a young gal brought the car to him. It was in
good condition, he saw the dollar signs and didn’t think of anything else. He gave her a thousand dollars for it. The girl fit the description of your friend.

“Okay,” I said. A
thousand
dollars for my car! Well, it’s only right. That’s the money Reckless Man gave her and took away. “Why are we here, then?”

Yeomans and Johnson glanced at each other. “Early this morning, the body of a young woman was found at Neal’s Sanitary Landfill off Neal Road. She had no identification on her. We think it may be the girl who took your car. She had some identifying, similar markings. You think you’ll be okay to come take a look?”

My hearing left me. Mutely, I started to cry. “No, I’m not going to be okay,” I said. It was like I crawled into my eardrum to hide and left no room for sound. “Where?” I whispered, but no one heard. “I’m not going to the town dump.” I shook my head. “No.”

“No, no. She’s been taken to the morgue. If it’s her, maybe we can notify her family. Does she … have family?” Yeomans asked with hope.

“It’s not her,” I said. “She’s not here.” I was nearly inaudible. Johnson patted me on the back.

“I hope you’re right,” he said. “But that’s not what you said when you called to report your car missing. You told us she’d be heading to Paradise in your yellow Mustang.”

I never looked up. “She didn’t know how to drive.” I kept staring at my feet, at the ground. “Why would you seek me out for this?” I asked. “Why would you come get me all the way in Reno?”

“This sort of thing doesn’t happen often in these parts,” said Yeomans. “The Reno cops were in touch with the Paradise PD. When we found her, we thought maybe the two were connected.” He paused. “And she’s been three days unidentified,” he added.

They brought me to Enloe Medical Center in Chico, and took me down to the sub-basement, possibly even beneath even the sewer pipes, where all was cold steel and fluorescents. A man in a soiled white overcoat and black glasses, a man who didn’t look
at us, the living, even once, as if he had no interest in the still-breathing, took us to a room full of metal drawers, slid out one of the lower ones, number 518, and pulled a white sheet away from a small thin body. I didn’t have to look at anything more than the tattoo on her bare left shoulder and the matted bloodied blonde of her sheared hair. Accidentally, I noticed the parted frozen mouth, the half-open eyes; the yellowing black-and-blue underneath one of them. I wanted to touch her dear head, to fall to my knees and kiss her hands and feet, but I could do none of these things. They told me she’d been bludgeoned, and my legs gave way. As they helped me up, the drawer slid shut with a metallic thud. I should have touched her, and will regret that I didn’t for the rest of my life.

I don’t remember how I got upstairs, but Yeomans sat me at a table in the hospital cafeteria. Johnson got me a hot tea.

“Tell me,” he said. “Do you know anything about how this might have happened?”

“I know absolutely nothing,” I said. “But I do know the man who killed her.”

I told them everything. The man who killed her was Erv Bruggeman. He had been following us since Indiana. She had something of his, and he wanted it back. We told her not to come here, we told her he’d be waiting for her. She didn’t want to believe us.

“Who’s us?”

I blanched. Did I say us? God, what happened to Gina? Where was she?

“Why would she come here?” asked Johnson.

“Her little girl lives here,” I replied.

Johnson asked where the film was.

“With her father.”

Johnson looked notably relieved. “I’m so glad she has family,” he said. “After the worst happens, all you want is for them to be properly buried. I can’t tell you how many times in Reno these sorts of things happen, unfortunately, and the bodies remain unclaimed and unidentified, cremated in the end on the taxpayers’
dime as John Doe or Jane Doe. You want them to have a name in death. As in life. What was her name?”

“Her name was Grace Rio.”

And so it came to be that Estevan Rio left the monastery in Melleray, Iowa, and came to Paradise, looking twenty years older than the last bright time I saw him, bringing the film his daughter left with him and a genuine monk-made, Trappist pine casket.

“
Merciful Father, by your Son’s suffering, death, and rising from the
dead, we are freed from death and promised a share in your divine life.
By the hands of monks, each day raised in praise of your goodness, this
casket was fashioned for your child who died in faith. We ask you now
to bless it. Receive the soul of our departed sister who is laid in this
humble bed as in a cradle, safe in your care. As the thief who had
confessed, Remember her, O Lord, when you come into your kingdom
.”

She was buried on a dazzling Friday in Paradise Cemetery, under a tree close to the overlook where Chico Valley lay as far as the eye could see to the hazy horizon, Estevan, the funeral director and me at the graveside. Tara didn’t come, but she gave me back the dolly to be placed with her mother in the pine box, a picture of herself wearing the dress Candy had bought for her, and a Valentine’s Day card. She kept the ball. After the burial, Estevan and I went to the Paradise stone and cement company to order a simple, black granite headstone. It was going to take eight to ten weeks to arrive. Estevan paid in full.

G
RACE
R
IO
1963–1981
“
She skated on noisy wheels of joy
.”

After the funeral, we met Tara and her grandmother Nora at the Paradise Recreation Center. I introduced Estevan to his granddaughter, and he sat for a few minutes with her and me on a bench under the Ponderosas, showing us the pictures he had brought
with him of a very young Grace. We agreed mother and daughter looked very much alike. “I wish you could have seen your mother,” said Estevan. “She was beautiful like you.”

“Oh, I did see my mother,” Tara told Estevan.

“When did you see her, child?”

“A few days ago.” She thought a moment. “Maybe seventeen days last Thursday. She came to the school, kind of like you did, Shall Be. We sat together, we talked.”

“Did she cry like me?” I asked. So Candy did see her baby girl, after all.

“No.” Tara giggled. “She said she was happy to see me, and happy to see me happy. She said she really liked my life. She bought me ice cream, and cotton candy, and a white clip for my hair. See?” She showed us the little white flower that held back her bangs. “She said she would come see me again someday.”

Estevan briefly held the child on his lap as she talked, his hand patting her kindly. We were high in the hills, it was warm, and the smell of pine and fading summer was strong.

Nora called for Tara from the shadow of the mighty trees, the safety of the station wagon.

“Nana!” Tara called. “Come here.”

“No, Tara, you come here!”

An open, loving child, Tara hugged Estevan. She even hugged me. Then ran to Nora, joyously skipping the whole way.

“That’s how Grace was, too,” said Estevan as we watched her, my heart so liquid with sorrow, I thought it would weep itself out of my chest. I clasped my arms around my stomach. “She was just like that, skipping through the abbey the first seven years of her life. She couldn’t walk without bouncing. She ran and jumped and played hide-and-seek with the squirrels. She had to force herself to walk, but even after, she was like a spring, up, down, up, down, so full of joy.”

I turned away as he spoke, faced the pines and the yellow gardenias. “She was still like that, Brother Estevan,” I said. “She never lost that.”

“You couldn’t help it,” he said. “Watching her roll around, pick flowers brought smiles to our faces.”

“Maybe that’s just what all children do,” I said, not really knowing, watching Nora’s face watching the animated Tara, talking, gesturing to us, folding her arms on her chest.

He nodded, wistfully. “Maybe. She was the only child I’d ever known.”

The woman took Tara’s hand, and together they slowly walked toward us.

“You see, Shelby, just when you don’t know how,” Estevan whispered to me, “a mystery happens.” He stood up tall, dignified even in grief, stoic in his white cassock and black tunic, his hands ever ready for a blessing, a prayer.

“Estevan,” said Tara, “I wanted my nana to meet you. She still doesn’t believe me that you are my mama’s daddy.”

“I am,” said Estevan. “I was.”

Stopping in front of us, Nora nodded to Estevan, eyed me warily, but spoke only to him. “Ah,” she said, her brown eyes widening. “
That
girl had a monk for a father? Well, well. The mysteries just don’t end.”

“You’re so right about that,” Estevan replied.

“So why didn’t you want to take her, bury her somewhere close to you?”

“I think she would have preferred to be close to Tara.”

I knew this to be true.

Nora stood awkwardly. She didn’t know what to say, what to do. Did she shake his hand? Did she bow her head? He made it easier by making the sign of the cross on her, which gave her permission to retreat, step by step, as if she didn’t want to turn her back on him. “Would you, um, like to come to the house with us?” she said, trying not to stammer. “Maybe have a bite to eat?”

“You are so kind,” said Estevan. “Too kind. Thank you. But I must be going.”

“Of course, of course,” she said hurriedly, notably relieved. “But do come and see the girl, won’t you? Any time you want. It’ll
make her happy, and that’s all that matters. She’ll be glad to know her mama’s daddy. I want her to be happy.”

“I can see that,” said Estevan. “I live in a monastery in Iowa. This is the first time I’ve left New Melleray in eighteen years. I will try to come again for a few days, when I can get a little time. But you are always welcome to visit me with Tara. We offer hospitality to all guests. You can stay as long as you like. I live in a sanctuary. It’s very peaceful.”