he put it, having been transformed by the rural life into someone who spoke like a medieval pastor, a crowing rooster in the background. When she told him about the accident there had been a long, long pause. Wind rushing the wires.
There they were. Ruth’s twins. In the doorway, a welcoming committee, teeth gnarly with metal braces but so poised, shiny brown hair and black dresses, shaking the hands of the elderly mourners, accepting condolences, giving them. Dot went to say hello and let them check her out, the weird auntie from that place they couldn’t find on a map. They were polite, told her about school and horse riding and drama class.
‘You must have been close to your grandparents?’ she asked, and both girls said together, ‘Oh, yes.’
She waved her daughter to come over from the speccy flirt, but before she reached them the minister took the podium, and the girls melted away, and Dot and Amy quickly ducked into a pew.
The service flowed with loving testimony from incredibly old people about Frank and Lee’s capacity for friendship. White-frosted men and women sticklike inside pressed cotton pastels, clean shoes. Maybe it was the jetlag, making her sway in her seat, as though one of the California fault lines had opened and was torquing the earth slowly. It wasn’t until the flirtatious cousin stood up to read a letter from Daniel, ‘who couldn’t be here in person’, that Dorothy really accepted he wasn’t going to come. No – even then a corner of her mind imagined him outside, smoking, ready to throw an arm out as she walked past. But this was a long way, no doubt, from wherever he now lived.
Overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation, the cousin lingered too long over Danny’s simple lines, delivered them in a suspenseful boom. ‘ “Lee and Frank gave me a home when I needed one most. They gave me a family”.’
‘He should do voice-overs for blockbuster ads. This summer . . .’ Dorothy whispered to Amy in the movie-trailer voice. ‘Two people . . .’
Her daughter looked at her. ‘Oh Mum,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’
The pew rocked. Her body felt the motion of the plane, still sleeping in the awkward chair, holding there the knowledge of her own safe bed at home. In Auckland it was midnight. Little by little her parents’ car approached the bend in the road. Funerals go by so fast.
Later they sat outside Frank and Lee’s house in the rented car and watched people stream through the gates for the catered afternoon tea, rich yellow light dripping over the afternoon. ‘Come on,’ Rena said from the back seat. ‘Let’s go in.’
Dorothy turned to Amy. ‘I think this is what’s called losing your nerve.’
‘I’ll come in,’ said Amy. ‘Moral support.’ She kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘Follow when you’re feeling up to it.’ She helped Rena’s crabbed body out of the car and across the road, hobbling.
The magnolia in the front yard was broad and luscious, the white plaster freshly painted. Inside, Amy walked a cup of tea through the Forrests’ retirement bungalow, watching her aunt and uncle and an antique-dealer friend in conversation that threatened at times to reveal itself as negotiation, linger over this sideboard, that rug. Pieces she described later for Dorothy to visualise, furniture that had bobbed back and forth on the ocean and crossed this country by U-Haul.
When Amy appeared in the front doorway after about half an hour the tall cousin was with her, and Dot gripped the steering wheel and craned forward to see better. He kissed Amy on both cheeks and they made a false attempt at parting and smiled, her fingertips to his chest both deflection and touch. From the shadowed hall, Ruth joined them and embraced her niece. At that distance she looked just like their mother. When they were younger Ruth had most resembled Eve, but now she had long passed Eve in age, the little sister outgrowing the elder. Dot waited for Ruth to glance over, walk down the steps and cross the road, but she did not. After a moment Dorothy tooted and waved. Ruth, to her credit, just stood on the doorstep and looked evenly at the car, then was swallowed back into the house. Amy slid into the passenger seat and pulled a small framed square from the inside of her linen coat.
‘What’s this?’
‘A memento. Do you want it?’
It was a needlework piece, a picture of a cottage garden, little blue and