Chapter Twenty-six
As soon as I get to work on Monday, Bill calls me into his office to let me know the coroner finished all the necessary testing, and Zoe’s foot and ashes are being released. If I’d like, I can be the one to pick them up.
‘Yeah. I’d like that. Thanks,’ I say, and grab the keys to one of the company vehicles, grateful that he’s chosen not to grill me about hiding my relationship with Zoe from him.
It’s strangely routine, signing the paperwork.
I don’t need a gurney for this one, of course.
It’s light, and I’ve brought a cooler to put the foot in for the drive.
I slide it into the passenger seat, because it feels too coldhearted to put it in the back.
I think about buckling it. Which is ridiculous.
On the other hand, if I make a sudden stop, I don’t want it to tip over and dump out the foot.
I buckle it, settling the clear plastic bag of ashes on the floor.
I turn the radio on to a station Zoe might have liked, then off. This is weird. Time to drive.
In a moment of timing you couldn’t plan if you tried, just as I’m driving away, Barnett calls back. As I roll to a stop at a red light, I swipe to answer and put him on speaker.
‘Margot. I’ve been in touch with the coroner. My condolences.’
‘Yeah. Thanks,’ I say, my voice emotionless. It’s hard to accept sympathy from someone who didn’t believe me about Zoe being in trouble, and didn’t believe me about Liam either. ‘So what’s going on with your investigation?’
‘We’re working on it. I’m going over the coroner’s report as well, and the pictures. I don’t have any updates I can share with you yet—’
‘No updates?’ I explode. ‘What about Liam? What’s the status there? Did you hear my voicemail? He’s out there, and dangerous and – someone new has just disappeared. Brooke Walsh. I know she’s connected. He might have her somewhere. He has a cabin—’
‘We’ll be bringing him in for questioning, and I’ll send someone to check out the cabin. I also have security footage from the restaurant, which I’ll be reviewing today.’
‘OK,’ I say, my voice ragged. I take a deep breath. ‘OK.’
With any luck, Liam will be behind bars soon, and for good.
One tiny flicker of regret sparks when I remember our encounter in the outdoor shower.
But I shut that shit down.
*
When I arrive back at the funeral home, I bring the remains straight downstairs to the basement where the cremation retorts are located.
Inside, Devin is at a control panel. A casket is sitting on a conveyor belt at the mouth of one of the side-by-side furnaces.
It’s hot down here. I’ve been here once before, during my new employee tour of the facility, but didn’t have a lot of time to really take it in.
The walls are cinder block halfway up, with a visible seam where it transitions to drywall.
The ceiling is unfinished, revealing piping, ventilation ducts and the stainless-steel chimney for the smoke from the cremation process.
In the left corner, water stains zig zag up through a network of cracks.
The only shiny thing about this space are the two retorts, which Bill upgraded a few years ago and proudly described as ‘state of the art.’
I wait quietly until Devin sees me.
‘Margot,’ he says, his voice raspy. He’s pale, with red-rimmed eyes as he walks toward me. His throat bobs. ‘Bill told us about Zoe.’
‘Yeah.’ I feel like I should say more, but I’m not sure what. ‘Do you … want to see it?’
He steps closer. I pop off the lid, and there it is, her foot, wrapped in a clear plastic bag, sitting on the ice packs.
We both look at it.
There’s a gagging sound next to me.
‘Sorry—’ says Devin, and rushes from the room. I hear him puking just outside. I hope he made it to a trash can.
When he comes back in, he’s wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbles. ‘Normally it’s just blood that gets me. Wasn’t expecting that to happen.’
‘It’s OK. It’s a lot. I understand.’
He drags his sleeve across his forehead, then rubs his face, like he’s trying to get his bearings again.
‘So she’s really dead,’ he says, his voice mechanical.
I huff out my breath in a sob masquerading as a laugh. ‘I liked your version better, with her in Costa Rica or wherever.’
He nods slowly. ‘Would you like to do the honors? I can walk you through it. The second retort is almost to temp.’
I glance at the ovens, then down at the foot, which suddenly I don’t want anyone else to handle but me.
‘Yeah. I would.’
Devin guides me through the process – moving the foot out of the plastic bag into a cardboard receptacle. Loading it on to the conveyor. Back at the controls, he indicates the Start button.
‘When you’re ready.’
I take a deep breath, push it. The retort door rises, revealing the fiery interior. The conveyor moves the foot into the blazing light of the oven, then the metal door closes with a smooth swoosh. It feels too quick, too easy.
‘So that’s it?’
‘Now we keep an eye on the process.’
‘How long?’
‘Three hours for a whole body, give or take,’ he says, gesturing to the left retort. ‘But for this, not long. Maybe thirty, forty minutes? I’d say no more than an hour.’
I sit on the floor next to the bag of ashes, lean up against the wall and stare at the ovens, because it feels wrong to leave, even though there’s nothing for me to do at this point.
‘I’ll give you some space,’ says Devin. ‘I’m gonna go take a break.’
He heads out, and I’m alone in the cavernous silence of the basement. I try to imagine what’s going on behind the metal door. Do bodies literally catch fire? Or slowly blacken and crumble?
Thoughts ghost through my mind. Like the day Zoe came back from her first women’s march in DC, sweaty and stinky from the seventeen-hour train ride, sunburnt and exhausted but so full of life.
I feel like we can really change things, Margot, if we all just band together.
I really felt it – the power of the sisterhood all those old feminists were always talking about.
The memory skitters away as I think about her upcoming memorial.
Her dad messaged me back this morning after I contacted him last night; he and his wife will be in attendance.
Figuring out how to get in touch was a challenge.
I’d already tried months ago via the area churches, to no avail.
This time, I went through Facebook. Every Boomer I know is on it; surely Zoe’s parents weren’t the exception.
Due to the astounding amount of Tim Dawsons, let’s just say it was a labor of love.
Around one in the morning, I found a Tim who appeared to be the right age, married to a Sue, and living in Illinois.
His bio said he was an engineer, but I shot him a message anyway, and now that he’s responded, there’s no doubt he’s Zoe’s dad. He must have changed careers.
I guess it’s good they’re coming. I wish I knew more about them.
Obviously, I know Zoe was a victim of their controlling, ultra-religious bent, but she never went into a ton of detail.
Still, things must have been bad for her to run away with her friend, junior year.
It took three days for the authorities to catch up with them, and I still remember Zoe’s vivid descriptions of driving through the night, chugging black coffee from McDonald’s, blasting Taylor Swift’s ‘Welcome to New York’ as they drove into Manhattan right as the sun rose.
A few days later, they were back, facing charges for car theft and expulsion from their private Christian school.
When Zoe started at the public high school fall of our senior year, I noticed her in the hall and immediately pegged her as not my type.
I was a teacher’s pet who was always getting A’s.
She was mostly getting D’s, because the teachers had pegged her as ‘trouble.’ But despite our surface-level differences, a deeper connection bonded us.
Not just our angst, or our controlling families, but our desire to go out into the big, bad world and claim it. We became inseparable.
When Devin comes back, almost an hour has gone by, and my aching back is proof.
‘Should be done,’ he says. ‘Ready?’
Inside the retort, a small pile of ash and bone fragments awaits us. He hands me a long tool to scrape the hot remains into a receptacle. Next, we take the bin of remains to the bone grinder, which pulverizes the rough bits into a fine powder.
‘We have urns in the storage room, if you want to pick one out,’ Devin says, seeming like his normal self again, like he’s had a chance to regroup.
‘Then, we can store it here until the service on Wednesday. Why don’t you take care of the fresh ashes.
I’ll add the ones from the beach later. The dust is really fine, so it can get messy. ’
The storage room has a dank smell. There are quite a few urns to choose from, but at first glance, none of them seem to suit Zoe. They’re too ostentatious, too fussy.
I choose the best of the bad options, a beige ceramic container. It’s big enough to fit the ashes in the bag as well as her freshly cremated foot. I take my time with this process, not wanting to spill any. Finally, I put the lid on, label the bottom, put it on the shelf and turn out the lights.