Slim, white, pretty shoulders, the curve down to her hip, it could have been a girl’s body. The rot and death inside. Heard his telephone ringing in the kitchen. It was strange how much of her was still good, how much remained of the girl. She went from waking to sleep instantly, without worry or sweat, the way Layla would run till she dropped on a summer night …. Her breath was sweet and slow, and she moved, gentle underwater movements. RL felt something big and cumbersome moving around inside him. She was not going to make it, were the odds. She was not going to live. And all this unlived life, all the years stuck in Purgatory with her knitting needles and her garden, the faces of the children in the rain … This longing to undo, untangle, revisit, reset. This futility. He closed the door again as silently as he could and went back to his chair in the living room, his little glass of Johnnie Walker on the rocks, his empty nest. He missed his daughter, yes, he did. The little pagan children spent eternity in Purgatory because they were without sin but they had not been baptized.
