Naomi shook her head. “Jimmie would have threatened him. You didn’t know him. He must have lost his temper and gone for him.”
“We don’t know that, Naomi.”
“I know it. That’s obviously what happened.”
“Let the police decide.”
Sam said this because she needed to know exactly what had happened. It would be the difference between being guilty or innocent.
“No,” Carissa said in Greek to Naomi. “We can’t do that. The police will think that we were accomplices. They’ll assume it immediately, and they’ll find out that I opened the door for him and that you asked me to do it. I’ll tell them if they ask me.”
Naomi turned to Sam and repeated this to her.
“Then what?” the girl burst out. “We’re just going to fucking leave them like this? Are you serious?”
“I’m going to talk to Carissa in Greek. She knows how the police work here. I think we should do what she says.”
“She’s the maid,” Sam spat at her. “We’re going to do what your maid tells us to? Are you insane?”
“It’s the least insane option.”
Naomi went back to Greek, speaking as softly and calmly as she could though her whole body was trembling.
“Say we don’t call the police,” she said. “I don’t see what we can do.”
“I’ve been thinking all morning. I’ve been thinking it through. I know it sounds like the worst idea—but what if we bury them in the garden?”
The sweat was coursing down Carissa’s face. She waved away the disgusting flies. Suddenly she got up and rushed into the kitchen, returning with an aerosol fly killer. She sprayed the room for a full minute until they were coughing and then sat back down in the same chair while the flies gradually subsided to their deaths. She went on. The garden was tiny, but it was enough. It was even fitting in its way. How many times had the master talked idly about being buried in his own garden? There was nothing wrong with it. In any case, they couldn’t go back to their prior lives, they had to deal with what the present moment had inflicted upon them. Bury them, she said. Just dig the hole and do it. There was nothing to it, and there was nothing else to do. Once it was done they would have time to think again, and—to state the obvious—anything was better than going to prison. She would show them how to do it.
“What a fool Faoud was,” Naomi whispered. “He lost his cool and panicked. We put him in a terrible situation.”
“Maybe not.” The maid’s voice was measured and rational. “He didn’t leave the money behind, did he? He made a choice. You should have realized he would.”
Naomi’s tears broke their dam. The realization was beginning to deepen and the first few minutes of shock had given way to emotion. She had never intended to erase her father from the earth and therefore she had not anticipated the sudden grief that came with the annihilation of a lifetime’s presence. Everything reversed and upended in moments, destroyed in a whirl of dust and madness. Yet there was no time for either gravity or histrionics; they had to act. She couldn’t look at him at first but then she went over and took his head in her hands and rocked it back and forth. She began to lose her breath. “Why did you wake up?” she said to him through gritted teeth. “Why didn’t you sleep after the tea? You had to wake up!”
And then it dawned on her that Phaine must have come downstairs, disturbed by the noise, and that Faoud—surprised and panicking—must have killed her there as well. It might have happened in the space of a few insane seconds, unpremeditated and purely accidental.
“I measured the garden,” the maid went on, as if this were not happening. Time was short and they had to make a decision. “We can dig it ourselves and bury them there. There are spades in the garden shed and plastic sheets. We can lay them next to the olive tree under the wall. Nobody will find them.”
“What is she saying?” Sam said close to Naomi’s ear.
“She says we have to bury them in the garden.”
Sam stood up and swayed a little.
“Not me. I’m not doing that.”
Naomi stood with her and faced her angrily. Her superior will suddenly imposed itself.
“You have to help. I need you, there’s no backing out. You’re with us.”
“I can do whatever I want. I can leave right now.”
“No, you can’t.”
“If you’re not with us,” the maid said laconically in Greek, “I’m not going to cover for you when the police come. If they ask me, and they will, I’ll say you were involved.”
Naomi translated: it was mutually assured destruction then. Sam was about to fly into a rage. Her face reddened and she took a step backward, but it was Naomi who gripped her wrist and tried to pull her out of her coming impulsiveness.
“Think a little,” she said gently. “Think it through. There’s no way out for you. You’re already in it with us. It’s better just to go through with it.”
The girl calmed and the first signs of resignation floated into her face.
“It won’t last long,” Naomi said, “and then we’ll be back to normal.”
“Normal?”
“Something like normal. I promise.”
“I can’t see what you can promise now. You really fucked this one up—why should I believe you of all people?”
“Because you have no choice,” Naomi said. “Now pull yourself together.”
It was two in the afternoon. In the garden the shade from the old wall reached as far as the center where the olive tree stood. It was tired grass which a gardener mowed twice a month and with the rainless days it had lost its color. The soil was dry and loose underneath it. They found it easy to scoop up with the brand-new spades as they created a large pit.
By four, having excavated the grave, they sat in the shade and tried to recover; they were relieved that no one had called their phones and no one had rung the outer doorbell.
Sam thought about how her future might look now. It had suddenly disintegrated before her. Everything that is solid, she thought, melts into air.
Then she looked down at her arms and saw clusters of ants clinging to the backs of her hands. She uttered a cry of disgust and shook them off. But they swarmed around her feet. She stamped them out, shuddering with a touch of theatricality.
“What is it?” Naomi asked her.
“They’re everywhere. Can’t you see them?”
But Naomi saw nothing.
Sam said, “They’re on my arms.”
She threw her hands into the air again to shake off the little vermin.
“Calm down,” Naomi said.
She gripped Sam’s hands and stopped her flustering. To distract them Carissa made them some mint tea. They went inside and drank it, then laid the two bodies flat and wrapped them in plastic sheeting. They carried Jimmie out first and arranged him gently at the bottom of the cavity. Phaine they positioned alongside him, and then they sat by the edge of the grave and wondered what to do next. “Should I say something?” Naomi said in Greek to Carissa.
“You can say it to yourself, love.”
“I can’t think of anything,” Naomi went on. “I can’t think of anything to think, let alone say.”
“Then don’t say anything.”
The quicker the better, the Greek girl was thinking.