EXCERPT

IN THE PHOTOGRAPH, only Maria was visible, her figure isolated and poignant. Its composition had drawn comparisons to the works of old masters, each element carefully arranged to capture a moment. A photograph is a catastrophe, an intractable reality—the rest is mere history. She hung there, as if suspended above an unfathomable gulf, much like the lingering odor of elephants in the air after a rain. Maria gesticulated, caught in the act of falling.

When a pregnant woman dies the baby yanks the mother to Heaven by the umbilical cord. This elucidates the mystery behind Maria's peculiar suspension. Naturally, Maria was oblivious to this phenomenon at the time of her fall. It was why Maria's face remained sharply, horrifyingly in focus while other women, like five little flung stones, blurred into mere smudges. They were reminiscent of coal dust clouds rising from the mines below, or indistinct fingerprints fading from memory.

“Look at that,” St. Adelaide said the next morning, her finger hovering over the photo. “Pouff! She was gone. One moment she was there, and the next—nothing. Just like that. Plucked off the train like a tick from a dog, flung over God’s shoulder like a little stone tossed into a dung heap.”

“Flung?” Nicolas echoed, his voice thick with disbelief. “I’d say she was flung to the dunghill like an old shoe—worn out and forgotten. Then God with his many hounds descended upon the train she was on, and shook the land, and made tunnels collapse. Many fled from the surrounding mine shafts like rats from a sinking ship. God shook until his arms grew tired, and then even a little more. And as he sat catching his breath watching the remnants trickle out, a person here, a person there, like a small drop of blood in the only place a wound has not yet clotted, I took my leave. And of course he was still muttering, ‘You can’t do anything with a kid like that.’”

St. Lucian joined their search, guilt weighing heavily on him; after all, it was his fault Maria had been thrown from the train to Heaven in the first place, a consequence of his father's terrible mood. “It’s infuriating, really. It feels so careless, doesn’t it?”

“She will simply become one of the disappeared, one among the thousands,” St. Adelaide replied, her tone matter-of-fact. “An image of people in the streets, holding vigil candles and clutching photographs of their lost loved ones.”