Death is Forever

walking shoes.
    The floppy cabbage-leaf cloth hat Erin wore, her nearly black sunglasses, and the crisp nylon travel bag at her feet were all new. Even the Canadian passport in the bag was new, at least to her, although it had a well-used look about it. Cole had produced it, along with one for himself, after they’d arrived in Perth. Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Markham of Nanaimo, British Columbia.
    There had even been a well-worn gold wedding ring for Erin to wear. It was inscribed with her mother’s name. The realization that she was wearing her mother’s wedding ring unsettled Erin. Family photos had arrived with the passports, photos of Erin’s grandmother, Bridget McQueen Windsor. When Erin first had seen the photos, passports, and ring, she’d wondered if Nan Faulkner knew what Matthew Windsor had done, or if her father was putting his lifelong career at risk in order to make up for the misjudgment of seven years ago.
    There had been no answer to that question, simply a note from her father that had said:
    This is all I could find of my father’s life in Australia. Be careful, Erin. I love you.
    Dad
    The gold ring smoldered in the tropical light, reminding Erin of the photos tucked within her nylon bag, photos that she hadn’t really looked at. She leaned over into the sun, rummaged in the duffel, retrieved the envelope, and stood upright in the shade again.
    She went quickly through the photos, then more slowly.
    They dated from the time when both Windsor brothers were young and exploring Australia’s wild outback together. The black-and-white images showed a land that was sparse, spare, bleak. Yet the men were always smiling, especially when Miss Bridget McQueen was in the photo.
    One picture in particular held Erin’s interest, a photo of the young Bridget wearing an old-style dress and standing on a rocky rise with thin, peculiar trees and strangely shaped rocks all around. Bridget was radiant, mischievous, and impudent as she looked up from beneath long lashes at the invisible man who was taking her picture. Off to one side was a man with dense, straight eyebrows, unkempt hair, and a look of raw longing on his face as he watched the young woman whose unbound hair lifted on the breeze.
    On the back of the photo was written Some love for silver, some love for gold,/We love for the heat that never runs cold.
    The writing was even, elegant, and old-fashioned. Perhaps bad poetry and careful script had run in the Windsor family.
    “That’s it,” Cole said, slamming down the Rover’s hood. “Let’s hit the road.”
    Erin stuffed the pictures back into their envelope and put it in her camera case. As she bent over, her head poked beyond shade into sunlight.
    The heat was suffocating. She had to force herself to drag the thick air into her lungs. It felt like she was sucking oxygen through layers of used sauna towels.
    And this was spring, not summer.
    Erin tried to imagine what Derby would feel like under the full weight of a summer sun. She couldn’t. The heat would be unbearable, unspeakable.
    The interior of the Rover seat was as hot as it was dusty. The engine fired quickly on the first try. Erin sat and sweated.
    “You were right,” she said.
    “About what?”
    “Sweating. It doesn’t help.”
    Cole smiled a bit grimly. “I’d rather have been wrong. I hate this bloody place during buildup.”
    As the Rover began moving, the steady flow of air from the open windows helped to cool Erin. After fifteen minutes the heat and humidity no longer seemed remarkable or shocking to her, simply exhausting. Derby disappeared in the side mirror, a sorry group of low buildings strewn across the flat landscape like God’s afterthought.
    The alien quality of the land was more subtle in its impact than the heat, but ultimately more powerful. To Erin, accustomed to Alaska and California, the area around Derby was like being on another planet. The land was utterly flat as far as the eye could see. No mountains rose in the heat-hazed distance, no hills, not even hummocks. The trees were few and stunted. If grass grew at all, it grew in sparse clumps. The iron-red soil showed through the spare veneer of plants.
    Slowly she became captive to the alien land, absorbing its shapes and textures, its heat and humidity and flatness, the strangeness that was both subtle and overwhelming.
    Cole’s restless glance flicked to the rearview mirror. The heat haze made it impossible to be certain, but he thought there was a