第4章 第1節 再びの灰
Ashes Again
By , the old station was only a black of smoking wood.
Nora had been standing in the cold rain for hours.
The fire had taken everything—the reels, the machines, the tapes.
Gabriel was gone, and no one had seen where the men took him.
She held two small things in her shaking hands.
One was a single tape, wrapped in plastic against the water.
The other was a key that Gabriel had pressed into her .
"Keep them safe," he had whispered before the men arrived.
"Everything is gone," she thought, "but the fire has not taken these."
Trembling, she pushed the tape and the key deep into her coat.
The town stayed , as if nothing at all had happened.
No fire truck had come, and no neighbour had opened a door.
Nora finally understood how completely Edwin owned this place.
She walked down toward the water, because she could not stay.
The storm had passed, leaving a grey and heavy morning behind.
Smoke still rose behind her, thin against the sky.
She had lost her only friend, her , and almost her hope.
Yet the little tape was still warm from the heat of her body.
"As long as it survives, the truth survives too," she told herself.
Walking on the wet sand, she repeated these words again and again.
Then, far ahead on the beach, she saw a dark shape.
It lay very still where the waves reached and pulled back.
Her heart began to beat hard against the small plastic tape.
Something about the shape made her want to run and to stop.
Afraid of what she had found, she moved slowly toward it.