She gave up fighting.

“Got it,” Nora offered morosely, then started following her sister over to where the luggage from her flight was already being dumped down to its carousal for the flight's passengers to retrieve. “So they transported the coffin in your plane’s cargo?”

“Yeah, although I will have to run the paperwork through federal security for some reason.” Tasmin suddenly laughed, although it sounded strained to Nora. “Although I have to say it would be pretty funny with all those people there waiting for the luggage and a big coffin suddenly banged down the luggage conveyor.”

She suddenly turned back to Nora, who was struggling a little with the heavy load on her shoulder.

“You didn’t bring any pallbearers with you did you?” Tasmin asked.

Nora stopped, shocked at the request. She hadn’t even thought of it.

“No...” she stared. “I didn’t expect I needed to.”

“That’s all right, Nora,” Tasmin assured her with a smirk, seeming to have got some energy back from somewhere. “I was just joking. As far as I’ve been told the funeral home is sending a hearse to pick up the coffin. All I need to do is sign a few things for them since I was the signatory back in Algeria.”

That was a relief, that they didn’t have to figure out how to get Dr. Burnes' coffin to the funeral home themselves. It would not fit in her Toyota, that was for sure. But that brought up another question.

“What kind of shape is it- he in?” Nora wondered. “I mean you were in the desert and all. Is Dr. Burnes’ body... okay?”

She had had all sorts of nightmare thoughts and images going through her mind of how his body might’ve ended up after being killed and then decay a week or two in the hot desert. Would they have wrapped it up, in bandages maybe? Did Africans still make mummies across the Sahara? Nora had no idea, her ideas only came from movies and textbooks.

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“Oh no he’s all right,” Tasmin told her. “Well, other than being dead, but his body is all right. As it turned out the Tuareg’s have at least moved into the 20th century. They have electricity and had a big freezer on their compound, so we were able to pop it in their a few days before negotiations were complete and they were able to cart his body out to the plane. It should probably be good enough for an open casket. It wasn’t like the Tuareg wanted to kill him, you know, it’s just how worked out.”

As they reached the carrousel, Tasmin turned back to her.

“Honestly Nora,” she said. “As captors go, the Tuareg were really not terribly bad. They had a bunch of rules. You followed you’re okay. If you didn’t follow, you were fucked.”

Then she gave Nora a hard stare.

“He isn’t here is he? I mean Andy’s ghost?” she asked. “God, that would suck if he was.”

“Oh no, no,” Nora told her, shaking her head. “I think he’s probably gone to Heaven or wherever he is going. I can’t feel them anywhere and I would if he was stuck with his body, I think.”

That was probably a good thing too. Most ghosts she’d met told her they had a hell of a bad time in the days and weeks after they died. Although, there were so many questions she would’ve liked to ask Dr. Burnes about what happened over there and just about himself in general, and didn’t really care at the moment how jealous that might’ve made Harold feel.

She’d fantasized about it, actually, Dr. Burnes after death and having him all to herself a little bit like Tasmin had when he was alive. But of course, she wouldn’t ever dare tell anybody even if that had become the case. Nora dreaded coming across like she was some kind of a pervert, which she feared her sister already saw her as since she had confessed before of experimenting a bit with Harold.

“That’s good,” Tasmin told her, spotting her luggage and heading over to grab it. “I don’t think you would’ve wanted him to stick around anyway. And I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have wanted to either. Grab a cart, will you?”

Nora did as told, dropped the heavy shoulder back onto it, and then rolled it over to collect the three larger pieces of luggage for her sister to hoist onto it.

“Okay,” Tasmin breathed out. “Now, let’s get over to security and get that whole thing done with?

“Of course,” she told her and pushed the cart in her sister’s wake.