Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

More and more, she had thought of suicide again. She even swore to herself that the next time she got her period would be the last. She would quit trying. She would just quit. And like a miracle, her next period never came. Instead, nine months later, Callie came. Her beautiful child. Her savior.

Valerie sat on the floor of Callie's room, hugging her knees. She stared at the empty crib and didn't notice the tears on her face. Behind her, through an open window, cold air and wet flakes of snow blew on her neck.

'Valerie.'

She looked up as a shadow stretched across the carpet. It was Marcus.

'Get out,' she told him.

He hesitated, but he didn't leave.

'Are you even disappointed, Marcus?' she asked him, her voice raspy with grief. 'Are you even sad that she's gone?'

'Of course I am.'

He sounded like a man who said what the world expected him to say. She had always known that he didn't love Callie the way she did, but she had never dreamed that he would be just as barren as a father as he was as a husband.

'Tell me you didn't do this,' she whispered.

'Oh, for God's sake, Valerie.'

'Tell me.'

'I can't believe I have to convince you. I didn't do this. It's absurd.' 'Is it?'

He took a step closer. 'I may be a bad husband, but that doesn’t make me a bad man, Valerie. You know me, warts and all. Some things I do well, and some things I do badly. But harm Callie? I would never dream of taking her away from you. I know she's your whole life.'

'You could have been my whole life, Marcus. But I guess I don't screw you like your whore in Vegas.'

Marcus sighed loudly. 'We've been down this road before.'

'Yes, we have.'

'You know it's only sex to me. It doesn’t change how I feel about you.'

'Oh, get out, Marcus,' Valerie snapped. 'Get away from me.'

'I've told you who I am,' he insisted, grabbing hard to the door frame. 'I want things I would never ask you to do. If I could resist them, I would, but I can't. You know that. I can't be a great surgeon and switch off my other needs. It doesn’t work that way. But this girl in Vegas was nothing.'

'What about the nurse? Regan Conrad?'

Marcus shook his head. 'I don't know what it was about Regan. That's the truth. But it was still all about sex. And when you told me to break it off, I did.'

'She was there,' Valerie said.

'What?'

'The night Callie was born. She was there, wasn't she? She was at the hospital.'

'I guess she was,' Marcus said, looking uncomfortable.

'You guess? Tell me the truth. You slept with her that night, didn't you? Tell me! I was in a hospital bed giving birth to your daughter, and you were fucking your little nurse. Right? Don't you dare lie to me about it.'

Marcus rubbed his tired eyes with one hand. With his other hand, he clung to the frame of Callie's crib. 'OK. You're right.'

Valerie pushed herself off the floor. She marched toward the doorway, and Marcus grabbed her arm in a hard grip to stop her. She shoved him furiously away, nearly losing her balance. She stumbled down the hallway toward the stairs and heard her husband shouting behind her.

'Valerie.'

She ran, not wanting to hear anything else. She flew down the steps to the foyer and wrenched open the front door.

'Valerie ,' Marcus called again.

She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at him. His face was screwed up with rage and bitterness.

'Don't pretend you're some wounded angel,' he bellowed from the railing above her, his voice dripping with sarcasm. 'You're not exactly innocent, are you?'

Valerie stepped into the snow and slammed the door behind her. She saw police cars and media vans on the street at the end of her driveway, and she froze as heads turned in her direction. She reversed course and stomped to the rear of the house, making heavy footfalls in the slush as she headed for the lake. She went all the way to the shore, where a translucent glaze of ice crept a few feet on to the blue water.

She crumpled to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Her jeans grew wet, and the cold worked its way inside her clothes. She hoped no one was behind her, that no one had tried to follow her. She stared at the lake and thought about wading in and allowing her body to grow numb as the frigid water shocked her skin.

You're not exactly innocent, are you?

No. That was true. She wondered if he was guessing or if, somehow, he knew what she had done. But she had given up trying to decide what it really meant to be innocent or guilty. Did God punish every sin, or did He forgive you for the things you did when you were desperate and had nowhere to go?

Her phone vibrated in her pocket.

Valerie yanked the phone out of her pocket and prepared to throw it into the lake. But it wasn't Marcus on the other end, calling to shred her last ounces of self-respect. Whoever was calling had a blocked number.

'Hello,' she said wearily.

'Is this Valerie Glenn?'

She didn't recognize the voice. It was a woman.

'Yes.'

'I know what happened to your daughter,' the woman told her.

Maggie sat in the chair and stared at herself in the mirror. With the black smock tied around her neck and draped over her body, she looked like a pawn in a giant chess game. Behind her, Sara Wolfe reached round and played with Maggie's bangs with her fingers.

'Are you sure?' Sara asked.

'Yeah, I'm sure. Do it.'

'I just don't want you waking up tomorrow and blaming me.'

'I know what I'm doing,' Maggie said.

'Whatever you say, girl.' Sara worked at the dye with a mortar and pestle. 'Where's Stride, anyway? I haven't seen him in a few weeks. Either he's found someone new, or he's getting shaggy.'

'He's been in a cabin in Grand Rapids for the last month. I'm seeing him tomorrow morning.'

'Oh, now I understand,' Sara replied, winking at Maggie in the mirror.

'What?'

'Nothing, it just makes sense now.'

'This has nothing to do with him,' Maggie told her.

'Right. Sure. Well, tell him to stop by. I'll get out the machete and cut through that tangled forest he calls hair.' She put down the white bowl and primped the highlights in her own sandy blonde hair. 'You know, when my husband's on stage doing a guitar solo, I still get as breathless as a groupie sometimes.'

Maggie eyed her suspiciously. 'Yeah, so?'

'So it's nice when you've known someone a long time and they can still make you go weak in the knees.' 'That's not what this is about.'

Sara nodded. 'I hear you, girl. Message received loud and clear.'

'You're such a bitch.'

'Never say that to someone who stands behind you with a pair of scissors.' Sara wagged her finger at Maggie and picked up the mortar and pestle again.

'You're right. I'm sorry.'

Sara's face grew serious. 'Are you close to nailing the guy who's doing these farmland murders? I have to tell you, all my girlfriends are pretty scared. So am I.'

'We've got patrols blanketing the roads northeast of the city all night long.'

'If I lived on one of those farms, I wouldn't be sleeping,' Sara said. 'I'd be sitting up with the lights on and a big gun in my lap and a couple German shepherds on either side of me.'

'That's not a bad plan,' Maggie told her.

Sara tilted the bowl and showed her the color of the dye. 'How's that? Is that what you want?'

'Redder.'

'If it gets any redder, you'll look like Ronald McDonald.'

'I want it to stop traffic,' Maggie said.

'You're the boss.'

At nine o'clock on Monday evening, Kasey spotted the one headlight trailing behind her patrol car like a watchful eye.

It appeared near the airport and matched her on the remote roads turn for turn. She didn't think anything was wrong until she turned for the fourth time, heading north toward Island Lake, and the same single headlight followed in her wake. When she slowed to draw the vehicle closer, whoever was behind her mimicked her speed. She was being followed.