Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

'So take a guess.'

Glenn's face was oddly passive, as if he were detached from everything that was happening around them. 'I guess you're going to find Callie.'

Serena felt her heart race. 'You think Callie is buried there?'

'Don't you? Isn't that why we're here?'

'Did you put her there?' she asked.

'No,' Glenn told her with a raspy sigh. 'But if someone is framing me, if someone left the toy there for you to find, well, I can't escape the obvious conclusion.'

'You think your daughter is dead.'

'I'm afraid so. We'll find out soon enough.' 'That's all you can say?' Serena asked.

'What else is there?'

What else but grief , Serena thought. What else but tears and desperation. What else but a horrible, irreparable sense of loss.

'Who could have done this?' She didn't add: if not you.

'It must have been Regan.'

'She had an alibi,' Serena reminded him.

'So maybe she was working with someone.'

Serena tried to read the surgeon's face, but there was nothing in his expression. 'You probably won't believe this, Dr Glenn, but I've been the one defending you. I'm the only one who hasn't been convinced from the beginning that you were guilty of murdering your daughter.'

'And what do you think now?' he asked.

'I think you may be the coldest man I've ever met,' Serena said. 'Cold men have no conscience. No empathy. They can do terrible things.'

'Or they can save lives on an operating table,' Glenn replied with a shrug.

Outside the car, the beagle unleashed a fury of impatient barking. Serena saw Stride approach the man with the dog and point to a spot on the north side of the trees. When he turned toward the Lexus, Stride caught Serena's eye and looked away.

Micki Vega was by his side. She saw the Lexus too, and Serena watched her eyes widen in dismay as she stared at Marcus Glenn. Her mouth fell open, and she took a step toward the car as if she would run to him. Serena thought she might cry. Micki said out loud, in a voice that barely carried through the glass, 'I'm sorry.'

Beside her, Serena watched Marcus Glenn offer Micki a small smile. He mouthed two words to her: 'It's OK.'

Micki turned away, bowing her head.

'Am I under arrest?' Glenn asked Serena. 'No.'

'Then I'm going home.'

Valerie sat on the floor. Her fingers kneaded the white carpet. Ten feet away, a fire burned in the middle of the stone fireplace that dominated the wall. It was a gas fireplace, with fake logs that burned forever and didn't crackle or pop like real wood. The circle of heat from the artificial flames barely reached across the drafty room to warm her shoulder. She was cold.

She thought about the fire pit behind Denise and Tom's house by the river. Every year, on Christmas Eve, Tom stoked a bonfire that roared for hours, and the kids squealed and played games, and the adults drank beer and wine. Before she had married Marcus, she had joined them for their holiday tradition. She would sit silently in the shelter of the fire and envy her sister for everything she had. Husband. Kids. Responsibilities. Joy. Every year, she had felt like an outsider at someone else's feast, but even so, she missed being part of it. She missed simplicity. Christmas with Marcus was lavish but sterile. One year, they had gone to Italy. The next year, they had cruised in the Caribbean. Another time, they had catered a party for hospital staff with roast turkey, elaborate canapes, and expensive California wines. Even in her own home, she had felt as if she were on the outside, looking in.

This year, she had thought that it would all be different, because this year, she would have Callie in her arms. They could build traditions of their own. But it wasn't going to happen now. It wasn't going to be like that at all. She would be as alone as an island in the middle of the lake.

Valerie knew they were searching. They were in the woods, with lights and dogs and cameras. They weren't going to bring Callie back to her, pink and happy, giggling as her mother laughed and cried. They were going to call her with other news. The phone would ring in the middle of the night, shattering the silence. It would be Denise or Serena or Stride. Their voices would have the low, ominous bass of tragedy, and they would tell her how sorry they were. Marcus would put an arm around her, and his comfort would be as false as the logs in the fire that refused to burn.

Marcus.

I was wondering if you bad any idea what your husband may have been looking for in Regan's files.

Valerie stared at the hospital envelope. She had unearthed it from the drawer of lingerie in her dresser and brought it with her, unopened, to the living room. A gleaming pair of oversized silver scissors sat next to her. She could snip off the end of the envelope and extract what was inside, or she could cut it into miniature pieces and add them to the fire, where they would dissolve into the only real ash ever to burn there. She could know the truth, or she could cover it up.

She thought: this is what you were looking for at Regan's house, isn't it? Tell me, Marcus. This is what you so desperately wanted to find. What could be worth so much? What do you not want me to know? Regan laughed at the idea that I didn't know already. She thought I was a fool. And maybe I am.

Did you kill Regan, Marcus? Is the secret so terrible that you had to silence her? But you're too late.

All she had to do was pick up the envelope, but she couldn't bring herself to touch it. Instead, she picked up the scissors. They were hefty and sharp. She nestled them in her hand and spread the blades wide. They formed her initial, V, in a mirror finish. The blades reminded her of other things, too. They were the mouth of a fish, gasping for air on the floor of a boat. They were legs opening wide, inviting a man to make love to her.

She took the edges of the envelope with her other hand and lifted it in the air. Held it. Felt its weight. She couldn't imagine how a single sheet of paper could change a life, or be worth the price of a life.

Some sins, some secrets, are not worth knowing. She wanted to cut it up, put it in the fire, pretend, forget, grieve, move on.

But no. She had to know.

Valerie wielded the scissors and in a single motion slit the side of the envelope open. She made an oval of the envelope and let the paper inside fall out into her hand. It was folded. The truth was inside. She separated the folds, turned it over, and tried to make sense of what she was holding.

It was a dirty Xerox copy, hard to read. A medical form, heavy with codes and scribbled over in a doctor's unintelligible writing. The first thing she saw that she understood was a date stamped in the corner from nearly five years earlier. The paper was old. How could something so old have any relevance to her today? Five years was a lifetime ago. Five years was the time when she had sat in this very room at two in the morning, with the fake fire glowing and her husband asleep upstairs, and she had poured the tablets of aspirin into her palm.

It was that same month, she realized. The month of her despair and rebirth.

The form was dated two weeks after she had tried to kill herself.

She studied the codes, the handwriting, the notes in the margin, and tried to interpret it, as if it were a foreign language. And then one word jumped out at her. It was a medical term she didn't really understand, but it didn't matter, because she knew. Other words began to make sense. The timing, the implications, everything was clear.

She knew how a single sheet of paper could rewrite history.

It hit her like a rogue wave. Her mouth fell open in a silent scream, so deep and anguished that no real sound could emerge. The form dropped from her hand. She toppled slowly, sideways, sinking like a fallen statue into the carpet. Her knees drew up to her chest, and she wrapped her arms around them. The outside world escaped. The wailing pierced her ears, but only inside her head. Her tears flowed, but they stayed inside her eyes. Like a child, she rocked back and forth, willing away the knowledge and drowning in her grief.