Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

Denise shrugged. 'If you don't know, you can still hope.'

Snow gathered in a wet film on the windshield as they waited. When it became hard to see, Denise flipped the windshield wipers, pushing the slush aside and clearing an arc on the glass. Inside, heat blasted from the vents, keeping the car warm.

'How are you?' Serena asked.

Denise said nothing. She chewed her nails harder.

'Sorry,' Serena said. 'Bad subject.'

'Yeah.'

'Do you want to talk about it?'

Denise looked at Serena as if she was crazy. Then she shrugged, as if anything was better than sitting in silence as the shovels carved up the ground.

'I wasn't expecting a bomb to go off under my life,' Denise replied.

'What happens next?'

Denise took a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and then scowled and put it back. 'When you've been married as long as Tom and I have, it's not like divorce is easy. There's a lot of practical shit standing in the way. Starting with the kids. Then again, I'm not going to do nothing. Some women can put on blinders and live with a crappy marriage, but not me.'

'What about Valerie?' Serena asked. 'If it's Callie out there in the woods, she's going to need your help.'

'Let her get help from someone else, not me.'

Serena hesitated. 'She's going to be alone.'

'Are you lecturing me?' Denise asked in annoyance.

'No, but Callie's her whole world.'

Denise took a photograph out of her pocket. Serena could see it was the picture of Callie that had been broadcast all over the country. 'What is it about wives married to shitholes? They always think having a kid will make it better. Like it's some kind of miracle cure. Valerie should have gotten a divorce, not gotten pregnant.'

Serena didn't reply.

'Don't get me wrong,' Denise added. 'I'm sick about Callie.'

'I know that. You don't hide it as well as you think.'

Denise frowned and put the photograph away. 'As long as you're prying into my secrets, what about you? What's up with you and Stride?'

Serena was caught off guard. 'What do you mean?'

'Oh, don't play dumb. I can see you two are having problems.'

Serena thought about making an excuse, but she realized that she needed to say it out loud. 'He slept with Maggie.'

Denise didn't look surprised. 'Well, they've been dancing around it for years. So what are you going to do?'

'Same as you,' Serena said. 'I don't have a clue. But we don't have kids to worry about. I guess that makes it easier for me to walk away.'

'You think it would have been different between you if you had a baby? It wouldn't.'

'Maybe I wonder if I would have been different.'

Denise twisted toward Serena and pointed a finger at her. 'It's not a magic bullet, Serena. You'll never feel more vulnerable than when you have a kid. If you let it, the responsibility will kill you. If something happens, it can drive you insane.' She turned back and looked through the steamy windshield of the patrol car. 'Oh, shit.'

Serena looked too. Through the snow, she saw Stride coming toward them, his face weary and grave. Even in the cold, he had his sleeves rolled up, showing bare arms, tracked with dirt. He stopped in the glow of the headlights.

They both climbed out and met him. Serena saw Denise's jaw trembling. She was a sister and an aunt now, not a cop, and she didn't want to hear the news. Neither did Serena. She had known from the beginning that the odds were against a happy ending. That wasn't how child disappearances played out. You hoped for a miracle, but you steeled yourself for the harsh reality. Most kids didn't come home. Most kids didn't stay alive.

Stride's face was bathed in sweat. He wiped his forehead, leaving a trail of mud. His thick hair was wet and flat. He didn't make them wait.

'We found the body of a child,' he said.

Denise spun around and lashed out at the tire of her car with her boot and pounded both fists on the hood. 'Goddamn it!'

'Hang on, Denise,' Stride said, but Denise didn't hear him. She hit the car until Serena was afraid she would break the bones in her hands. Tears streamed out of her eyes and ran in glistening streaks down her face.

It didn't matter if you knew it was coming. It was one thing to cxpect the truth and another to hear it. It was one thing to be furious with Valerie and another to hear that her daughter was dead.

'Denise, wait,' Stride called.

Serena watched his face. Behind his sorrow, something was different. Whatever had happened was not what they had all expected. Something else was going on.

'Listen to me, it's not Callie, ' he said. Denise's head snapped around. 'What?' 'It's not Callie in the woods.'

Her hands flew to her mouth. 'Oh, my God, are you sure? How can you be sure?'

'It's not a girl,' Stride told her. 'The body that was buried there, it's a boy.'

Valerie stood in the doorway of their bedroom. The hallway light cast a rectangular glow from behind her. Marcus lay in bed, asleep on his back. His breathing came easily and steadily. She stared at her husband and wondered how he could sleep so calmly when men were hunting for Callie in the ground, when her precious baby was cold and alone.

She knew the answer. Callie had never been his daughter. She was a stranger who had lived in his house. Someone else's child. The offspring of his wife's affair. He had known the truth from the very beginning.

'Do you really wish she'd never been born?' she asked.

He slept without answering.

She approached the bed and stood over him. He was a handsome man. Fit, strong, attractive. She wondered if he was really asleep or just pretending. Part of her wanted to scream and make noise, to force him to acknowledge her, but she didn't. They were beyond that. Beyond rescue.

Valerie undressed and went into the master bathroom and closed the door behind her. The marble tile was cold under her bare feet. She turned on the shower and waited as the water grew hot. She studied the reflection of her naked body in the full-length mirror. People told her she was beautiful, but they didn't understand how she could hate her body. They never saw that one brown nipple was slightly larger than the other. That her knees were ugly. That her stomach was a constellation of pale freckles.

She got under the water, which poured from the shower like rainfall, straight down over her head. It flowed through her blonde hair and over her shoulders and breasts and between her legs and over her feet and then swirled into the drain. She didn't move or wash her body with soap or knead shampoo into her hair. Instead, she stood straight, with her eyes closed and her arms at her sides and her face tilted into the spray. Her skin became clean and pink. She stood, not moving, until she had been there for so long that the hot water drizzled away and became cold.

Outside the shower, she shivered on the bath mat. She toweled herself dry but left her hair wet. She returned to the bedroom and stared at Marcus and felt nothing. She dressed again, not for sleep, but for the day ahead. A day when she would finally be free.

She was hungry, so she went downstairs. It felt odd to think about food now, but she hadn't eaten in hours. She turned on the lights in the kitchen and took a small bowl from one of the cabinets. Inside the refrigerator, she found a stalk of celery, a cluster of green grapes, an avocado, a Granny Smith apple, a lemon, and a cup of yogurt. She put the ingredients on the counter.

'This is called a Waldorf salad,' she said to her daughter.

It didn't matter that Callie wasn't really there. In her imagination, she saw her little girl in the high chair beside the kitchen island, smiling back at her.

'I use yogurt instead of mayo, because who needs all the fat and calories? And I add in half an avocado, because I like avocados.'