Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

Bruce sank back into the sofa with Callie on his chest. 'Our own little boy never had a chance.'

'Your son? He was the baby we found in the woods?'

'Yes.'

'What was wrong?'

'Jack's lungs didn't develop properly.' Bruce shook his head. 'That poor little boy, he would turn blue fighting for breath. As he grew, he struggled more and more.'

'Did you take him to the doctor?' Serena asked.

'Of course we did. They ran tests and scans and put him through hell and all they could say was the defects were too severe. Surgery would have killed him, and he was going to die without it. It was just a matter of time. We didn't want him to die in a hospital. We wanted him home with us. At least we could make him comfortable as long as we could.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Kasey was so depressed. She never slept. She would have killed herself to make that baby healthy, and she thought it was her fault that we were losing him.'

'You're talking about severe congenital defects. It's nobody's fault.'

'I know, but Kasey thought God had abandoned us. She was desperate.'

Serena watched the frantic longing in Bruce's face. She could imagine their minds fraying after months of their child slowly getting worse. 'What about Callie?' she asked.

Bruce stared at the girl in his arms. 'Regan put the idea in Kasey's head. She was our nurse at the hospital. She helped us all year. She came by our house every day. I don't think Kasey would have survived without her.'

'What did she tell you?'

'Jack was dying,' he said with a sigh. 'There was nothing we could do. Regan told us how unfair it was and how we'd been cheated.

She said we deserved to have a baby. She told us about Marcus Glenn and how he didn't love Callie because she wasn't his, and how he and his wife were both cheating on each other, and how awful it would be for a baby to grow up in that household. She said it was like God had made a mistake that night and switched the babies. That's what it was — a mistake. They had a wonderful, healthy little girl, and we were forced to live through the agony of watching our sweet little boy fighting and fighting and not making it. Don't you see? It wasn't supposed to be that way.'

Serena grew angry, imagining Regan preying on their vulnerable souls, using them as pawns in her own game of revenge against Marcus and Valerie Glenn. 'What happened?' she asked.

'Jack finally passed away last week,' Bruce said. 'We lost him.'

'What did you do?'

'I thought, if it really was God's mistake, I could put it right, you know? So I had the idea that I should bury him with the Glenn family. I wanted him to be protected. Taken care of. I took him with me that night and I buried him near the cemetery. He was finally at peace. He was where he was meant to be all along.'

Serena closed her eyes. 'What about Kasey?'

'Kasey went to get Callie,' Bruce said. 'Regan told us it was the only way. She offered to help us — she had a key to the doctor's house. She said we had to go rescue her.'

Serena stared at Callie in Bruce's arms. The little girl knew none of the heartache around her. None of the sorrow and desperation that had become focused on her.

'Bruce, may I hold her?'

She waited, holding her breath, to see what he would do. To see if he could give her up and let her out of his hands. Somewhere in his mind, he had to know that he would never get her back. She would never be in his arms again. She was someone else's child. Their child was in the ground.

Bruce sobbed. He laid a soft hand on the girl's curls. 'I can't lose another baby,' he murmured.

'I understand. Just let me hold her for a while.'

Give her to me. Let her go back home to her real parents. Grieve for your son.

Bruce held up Callie in his outstretched arms. She giggled as he held her. His mouth contorted in an awful, wounded frown, even as he tried to smile for the girl's benefit. Serena got up and reached out her hands. Her fingers touched the child's blanket, and her hands took hold of her soft sides. For an instant, Bruce didn't let go. He clung to Callie, as if the moment of parting were too painful to bear. Then, with gentle pressure, Serena took the girl into her own arms and folded her up against her chest.

Bruce watched the two of them sit down and then buried his face in his hands. He was grieving for both babies now. One dead, one alive, but both of them out of his life. Serena knew he loved Callie, even if she wasn't his own.

'Tell me what happened that night, Bruce. What did Kasey do?'

'She drove to Grand Rapids. She went inside the doctor's house. She got Callie.'

'And then?'

'And then she got lost in the fog.'

'Are you crazy?' Maggie screamed. 'Kasey, what did you do?'

The gun smoked in Kasey's hand. The burnt powder briefly rose above the stench of the dead. She watched him lying there with the gray tissue of his brain blown against the wall behind him. Bloody, dazed, she found a concrete pillar and slid down to the floor, laying the gun beside her. She turned the flashlight toward Maggie's face.

'He knew,' she told Maggie.

'What are you talking about?'

'He knew about Callie.'

Maggie stared at her, and her mouth fell open. The confusion in her eyes became something else. Recognition. Horror. Anger. Kasey felt Maggie judging her, and she hated it, because she liked Maggie. She had never wanted it to end this way. All she had wanted to do was drive away to the desert with her husband and her daughter.

'Why?' Maggie asked.

Kasey shrugged. 'God took away my son for no good reason. He just let him die. I didn't deserve to lose my baby like that. There was no reason I got a sick baby, and Valerie Glenn got a beautiful, healthy baby. I decided that I wasn't going to live with it.'

It was a relief to say it out loud. To tell someone the truth. She had accepted what she was doing, accepted who she was. She had made up her mind that she would do whatever it took to erase the previous year and all the hell and suffering she had gone through. She had faced the truth about herself that night in the fog, and once you choose to cross the line, you can't go back.

Maggie understood. She was smart. 'Susan Krauss,' she said quietly. 'What really happened?'

'Callie was in the back seat of my car that night,' Kasey explained. 'I was almost home. Can you believe it? I was a mile from home when I got lost. And suddenly there I was in the woods, and Susan Krauss was bleeding outside my car. She saw Callie. It's not like I could let her go. I had to go after her. And after him, too.'

'Nieman didn't kill her.'

Kasey shook her head. 'No, she was still alive when he ran for the highway. He dropped the garrote. She was barely breathing. I went over to her, and I thought, I can save her. That's what I should do. But then she would see the pictures of Callie on TV, and she'd know what I'd done. After all that sacrifice, I couldn't let that happen. I figured that this woman was almost dead anyway, and he'd be blamed for it. So I took the garrote, and I finished the job.'

Maggie struggled against the bonds that held her to the wooden chair. 'My God, Kasey.'

'I know. I've disappointed you. I'm sorry.'

'Nieman knew you'd killed that woman, not him. That's why he was hunting you.'

'Yeah. He knew I was a bad girl. What can I say?'

The light on the flashlight dimmed. Kasey jiggled it, and the brightness came back. Her head snapped round as she heard a noise beyond the crumbling walls of the classroom. She waited, but nothing moved.

Except the ghosts. There were plenty of ghosts here to haunt her.

Kasey stared at the bodies near the wall and their lifeless eyes. Every night, Susan Krauss had visited her in her dreams with those same dead eyes. She had stood over her in the field behind the dairy, and her eyes had pleaded for help. For rescue. She had looked at her as if Kasey had brought her salvation. And then the look had turned to panic and disbelief as Kasey tightened the wire around her neck.