Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

With blinding brightness, the overhead lights burst on and turned night to day.

Kasey squinted involuntarily and thrust her arm in front of her eyes. When she lowered her hand, she realized that the bed was empty. The outline of a body was just pillows lumped under a blanket. When she looked at the opposite wall, she saw someone sitting in an easy chair by the window, staring at her, a gun in her hand, pointed at Kasey's chest.

It was Maggie.

'Put the gun down right now, Kasey,' she said.

Kasey backed away toward the bedroom door, but as she did, she felt another gun, this one in the back of her skull.

'She said put it down,' Stride said. 'It's over.'

Kasey heard the thunder of boots everywhere around the house. On the porch. In the yard. In the great space. There were police at all of the windows. Faces. Guns. She stood, paralyzed and trapped, and felt Stride reach round and peel the gun away from her fingers.

'Serena saw you coming, Kasey,' Maggie told her, getting up from the chair. Her voice was hard and sad. 'She called ahead to arrange a welcoming party.'

'Oh, my God,' Kasey murmured. 'Oh, God, no.'

Stride yanked her hands behind her, and she felt him clamp cuffs tightly round her wrists. He pulled her on her heels out of the bedroom. She let him drag her, and then she couldn't feel her legs anymore or support her weight. She toppled backward into Stride's chest. Her body collapsed in on itself. She felt him holding her under her shoulders and easing her on to the floor, and when she stared at the ceiling, she saw all of their faces going in and out of focus as they looked down at her. Stride. Maggie. Police in uniform.

Somewhere in her head, she heard Stride say, 'She's lost a lot of blood. Get an ambulance down here.'

She tried to get up, and hands gently pushed her down. The room spun and floated lazily away from her, carrying her down a river. She watched bodies come and go in a blur of motion, and among all the people crowding around her, she saw a new face. Valerie Glenn. Serena was behind her in the brightly lit living room, holding Callie. Kasey saw Valerie staring at her the way a mourner stares at a grave, and she wanted to say something, wanted to explain, wanted to scream, but she was lost in the fog.

Valerie said aloud, 'Does anyone know what her child's name was?'

Jack, Kasey wanted to say. It was Jack. He was my baby, and God took him away from me. Don't you understand? Doesn't anyone hear me?

'Jack,' Maggie answered for her. 'It was Jack.'

Valerie nodded. Kasey saw her squat down beside her. Her face was inches away, and her skin emanated the fresh smell of a mother holding a child. She put a hand on Kasey's cheek and caressed it, feeling the dampness of her blood and sweat. Valerie was crying. Kasey realized she was crying too.

'I'm sorry for what happened to Jack,' Valerie murmured in her ear.

Kasey tried to speak again but heard only the wheeze of her own breath. The metal of the cuffs gnawed at the small of her back. She closed her eyes, but she could still feel the touch of Valerie's hand, and she felt it there, soft and warm, until the sirens drew near.

First day. Last day.

Stride sat in a folding chair in the long grass behind his cottage on the Point, watching the angry lake waters in the early morning. Red clouds on the horizon marked the glow of dawn, but it was still more night than day. His leather jacket was zipped to his neck, providing meager protection against the cold and wind. His hands were in his pockets.

He waited for Serena. He didn't want to be inside as she packed the last of her things and loaded them in her Mustang. It was one thing to know she was leaving, another thing to watch her go. Sooner or later, he would have to go back home, after she was gone, and face the emptiness she had left behind. That could wait until later. He would be working until midnight, catching up on everything that had gathered in his absence, postponing the moment when he returned to a house where the only thing that lingered was her scent.

He didn't look when he heard her footsteps in the snow behind him. She sat down in the chair next to him and didn't say anything. The two of them spent a minute of silence, putting off the inevitable.

'You're ready?' Stride asked finally, when he couldn't stand the tension anymore.

Serena nodded without looking at him. 'Yeah.'

'You don't have to go,' he told her. 'You can stay in a separate bedroom for a few weeks if you like.'

'We've talked about this, Jonny.'

'I know.'

That was the reality staring him in the face. It was done between them. Over. At least for now. At least for a while. 'You know I love you,' he told her.

'I love you too, but you need time, and I need time. I don't know whether it was just the heat of the moment, but you're more comfortable with Maggie than you are with me. You opened up to her, and you shut me out. That doesn’t work for me.'

'I'm sorry.'

'So am I. I'm not blaming you, Jonny. It's my problem, too.'

'What's next?' Stride asked.

Serena shook her head. 'I don't know yet.'

'Are you going back to Las Vegas?'

'No,' she told him. 'Not now, anyway. I could go back there and get a job, but it's not really home anymore. I'm not sure where home is to me. I'm not like you. I don't have roots.'

'So what will you do?'

Serena shrugged her shoulders, as if the future were a small thing compared to the present. 'Denise asked me to stay on with the Sheriff's office in Grand Rapids. I may do that for a while. Valerie's getting settled on her own with Callie, and I'd like to help her. She's renting a house and said I could use one of the spare bedrooms.'

'I like the idea of you staying close by,' Stride said.

It was an olive branch, but she left it where it was. He watched the sadness in her face and wished he could wipe it away. He knew there had always been something missing in Serena, some part of her unfulfilled. Maybe she just needed to be on her own. The prospect didn't seem to scare her as much as it scared him.

'I have to go,' she told him, standing up. She cast her eyes out toward the lake and then at the cold sand of the beach. Three years ago, on a hot summer night, they had made love out there for the first time.

'If you need anything at all, call me,' Stride said. 'Any time, day or night. You know that, right?'

'You're always trying to protect the women in your life, Jonny,' she murmured. 'We don't all need protection.'

'I'm just saying.'

'I know. If I do need someone, you're my first call.'

'I may show up on your doorstep someday,' he said.

She gave him a weak smile. 'You never know, I may show up on yours first.'

Serena put a hand on his shoulder as she turned away to walk over the snowy slope toward the cottage. He didn't watch her go. The lake was loud, and he couldn't hear the sound of her car engine on the street as she drove off. He waited on the beach, not moving, getting colder and feeling numbness on his face. Time passed, and by the time he got up, the sun had climbed over the edge of the water.

The Detective Bureau in City Hall was mostly empty. No one was there to greet him. He had been gone, and now he was back. He went inside his office the way he had done thousands of times over the years and hung up his coat. The room still held a trace of Maggie's perfume about it. Otherwise, nothing had changed. Time had stood still while he was away.

Stride didn't sit down immediately. He ran his fingers over the framed photos on his credenza and picked up the one of himself and Serena, taken atop the Stratosphere tower in Las Vegas. He remembered thinking back then that he had borrowed time with her and that one day someone would ask for it back. Suddenly, unexpectedly, that time was now. He put the picture back down where it had always been, so he could still see her face.