Adam and I parked in the driveway of my father’s house, and we hiked through the backyard toward the cemetery. The burial plots are clustered in small groves, with spruces watching over the dead like silent giants. Moss and mold adorn the older stones, some of which date back two hundred years. Even on the hottest, brightest summer day, it’s cool and dark there, and you can’t see far because of the tree trunks packed closely together.
I called, “Jeremiah! Jeremiah, are you here?”
Adam shouted, too. “Jeremiah! Hey, Jeremiah, can you hear us?”
We didn’t get any reply except the trill of cardinals.
“Let’s split up,” I suggested.
Adam took a path to my right, and the woods quickly swallowed him up. I went in the opposite direction. Every now and then, I called Jeremiah’s name again. Distantly, I could hear Adam doing the same, but after a while, his voice faded away. The cemetery meanders over acres of hilly land, and as I explored the individual groves, I saw winged angels, crypts guarded by carved lions, fallen crosses, and massive trees toppled by storms, with mushrooms growing out of the stumps. The whole area had a peaty smell.
I’d walked these trails countless times and knew many of the names on the graves by heart, but this time, I felt an odd sense of unease being here. That’s because I knew I wasn’t alone. Someone was in the trees, spying on me. Every now and then, I heard a twig snap, betraying a footstep. It could have been an animal digging in the leafy brush, but I didn’t think so. I kept looking over my shoulder, but the trails were empty, and I didn’t see anyone near the graves.
“Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”
There was no answer, so I tried again. “Jeremiah? Is that you? Come on out, I know you’re there.”
I kept walking, but when I glanced back, I spotted a tiny flash of yellow disappearing behind the trunk of a black oak. It was someone wearing a hoodie. Small, definitely a child. I couldn’t see a face, but whoever it was knew they’d been spotted. I heard my stalker sprinting away, and I took off in pursuit, but I was chasing someone with the grace and speed of a deer. Little stabs of yellow whipped in and out of view through the trees and left me behind.
“Hey! Hey, stop!”
I broke into a field of headstones scattered along a shallow hillside. Shadows stretched across the lawn, and the forest itself was gray. My spy in the hoodie had vanished. If it was Jeremiah, he wasn’t wearing his Sunday suit anymore.
“Shelby?”
Deputies aren’t supposed to scream, but I screamed in surprise. Someone was right behind me. I whirled around, and the man who was there backed away, raising his hands as if to assure me that he came in peace.
I knew him.
Oh, yes, I knew him. He was just about the last person I wanted to see.
“Keith.”
He stood there, looking as awkward as me. His lips moved, but he didn’t say anything, as if his mouth didn’t know what to do. Talk. Smile. Frown. Kiss me.
“Long time,” Keith said finally. You’d be amazed how much meaning you can pack into two little words. We could both tell you the exact date when we’d last spoken. November 14. Last fall.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
He nodded his head toward a flat stone on the ground, newer and brighter than the weathered graves around it. “Colleen.”
“Oh. Sure.”
“I suppose that surprises you.”
“Why should it? She was your wife.”
Keith tossed his head, flipping back his messy brown hair. It was a nervous gesture he used a lot. He was lanky and tall, wearing khakis, old brown shoes, and a rust-colored pullover. He limped when he moved, because he had an artificial limb below his right knee. He wasn’t classically handsome, but handsome faces have never been that interesting to me. His face had character, like a book that offers you something new every time you read it. His eyebrows were thick and dark, his nose long and slightly crooked, his chin narrow and protruding. He and I had the same kind of eyes, colored like raw brown sugar and a little sad. Whenever I looked in his eyes, I knew there was a lot going on inside.
Keith Whalen. He was eight years older than me. When I was a senior in high school, he taught my English class. I know, what a cliché, the girl with a crush on her English teacher. He read Thoreau, and I swooned. Yeah, that was me, but it’s not that simple. We’d all heard stories about his injury in the war, his mood swings, his opioid habit, his troubled marriage. I didn’t see any of that in the classroom. I just saw a broken man sitting on the desk, taking us all to Walden Pond with that “Tupelo Honey” voice of his. To me, if he had personal struggles, that only made him more attractive, and I was the teenage girl who could fix it all.
Don’t worry, it was nothing more than a Harlequin Romance fantasy in my head. Nothing happened when I was a student. But dead fires have a way of coming back to life.
“So how are you?”
Keith shook his head the way he had when one of my answers disappointed him in class. “Do you really care how I am, Shelby? If you’re just making small talk, we don’t need to do that.”
“I care.”
“Okay. Sorry, I suppose that sounded harsh. It’s just that the last time we talked, I thought that you—”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” I interrupted with coolness in my voice. “I’m still a police officer. Nothing’s changed. But you asked me if I care, and I do.”
He got a little tic in his cheek. I knew I’d hurt him. I was trying to hurt him.
“You’re honest. I guess I prefer that. Well, since you asked, the fact is, I’m not doing well at all.”
“That’s too bad, Keith.”
“You may not think I loved Colleen, but I did. I miss her. And yes, I know she was a better wife to me than I deserved.” Keith eyed the grave, as if Colleen were still listening to him. “You know, I’ve picked up the phone a hundred times to call you, Shelby.”
“It’s better that you didn’t.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured. I never told anyone. Your secret is safe. I mean, I assume you wanted it to be a secret.”
“I don’t want to have this conversation, Keith.”
“Okay. That’s fine.” But I could sense his disappointment. “What about you? What are you doing here?”
“Jeremiah Sloan is missing. Didn’t you hear about it?”
“No. Town news doesn’t come my way like it used to.”
“Well, we had a report of a kid here in the cemetery. We were hoping it was Jeremiah. Have you seen him?”
Keith hesitated. “No, I haven’t. At least I don’t think so.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“Well, someone was around here. I don’t know who, but somebody was watching me from the trees when I was talking to Colleen.”
“Yellow hoodie?”
“That’s right. I didn’t see a face.” Keith flipped his hair again. I made him uncomfortable. “What happened to Jeremiah?”
I explained, and his face grew cloudy.
“You think he was abducted? Around here?”
“I’m trying not to think about it. I’m just trying to find him.”
“Well, I know Jeremiah likes to go off by himself and explore. I’ve seen him on my property a few times this year. Mostly in the woods, but he would come up to the house and barn, too.”
“Oh? Why?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything when I tried to talk to him. Ellen and Dennis only live a mile away. I just figured he was out hunting for the Ursulina.”