Chapter 1 - THE VOICE BEYOND THE GATE
Daniel poured another cup of water over my face and waited for me to cough.
Mud sealed my body from the shoulders down. It packed against my ribs, pressed beneath my swollen belly, and held my legs so tightly I could no longer tell whether my feet were numb or simply gone from my awareness.
“Stay buried, you filthy burden,” he said. “Maybe the dirt will teach you and that baby who owns this house.”
I kept the plastic straw between my lips.
The straw was the only reason I could breathe when the water ran over my nose. Beneath the loose soil near my left shoulder, my old phone recorded from inside two sandwich bags.
Daniel believed he had taken my phone the night before.
He had taken the one I used every day.
Linda laughed from the porch. My mother-in-law wore a beige sweater over her nightgown and held a mug with both hands as though she were enjoying an ordinary Ohio sunrise.
“Still hasn’t apologized?” she called.
“For what?” I managed.
Daniel crouched beside me. The toe of his work boot pressed into the mud beside my cheek.
“For embarrassing my family.”
Our backyard lay outside Xenia, where the subdivisions thinned into soybean fields and gravel roads. The closest neighbor’s house stood beyond a line of bare maple trees. At dawn, the only sounds were birds, the porch boards, and the highway several miles away.
“My baby hasn’t moved since last night,” I whispered.
Daniel’s expression did not change.
“Then stop whining. Fear is the first lesson that child needs.”
My father-in-law, Mark, stood behind Linda in his plaid shirt. He pointed toward me and forced a thin smile.
“Maybe she’ll sign now,” he said.
The sentence mattered.
They had not put me in the ground because I disobeyed Daniel about dinner, housework, or visiting my sister, though those arguments had prepared the way.
They wanted my signature.
At 5:41 a.m., the phone beneath the soil vibrated.
Daniel heard it.
His head turned.
“What was that?”
I closed my mouth around the straw and stared at the mud.
He leaned closer, pressing one palm into the earth near my shoulder.
“You didn’t bring something out here, did you?”
Linda stopped laughing.
The phone crackled beneath the dirt.
A woman’s voice came through the covered speaker.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
Daniel dug his fingers into the soil.
Before he reached the phone, headlights swept across the yard gate.
A car horn sounded twice.
Then my sister Rachel shouted, “Emily?”
Daniel stood so fast he slipped.
Mark moved first, but not toward me. He crossed the yard and pulled the gate open.
Rachel’s SUV came through with a Greene County sheriff’s cruiser directly behind it.
Daniel grabbed the hose.
Linda stepped off the porch and hissed, “Mark, what did you do?”
The deputy left his cruiser with one hand near his holster.
“Everybody step away from her.”
Daniel looked at Mark.
Mark’s face had lost its mocking smile.
“You weren’t supposed to know where she was,” Daniel said to Rachel.
Rachel ran toward me, but the deputy stopped her until he could see my hands and make sure nothing dangerous lay in the pit.
“I’m pregnant,” I said. “Thirty-four weeks.”
The deputy called for paramedics.
Daniel began explaining before anyone questioned him.
“She put herself there. It was some kind of grounding exercise. She’s been unstable.”
Rachel stared at the mud packed around my neck.
“You buried my sister.”
“She agreed to it.”
I worked the straw from my mouth.
“My phone recorded everything.”
Daniel’s eyes dropped toward my shoulder.
The deputy saw the movement and ordered him back.
As sirens approached along the county road, Mark walked past Linda and stood beside the gate.
He would not look at me.
Linda seized his arm.
“You sent that message.”
Mark said nothing.
Rachel turned toward him.
“What message?”
The phone beneath the soil was still connected to the emergency dispatcher, but Rachel had not followed the call.
She held up her own phone.
At 4:52 that morning, someone had sent her a map pin from Mark’s number.
May you like
Under it were five words:
SOUTH YARD. COME WITH POLICE.
