My Sister's Grave (9 page)

She introduced herself to the woman seated at a desk in the lobby and declined a seat or a cup of coffee. The lighting inside the building seemed brighter than she remembered, and the walls and carpeting a lighter color too. The smell, however, had not changed. It smelled like incense, an odor Tracy had come to associate with death.

“Tracy?” Darren Thorenson approached in a dark suit and tie, arm outstretched. He took her hand. “It’s good to see you, though I’m sorry about the circumstances.”

“Thanks for taking care of all the arrangements, Darren.” In addition to cremating Sarah’s remains, Thorenson had notified the cemetery workers and obtained a minister for the service. Tracy hadn’t wanted a service, but she also wasn’t about to dig a hole in the middle of the night and unceremoniously dump her sister in the ground.

“Not a problem.” He led her into what had been his father’s office when Tracy and her mother made the arrangements for her father’s funeral and when Tracy had returned after her mother had died of cancer. Darren took the seat behind the desk. A portrait of his father, younger-looking than Tracy recalled, hung on the wall beside a family photograph. Darren had married Abby Becker, his high school sweetheart. They apparently had three kids. He looked like his father. Heavyset, Darren combed his hair back off his forehead, which accentuated his bulbous nose and thick, black-framed glasses, like the kind Dan O’Leary had worn as a kid.

“You’ve redecorated,” Tracy said.

“Slowly,” he said. “It took some time to convince Dad that
reverent
didn’t have to mean
bleak
.”

“How is your father?”

“He still threatens to come out of retirement from time to time. When he does, we stick a golf club in his hand. Abby said to pass along her condolences.”

“Did you have any problems with the plot?”

Cedar Grove Cemetery had existed longer than the town, though no one knew the date of the first burial since its earliest graves were unmarked. Volunteers tended to the upkeep, pulling weeds and mowing the grass. If someone died, they dug the grave. They worked for free, the unspoken understanding being that someday someone would repay the favor. Because of limited space, the City Council had to approve every burial. Cedar Grove residency was mandatory. Sarah had died a Cedar Grove resident, so that wasn’t the issue. Tracy had requested that her sister be buried with their parents, though technically her parents were in a two-person plot.

“Not a bit.” Darren said. “It’s all taken care of.”

“I guess we better get your paperwork taken care of.”

“That’s all done too.”

“Then I’ll just write you a check.”

“It’s all good, Tracy.”

“Darren, please, I can’t ask that of you.”

“You didn’t ask it of me.” He smiled, but it had a sad quality to it. “I’m not going to take your money, Tracy. You and your family, you’ve been through enough.”

“I don’t know what to say. I appreciate this. I really do.”

“I know you do. We all lost Sarah that day. Things were never the same around here. It was like she belonged to the whole town. I guess we all did back then.”

Tracy had heard others say similar things—that Cedar Grove hadn’t died when Christian Mattioli had closed the mine and much of the population had moved away. Cedar Grove had died the day Sarah disappeared. After Sarah, people no longer left their front doors unlocked or let their kids roam freely on foot and bicycle. After Sarah, they did not let their children walk to school or wait for the bus unaccompanied by an adult. After Sarah, people weren’t so friendly or welcoming to strangers.

“He’s still in jail?” Thorenson asked.

“Yeah, he’s still in jail.”

“I hope he rots there.”

Tracy considered her watch.

Darren stood. “You ready?”

She wasn’t, but she nodded anyway. He led her into the adjoining chapel, the rows of chairs empty. The room had been unable to accommodate the crowd for her father’s wake. A crucifix hung on the front wall. Below it, on a marble pedestal, was a gold-plated container the size of a jewelry box. Tracy stepped closer and read the engraving on the plate.

Sarah Lynne Crosswhite

The Kid

“I hope it’s okay,” Darren said. “That’s how we all remember her, the kid following you all over town.” Tracy wiped a tear away with a tissue. “I’m glad you’re going to be able to put Sarah to rest and put this behind you,” Darren continued. “I’m glad for all of us.”

The cars parked bumper to bumper on the one-way road leading into the cemetery were more than Tracy had anticipated, and she suspected she knew who was responsible for getting the word out, and why. Finlay Armstrong stood in the road directing traffic, rain sheeting off the clear poncho that protected his uniform and dripping from the brim of his hat. Tracy lowered her window as she pulled to a stop.

“Don’t worry about parking. You can leave it in the road,” Finlay said.

Darren Thorenson, who’d followed Tracy in his own car, opened a large golf umbrella to shield her from the rain as she stepped from the car, and they walked up the hill toward a white awning covering her mother and father’s plot at the top of a knoll overlooking Cedar Grove. Thirty to forty people sat in white folding chairs beneath the canopy. Another twenty stood outside its perimeter beneath umbrellas. Those people seated stood when Tracy stepped beneath the cover. She took a moment to acknowledge the familiar faces. They’d aged, but she recognized friends of her parents, adults who had once been kids that she and Sarah had gone to school with, and teachers who’d become Tracy’s colleagues when she’d returned briefly to teach chemistry at Cedar Grove High. Sunnie Witherspoon was there, as was Marybeth Ferguson, one of Sarah’s best friends. Vance Clark and Roy Calloway stood outside the tent. So did Kins, Andrew Laub, and Vic Fazzio, who had all driven up from Seattle and brought Tracy some semblance of reality. Being back in Cedar Grove was still surreal. It felt as if she’d become stuck in a twenty-year time warp, things both familiar and foreign. She couldn’t equate what she was seeing with what she remembered. This was not 1993. Far from it.

The crowd had left the first row of chairs vacant, but now the empty seats beside Tracy only served to amplify her isolation. After a moment, she sensed someone step beneath the canopy to the seat beside her.

“Is this seat taken?” She had to take a moment to peel away the years. He’d ditched the black frames for contacts, revealing the blue eyes that had always held a mischievous glint. The crew cut had been replaced with gentle waves that fell to the collar of his suit jacket. Dan O’Leary bent and gently kissed Tracy’s cheek. “I’m so sorry, Tracy.”

“Dan. I almost didn’t recognize you,” she said.

He smiled, keeping his voice low. “I’m a bit grayer, not much wiser.”

“And a little taller,” she said, bending back her head to look up at him.

“I was a late bloomer. I grew a foot the summer of my junior year.” The O’Learys had moved from Cedar Grove after Dan’s sophomore year in high school. His father had taken a job at a cannery in California. It had been a sad day for Tracy and the other members of their posse. Dan and Tracy had stayed in touch for a while, but those were the days before e-mail and texting and they had soon fallen out of touch. Tracy seemed to recall that Dan had graduated and gone to college on the East Coast and remained there after graduating, but had also heard that his mother and father had returned to Cedar Grove when his father had retired.

Thorenson approached and introduced the minister, Peter Lyon. Lyon, tall with a full head of red hair and fair skin, wore a white, ankle-length alb with a green rope tied around his waist. A matching green stole was draped over his shoulders. Tracy and Sarah had been raised Presbyterian. After Sarah disappeared, Tracy’s faith had ranged from agnostic to atheist. She hadn’t set foot in a church since her mother’s funeral.

Lyon offered his condolences, then stepped to the head of the grave and began with the sign of the cross. He thanked those who had come, raising his voice to be heard over a burst of rain pattering on the canopy. “We have come today to inter the remains of our sister, Sarah Lynne Crosswhite, in the earth. Our loss is great and our hearts are heavy. In times of trouble and pain we turn to the Bible, the Word of God, for our comfort and our salvation.” The minister opened his Bible and read from it. Finishing, he said, “I am the resurrection and the life, sayeth the Lord. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” He closed his missal. “Sarah’s sister, Tracy, will now come forward.”

Tracy stepped to the edge of the grave and inhaled a deep breath. Darren Thorenson handed her the gold-plated box and gave her a hand as she knelt on a cloth spread over the ground, though she still felt moisture seep through her nylons. She placed Sarah’s remains in the grave and then scooped up a handful of moist soil. Tracy closed her eyes, imagining Sarah lying in bed beside her as she had frequently done when they were children and when they had shared a hotel bed while traveling to shooting competitions with their father.

Tracy, I’m scared.

Don’t be afraid. Close your eyes. Now take a deep breath and let it out.

Tracy’s chest heaved. Her eyes watered. “I am not . . . ,” she whispered, fighting to keep her voice even as she spread her fingers and let the clumps of dirt fall onto the box.

I am not . . .

“I am not afraid . . .”

I am not afraid . . .

“I am not afraid of the dark.”

A sudden gust of wind rippled the canopy and blew strands of hair in Tracy’s face. She smiled at the recollection and folded the strands behind her ear.

“Go to sleep,” Tracy whispered, and wiped away the tear rolling down her cheek.

Those in attendance came forward to drop handfuls of dirt and flowers into the grave and to offer their condolences. Fred Digasparro, who had owned the barber shop, needed the assistance of a walker, a young woman at his side. Hands that had shaved men with a straight razor now trembled as he reached to take Tracy’s hand. “I had to come,” he said, with his Italian accent. “For your father. For your family.”

Sunnie quickly embraced Tracy, sobbing. They had been inseparable throughout grammar school and high school, but Tracy had not stayed in touch, and now the contact felt uncomfortable and the tears forced. Sunnie and Sarah had never been close; Sunnie had been jealous of Tracy and Sarah’s relationship.

“I’m so sorry,” Sunnie said, drying her eyes and introducing her husband, Gary. “Are you staying for a few days?”

“I can’t,” Tracy said.

“Maybe a cup of coffee before you go? A few minutes to catch up?”

“Maybe.”

Sunnie handed her a slip of paper. “This is my cell phone. If you need anything, anything at all . . .” She touched Tracy’s hand. “I’ve missed you, Tracy.”

Tracy recognized most of the faces that came forward, though not all. As with Dan, for some she had to peel away the years to find the person that she’d known. Toward the end of the procession, however, a man in a three-piece suit stepped forward, a pregnant woman at his side. Tracy recognized him but could not put a name with his face.

“Hey, Tracy. It’s Peter Kaufman.”

“Peter,” she said, now seeing the boy who had left Cedar Grove Grammar School for a year while suffering from leukemia. “How are you?”

“I’m great.” Kaufman introduced his wife. “We live over in Yakima,” he said, “but Tony Swanson called and told me about the service. We drove over this morning.”

“Thanks for coming all that way,” Tracy said. Yakima was a four-hour drive.

“Are you kidding? How could I not come? You know she used to ride out to the hospital every week and bring me candy and a coloring book or a book to read?”

“I remember. How are you?”

“Cancer free for thirty years. I’ve never forgotten what she did. I used to look forward to seeing her each week. She raised my spirits. She was like that. She was a special person.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I’m glad they found her, Tracy, and I’m glad you gave us all this chance to say good-bye.”