The Wife They Burned novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: The Grave

I didn't make a sound.

I just set my fork down on the pie plate, very carefully, so it wouldn't clink.

Abel was across the table, arguing with the boy about whether Sarge was allowed whipped cream.

He looked up and stopped mid-word.

He came around the table and crouched by my chair.

I turned the phone so only he could see it.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he enlarged it with two fingers and looked at the bottom corner, where the grass met the headstone.

"Who sent this?"

"I don't know the number."

He called it right there, under the table.

It rang twice and went dead.

When he tried again, a recording said the number was no longer in service.

"A burner," he said quietly. "Bought this week, thrown away tonight."

Joy was watching us over her red glasses.

She stood up and announced that seconds of the mystery pie meant clearing your own plate first.

The whole table groaned, and nobody looked at me again.

I helped wash up.

At ten, Abel found me in the laundry room, folding towels that were already folded.

"I'm going," I said. "At first light."

"You've got a trespass warning on that whole estate."

"Then they can arrest me at my daughter's grave. I'd like to see the picture of that."

He didn't argue.

"I'll drive," he said. "We go in by the water."

We left at five forty.

He parked on the shore lane by the hedge, in the same spot as the night of the gate log.

The service gate had a new padlock on it, bright brass.

We went along the rocks below the lawn, with Sarge picking his way ahead of us, his tail low.

The sky over the Sound was going from black to gray.

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