Chapter 23: Plot One-Eleven

The county burial ground lay behind a chain fence on the north edge of the city.

It was under two feet of snow.

Jerome drove, and neither of us said anything on the way.

A groundskeeper in a canvas coat unlocked the gate and pointed with his chin.

"Back row. The numbered ones. You'll see the stakes."

We walked between the white mounds, in boots, with our breath showing.

The stakes stood in lines, short iron pegs with numbers stamped into their tops, most of them tilted.

I counted down the row.

One-oh-nine. One-ten.

I stopped.

Where one-eleven should have been, there was only snow.

There was no stake and no mound.

There was only a smooth strip of white between two numbered pegs.

"It's empty," Jerome said.

"Yes."

"The plot's empty, Hallie."

"I know."

I stepped onto it.

The snow squeaked under my boots.

I walked the length of the strip, slowly, from one end to the other.

In another winter somebody had put me down here in the dark.

Nothing happened.

The wind moved along the fence, and a crow shouted from a tree.

I stood in the middle of the empty ground and looked at my own boots.

I had thought it would feel like something.

It felt like standing in a field in winter.

Jerome had not followed me.

He stood at the edge of the row with his hands in his coat pockets.

"This is where I stood," he said. "Isn't it?"

"That's what Sabrina said."

"I would have come every year."

"I know you would."

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