Chapter 38: The Empty Box

The Cold Creek family graveyard sat on a rise behind the old mill, inside an iron fence with a gate that squealed.

We opened the grave at eleven.

The Cold Creek Alpha brought two grown sons and three spades, and he did not ask the Moot's leave.

Ronan and I stood at the fence.

The headstone was gray granite with lichen in the letters.

It read: Opal Harkness, beloved wife.

Under the name was a date sixty years back, to the month.

"Dig," the Cold Creek Alpha said, and he went in first with his vest off.

It took them an hour to reach the lid.

The box was pine, gone soft and dark, and one son pried it up with the edge of his spade.

Nobody spoke.

Inside were bare boards, a folded white sheet and one rusted nail.

There were no bones and no hair.

There was not so much as a button.

The Cold Creek Alpha knelt on the edge of the hole and put his hand flat on the sheet.

"My great-uncle stood at the head of this and cried," he said. "I've heard it told at every funeral since."

"Maybe he knew," Ronan said.

"Maybe." He wiped his face with his sleeve. "He's lying six feet from her, and he never said."

"It's an empty box," I said. "She'll say her family buried a story."

"Then we need somebody who was in the cellar."

"There's one man alive who sold her the building," I said.

The Brackett county jail had a visiting room with a steel table bolted to the floor.

Ronan didn't come in.

I had asked him to wait in the truck.

He had looked at the jail and the sky and said nothing for a long moment.

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