Especially considering the fact thatshe died two days ago.
“Noah Evans the gravedigger?!” she shrieked.
Oh, so she remembered me.
“Is This a Coffin?Oh My God,Let Me Out!”
The sound of banging echoed from below, followed by more screams.
Good going, Noah. Really great job making everything worse like you always do,I chided myself.
I called her name several times before she finally stopped screaming. “I have to go get the excavator! If I try to dig you out by hand, it’ll take forever!”
“Don’t leave me!”
“Only for a second, and then I’ll be right back!”
The sound of sobbing hit my ears, breaking my heart.
“Emma, I promise, I am going to get you out of there, you just have to try and calm down. Please, darlin’,” I said, the endearment falling from my lips without thought. This part of the country, it was a common term.
“Okay, but ... please hurry,” she said.
I sprinted back the way I came, cursing my clunky work boots, wishing I had sneakers on instead. The excavator was tucked away in the garage for the night, and it would take a while to drive it all the way back, but trying to dig Emma free without it would take four hours, minimum, and I didn’t know if she had enough air left for that.
A few minutes later, I turned the key in the machine and rumbled out into the night, cutting right through the graves instead of taking the road, knowing my dad was going to cuss me out because it would leave tracks and maybe concave some of the newer burial sites. There was no help for it. Plus, I was sure once Dad understood the circumstances, he’d forgive me.
After what felt like an entire lifetime, I parked the machine a few feet from Emma’s grave, cut the engine, and hopped out.
“I’m back!” I told her, and heard her relieved sob. “I’m going to start digging as carefully as I can, but I need you to scream real loud if the coffin cracks or buckles.”
“Oh, god,” she groaned, sounding petrified.
“I’m good with the bucket, Emma. I won’t hurt you.”
“You promise?” she called.
“I promise.”
Please, universe, don’t make a liar out of me now,I prayed, hopping back into the excavator and turning it on. Iwasgood at it, the best in my family, putting hours in each month, but this would be the ultimate test of my skill.
I swung the arm out over Emma’s grave and took a steadying breath. My whole body shook with a mix of fear and adrenaline, and one wrong jerk of my fingers might end in disaster. Willing myself to take my own advice and calm the hell down, I carefully tilted the bucket, and, slower than I’d ever gone in my life, dug out the first load of soil, my ears strained for the sound of a scream over the rumbling engine.
I didn’t hear one, but I cut it just to be safe.
“You still okay?” I called.
“I wouldn’t say I’mokay, but the lid is holding!”
“I’m gonna keep working, then,” I told Emma, and got back to it, lifting another load, pausing to check on her, repeating that sequence again and again, until I’d moved as much of the turf as I safely could. Everything else, I’d need to do by hand.
I jumped out and ran to my shovel. “Knock on the wood by your head, as hard as you can!”
Emma knocked. I climbed down into the opposite side of the grave, by her feet, and started digging faster than I ever had in my life, grateful the soil wasn’t too compacted. Beneath me, I could hear her breathing, loud, ragged, like she was hyperventilating.
“Emma, you gotta calm down,” I told her.
“Youcalm down!” she yelled back, and I was relieved to hear some of her fiery personality peek through the panic. It was like the old Emma. The one I grew up with. Not the Stepford wife she’d turned into after marrying Beau.
