He drew closer to it as if pulled on a tether. Just as insects could sense light and warmth, Lee Turner could sense death.
Now, over a hundred years later, the earth here looked no different from the rest of the forest. Sword ferns and peonies had grown over it, the same as everywhere else in the woods. Lee could visualize Sen standing at the fork, the exact trajectory of her gaze, roughly fifteen feet from where they’d walked. He remembered the camphor tree that had been a sapling back then but now towered high over him. This was the place. He was sure of it.
He staked the shovel into the dirt, pressed it down with the heel of his shoe, and dug up a clump of earth.
Sweat stung across his forehead and into his eyes. He panted as he dug deeper and deeper, raking up the secrets of the earth. Lee Turner couldn’t remember burying a body, but now he was unburying one. He laughed, wiping his face on his shirt. It felt like a resurrection.
He didn’t know how much time had passed, because his entire world had boiled down to the smell of wet earth, the prickle of roots against his arms, the determination to dig and dig and dig.
What comes after the truth?Sen had asked him.
He imagined her here now, asking him what he planned to do after he uncovered the bones of a dead spy. Turn them in to the police? Nod and sayI knew it!and bury them again? Save them as a souvenir?
But Lee hadn’t thought that far ahead. He never did. He only wanted to see the bones, to remind himself they were real—how could what came after possibly matter more than that?
When his shovel struck down again, fingers closed around it.
Lee jumped back, stumbling into the shallow wall of the pit and falling onto his back. The shovel fell toward him and the handle smacked him in the head.
He remembered those hands.
He’d seen them closed around doorknobs, clutching forks, flicking on light switches. But no, he hadn’t buried James. He couldn’t have, because he didn’t have a shovel at college and there was nowhere to discreetly bury a body on campus. He’d put him somewhere darker, colder.
Lee scrambled to his feet, but the hole was empty once more. There was nothing but dirt and worms and the echo of his own heartbeat thundering inside of him.
He was nearly six feet deep now and still hadn’t found anything. Sen couldn’t have dug much deeper than this, because she hadn’t been gone very long, so where was the body?
This was the right spot. Lee was certain of that in the same way he was certain of his own name. There should have been bones by this point—corpses without caskets rose toward the surface after decomposition. But there was nothing here, like it had never happened.
Lee let out a frustrated yell and sat down in the grave that was not a grave, then leaned back in the earth and pretended he was dead. He stared at the sun through the fingers of the trees and imagined someone piling dirt over him until it filled his mouth, his lungs, his ears, his eyes. He pictured Sen appearing above him, eclipsing the sun. He would let her bury him alive, if she wanted to.
Sen.
He sighed, rolling over onto his side in the dirt, feeling the pulse of the earth beneath his ear.
It was pathetic of him to sit around waiting at the closet door as he had. She was supposed to be no more than a path to the land of the dead, and she couldn’t even do that part right. A ghost guide who couldn’t even navigate her own world, who fought him at every turn, who ran from him to tend to her own needs.
And yet he wanted nothing more than for her to appear here now, her face blocking out the sun, her hands reaching out tohelp him up. She had killed someone too. She understood, at least in part, the torrents that he carried inside him. She looked him in the eye and didn’t run away. Perhaps someone like his father would have thought the situation romantic, but Lee wasn’t interested in Sen’s body. He wanted to hopelessly entangle her soul with his until they were one and the same, to follow her to the bottom of the sea, to rot beside her when death devoured them both.
He sat up, angry at himself and disgusted with the stains all over his clothes. He walked back home, not even bothering to fill the hole. He headed up the driveway just as the engine of his father’s car revved.
For a moment, he saw himself as his father would—covered in sweat and dirt and brambles like he’d clawed his way out of his own grave. He probably had a bruise on his forehead from where the shovel had struck him. His hands shook, either from nerves or Ativan withdrawal. He looked around for a bush big enough to hide behind, but there were only wildflowers in this part of the yard. He couldn’t hide, so he would have to lie.
He readied his excuse as he trekked up the driveway.I’ve taken an interest in gardening to help Hina.No, that probably wasn’t masculine enough for his father.I was wrestling in the dirt with other guys.No, his father would think that was gay.I was digging for worms for fishing bait.Yes, that would work.
He squared his shoulders and continued up the driveway, waving to his father and smiling as if nothing was wrong.
His father’s car started rolling forward. Maybe he was going to meet Lee halfway down the drive? Lee slowed his pace, but his father’s car only picked up speed. Through the sheen of pollen on the windshield, Lee could see his father’s blank expression, looking straight ahead. He was going to run over Lee’s toes if he didn’t turn.
“Dad?” Lee said, the smile dropping off his face. His father gripped the wheel, still staring ahead as if seeing straight through Lee.
His father was probably lost in thought, the way he sometimes got when he missed Lee’s mother. But he would come to his senses once he spotted Lee waving. It wasn’t as if he would run Lee over with his car in broad daylight.
Maybe that was why Lee didn’t move as his father drove closer, convinced that at any moment, his father would swerve to the side and roll down his window to talk to him. But his father drew closer and closer, still staring straight ahead. Lee felt as if he’d grown roots in the garden, unable to move as his father’s car roared toward him. Any moment now, he would slam on the brakes and laugh with Lee about how he hadn’t had enough coffee today.
But the car never stopped.
Lee jumped aside at the last moment, tripping into the ferns and landing on his hands and knees. His father’s car raced just past his face, the roar of the wheels bright in his ears, the metal spokes gleaming in the sun, inches from his nose. If he hadn’t moved, the tires would have ground him into the dirt.
