Free My Sister's Grave by Robert Dugoni

counter.
    Mr. Kaufman looked as if he was about to cry. “Do you know she rides her bike all the way to the hospital to visit Peter?”
    “She does?” The hospital was one town over in Silver Spurs. Sarah would have been in big trouble if their parents found out.
    “She brings him coloring books,” he said, eyes moist. “She said she’d been saving her popcorn money.”

CHAPTER 16
    T racy shook the rain from her jacket as she entered the front door of Thorenson’s Funeral Home. Old Man Thorenson, which is what they’d called Arthur Thorenson when they were kids, had once embalmed everyone who died in Cedar Grove, including both her mother and her father. But when Tracy had called earlier in the week, she’d spoken to Darren, his son. Darren had been a few years ahead of her at Cedar Grove High and had apparently gone into the family business.
    She introduced herself to the woman seated at a desk in the lobby and declined a seat or a cup of coffee. The lighting inside the building seemed brighter than she remembered, and the walls and carpeting a lighter color too. The smell, however, had not changed. It smelled like incense, an odor Tracy had come to associate with death.
    “Tracy?” Darren Thorenson approached in a dark suit and tie, arm outstretched. He took her hand. “It’s good to see you, though I’m sorry about the circumstances.”
    “Thanks for taking care of all the arrangements, Darren.” In addition to cremating Sarah’s remains, Thorenson had notified the cemetery workers and obtained a minister for the service. Tracy hadn’t wanted a service, but she also wasn’t about to dig a hole in the middle of the night and unceremoniously dump her sister in the ground.
    “Not a problem.” He led her into what had been his father’s office when Tracy and her mother made the arrangements for her father’s funeral and when Tracy had returned after her mother had died of cancer. Darren took the seat behind the desk. A portrait of his father, younger-looking than Tracy recalled, hung on the wall beside a family photograph. Darren had married Abby Becker, his high school sweetheart. They apparently had three kids. He looked like his father. Heavyset, Darren combed his hair back off his forehead, which accentuated his bulbous nose and thick, black-framed glasses, like the kind Dan O’Leary had worn as a kid.
    “You’ve redecorated,” Tracy said.
    “Slowly,” he said. “It took some time to convince Dad that reverent didn’t have to mean bleak .”
    “How is your father?”
    “He still threatens to come out of retirement from time to time. When he does, we stick a golf club in his hand. Abby said to pass along her condolences.”
    “Did you have any problems with the plot?”
    Cedar Grove Cemetery had existed longer than the town, though no one knew the date of the first burial since its earliest graves were unmarked. Volunteers tended to the upkeep, pulling weeds and mowing the grass. If someone died, they dug the grave. They worked for free, the unspoken understanding being that someday someone would repay the favor. Because of limited space, the City Council had to approve every burial. Cedar Grove residency was mandatory. Sarah had died a Cedar Grove resident, so that wasn’t the issue. Tracy had requested that her sister be buried with their parents, though technically her parents were in a two-person plot.
    “Not a bit.” Darren said. “It’s all taken care of.”
    “I guess we better get your paperwork taken care of.”
    “That’s all done too.”
    “Then I’ll just write you a check.”
    “It’s all good, Tracy.”
    “Darren, please, I can’t ask that of you.”
    “You didn’t ask it of me.” He smiled, but it had a sad quality to it. “I’m not going to take your money, Tracy. You and your family, you’ve been through enough.”
    “I don’t know what to say. I appreciate this. I really do.”
    “I know you do. We all lost Sarah that day. Things were never the same