Free My Sister's Grave by Robert Dugoni Page A

around here. It was like she belonged to the whole town. I guess we all did back then.”
    Tracy had heard others say similar things—that Cedar Grove hadn’t died when Christian Mattioli had closed the mine and much of the population had moved away. Cedar Grove had died the day Sarah disappeared. After Sarah, people no longer left their front doors unlocked or let their kids roam freely on foot and bicycle. After Sarah, they did not let their children walk to school or wait for the bus unaccompanied by an adult. After Sarah, people weren’t so friendly or welcoming to strangers.
    “He’s still in jail?” Thorenson asked.
    “Yeah, he’s still in jail.”
    “I hope he rots there.”
    Tracy considered her watch.
    Darren stood. “You ready?”
    She wasn’t, but she nodded anyway. He led her into the adjoining chapel, the rows of chairs empty. The room had been unable to accommodate the crowd for her father’s wake. A crucifix hung on the front wall. Below it, on a marble pedestal, was a gold-plated container the size of a jewelry box. Tracy stepped closer and read the engraving on the plate.
Sarah Lynne Crosswhite
The Kid
    “I hope it’s okay,” Darren said. “That’s how we all remember her, the kid following you all over town.” Tracy wiped a tear away with a tissue. “I’m glad you’re going to be able to put Sarah to rest and put this behind you,” Darren continued. “I’m glad for all of us.”

    The cars parked bumper to bumper on the one-way road leading into the cemetery were more than Tracy had anticipated, and she suspected she knew who was responsible for getting the word out, and why. Finlay Armstrong stood in the road directing traffic, rain sheeting off the clear poncho that protected his uniform and dripping from the brim of his hat. Tracy lowered her window as she pulled to a stop.
    “Don’t worry about parking. You can leave it in the road,” Finlay said.
    Darren Thorenson, who’d followed Tracy in his own car, opened a large golf umbrella to shield her from the rain as she stepped from the car, and they walked up the hill toward a white awning covering her mother and father’s plot at the top of a knoll overlooking Cedar Grove. Thirty to forty people sat in white folding chairs beneath the canopy. Another twenty stood outside its perimeter beneath umbrellas. Those people seated stood when Tracy stepped beneath the cover. She took a moment to acknowledge the familiar faces. They’d aged, but she recognized friends of her parents, adults who had once been kids that she and Sarah had gone to school with, and teachers who’d become Tracy’s colleagues when she’d returned briefly to teach chemistry at Cedar Grove High. Sunnie Witherspoon was there, as was Marybeth Ferguson, one of Sarah’s best friends. Vance Clark and Roy Calloway stood outside the tent. So did Kins, Andrew Laub, and Vic Fazzio, who had all driven up from Seattle and brought Tracy some semblance of reality. Being back in Cedar Grove was still surreal. It felt as if she’d become stuck in a twenty-year time warp, things both familiar and foreign. She couldn’t equate what she was seeing with what she remembered. This was not 1993. Far from it.
    The crowd had left the first row of chairs vacant, but now the empty seats beside Tracy only served to amplify her isolation. After a moment, she sensed someone step beneath the canopy to the seat beside her.
    “Is this seat taken?” She had to take a moment to peel away the years. He’d ditched the black frames for contacts, revealing the blue eyes that had always held a mischievous glint. The crew cut had been replaced with gentle waves that fell to the collar of his suit jacket. Dan O’Leary bent and gently kissed Tracy’s cheek. “I’m so sorry, Tracy.”
    “Dan. I almost didn’t recognize you,” she said.
    He smiled, keeping his voice low. “I’m a bit grayer, not much wiser.”
    “And a little taller,” she said, bending back her head to look up at