When I leave the quarry behind, it starts drizzling. Should I turn around and look for Auntie’s grave another time? A sensible idea, but I can’t turn around. Something drives me forward. When the valley opens up again an old, forgotten settler’s chapel greets me as it stands to watch over the entrance of the cemetery.
Its once pristine white wooden walls have succumbed to the passing of time. Some weatherboards are still standing upright, while others have fallen apart a long time ago. Paint has peeled from some boards and faded from others. The rusty, corrugated iron roof is still hanging on, courtesy of a few nails and a skeleton of roof beams. Spots of red color on the few remaining panels are a testimony of its former glory.
I’m disappointed and my hope for a vicarage or someplace still in working order where I could ask for information disappears like morning mist under the burning rays of the rising sun. Left to my own devices, I walk past the ruins of the old church. The cemetery must have been here since the early settler times. Overgrown with weeds, most of the graves look very old and nature is reclaiming the land stolen from it almost two centuries ago. How hard can it be to find a grave?
A peaceful, serene atmosphere hangs in the air as if the people buried here put their index finger to their lips and urge visitors to hush. There is no birdsong and even the rain drifts down quietly. I stroll past rows of headstones, their roughly carved names and dates faded over time and invaded by large patches of lichen to devour the messages of love and loss.
Many of the old headstones sit lopsided in the ground, like teeth of an old person, tired from a long life of chewing and resigned to falling out any moment now. One of the newer headstones among a group belonging to the Wright family is laying flat on the ground. I brush away the dirt and weeds and stop dead in my tracks.
Here lie Eugene and Sarah Seagar.
I should have expected to come across their grave and feel silly now that I’m caught by surprise. The cemetery borders against the back of the Gateway compound. It makes sense they bury their people here.
Shivering and overwhelmed by fear, parts of me want to sprint away, want to forget they have ever seen the headstones. But I can’t. My feet are not listening to my commands. I notice Sky’s hand on my shoulder giving me strength. I’m not alone.
“Listen, kids, I want everyone to take a good look. This is the place they put the parents to rest. They can’t hurt us anymore. Every time a memory surfaces and you think they are coming to hurt you, remember us putting flowers on their grave.”
I divide the bunch of flowers from home and put one on the parent’s headstone as a reminder we’ve been here and that they are no longer a threat to us. A shudder runs through the body and not much later I can move again.
One of these graves must be Aunt Amanda’s. A hint of guilt for not having looked her up earlier is making me walk faster. She must be here somewhere. I find a few other Wrights, but no Amanda Wright. I go all the way up the hill and look at every headstone. She should be here surrounded by her family in this stunning valley.
An hour later I return to the car without having found Auntie’s grave. Did I miss something? I don’t think so. Could it be I’m at the wrong cemetery? There is still enough time to go to the city council and find out what I need to know. The voice in my head is still calling me. I have to find auntie’s grave.
It’s now an obsession.
Chapter Seventeen
It’s a freaking rush to get to the city council before they disappear on their lunch break. A young man, with the sallow face of someone spending his days holed up inside, tears his eyes away from the computer and greets me with an annoyed expression because I disturb him playing Fortnite.
“Winning?” I point to the now frozen computer screen.
His face stretches into a wide grin as he nods.
“I’ll make it short. I’m looking for the last resting place of my aunt, Amanda Wright. She’d died in 1985. I’ve been to the cemetery in Quarry Valley but couldn’t find a grave.”
“What’s the name again?”
“Amanda Wright.”
He looks something up on the second computer and then dives into old-fashioned filing cabinets that line the back wall of his small office. After a few minutes, he comes back with a brown scrap folder.
“I think I found what you’re looking for.”
He beams at me triumphantly as if he’d found gold.
“Here is your aunt’s accident report. We don’t have her last resting place. It says here, they found her car in Flatbush Valley. It had tumbled down a bank and ended up upside down in the creek. The police found lots of blood on the front seat of the car and bits and pieces of personal belonging, a shopping bag, and a blood-drenched headscarf at the scene. But they never found a body.”
The young man shows me the report and six photos the police took from the accident scene.
“Search teams looked for her but didn’t find any trace of her. The case was closed. The coroner concluded that her body must have washed down the creek and into the sea. It was never found. It says
