William, but he acquired his nickname as a child when he managed to break everything he touched.
I answered just before voice mail kicked in.
“What’s up, boss?” he asked.
His voice possessed its usual hail-fellow-well-met cheer. Talking to him on the phone was like conversing with a particularly convincing telemarketer, one who could almost make you believe your ship had come in and you’d be a fool to pass up the current offer. Buster maintained this tone even though we hadn’t spoken to each other in close to six months. He’d moved an hour away the year before, and our communication, which had always been sporadic, slowed to a drip. We shared a mother-dead five years earlier-but had different fathers. My dad died when I was four. My mom remarried and had Buster.
I told him I was walking the dog.
“Good, good.” He cleared his throat. I heard someone talk in the background on his end of the line. It sounded like a woman. “I wanted to tell you I’m coming to town this week.”
“What for?”
“For the funeral,” he said. “Or whatever the hell it is that Abby’s doing. I know you didn’t invite me, and you might not even want me to come, but Abby called. She said she wanted all of the family there, and since you don’t have much-I mean, I’m pretty much it these days. Right?”
“It’s not that I didn’t want you to come,” I said. Frosty and I stood alongside the cemetery and I could see the area where Caitlin’s marker would go up in a few days. “I just thought you wouldn’t want to come because-”
“Because it’s so fucked-up.”
I hesitated. “Yeah, because of that.”
“What’s she going to do, bury an empty coffin? How do you have a funeral for someone who might not be dead?”
“We didn’t buy a coffin.”
“But you bought a plot and a headstone?”
Frosty tugged on the leash, indicating he wanted to move on.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Jesus. Is this because of that wackadoodle church she belongs to? What’s it called?”
I regretted ever answering the phone. “Christ’s Community Church.”
“That’s original,” he said. “Aren’t they all Christ’s churches? Remember when people belonged to actual churches? You know, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians. I hate hearing about these anything-goes religions, you know? Just put up a warehouse and a coffee bar and let them come in and feel good about themselves.”
“I didn’t know you were so easily offended.”
“Stupidity pisses me off. That herd mentality. How much is it costing you to buy this cenotaph and plot? A couple thousand bucks?”
Frosty pulled against the leash again, and I tugged back, trying to keep him still.
“Buy what?” I asked.
“A cenotaph. That’s what they call it when you put up a marker and there’s no body under it. A cenotaph. You’re not the only one who knows the big words, professor.”
“Look, I have to go. The dog’s done his business.”
“I’ll call you when I get to town. Okay?”
“Sure. But don’t feel obligated-”
“I do feel obligated,” he said. His voice dripped with sincerity, and I wanted to believe him. I really did. “For you, anything. Just let me know. I’ll be by your side.”
Frosty and I faced the choice of going around the track again, something we almost never did, or getting in the car and completing my mission. Frosty pulled a little in the direction of the car, but I pulled harder, and we entered the cemetery together.
I knew they didn’t want pets in there, digging up flowers and shitting and pissing on the graves. But Frosty’s tank was pretty well emptied, and I preferred to face the prospect of an accident in the cemetery over delivering him to the pound.
We walked down the road that cut through the center of the cemetery, then turned right and headed toward the back. I recognized the names on the larger headstones, the same names that adorned the buildings and parks throughout town. Potter. Hard-castle. Greenwood. Cooper. They didn’t skimp on death, these founding families and innovative educators, these city councilmen and spiritual leaders. Not only did they have elaborate headstones, beautifully engraved and clean as the day they were cut, but they paid for life-sized guardians to watch over the graves. Vigilant Virgin Marys and winged angels, Christ with his eyes cast to heaven as though begging for intercession. While the stone we’d picked out for Caitlin didn’t approach those lofty heights, it wasn’t cheap either. Buster was right-we’d spent too much money.
I read the signs posted at knee level and found section B; then I worked my way up until I came to the number. Despite the presence of the sleeping and buried dead, it was a beautiful day. The temperature climbed toward eighty, and only a few high, puffy clouds disrupted the blue of the sky. In the distance, somewhere, a lawn mower engine churned, but I couldn’t see where it was, and when I looked around the cemetery, I found myself alone. The walkers and joggers kept up their work in the park, so I just listened to Frosty’s panting breath and rattling collar.
“It’s just a little detour, boy.”
Most of the cemetery was full, the stones nestled close together so that it didn’t appear there was any room left for new burials. I kept my eyes peeled for a small open place, a last remaining plot that we purchased only to- hopefully-never fill. My eyes wandered over husbands buried with their wives, the headstones a monument to eternal love and union. I saw children buried near their parents. Veterans of wars, their stones decorated with small, fluttering flags. And then I thought I saw Caitlin’s name.
It was a brief glimpse, something caught out of the corner of my eye, and I just as quickly dismissed it, assuming that my eyes and mind, in their haste to find a closer connection to my daughter, simply imagined her name. But as I came closer, I saw it again, chiseled into a large rectangular headstone. It was really there. CAITLIN ANN STUART. DAUGHTER. FRIEND. ANGEL. 1992–2004.
The stone didn’t belong there.
Abby had told me it wouldn’t be placed until days after the service, that when we stood at the grave on Wednesday for the memorial, we’d just be facing a small area of green grass. No earth would be churned, no stone in place. And I took comfort in that scenario because it seemed less permanent somehow, less final than what Abby had intended. I convinced myself that the ceremony would bear no real relation to my daughter, that we were there remembering some other kid or maybe even some person I never knew. A stranger, the faceless, nameless victim of a distant tragedy.
I stared at the slab. Frosty walked away, pulling the leash taut, and sniffed at a nearby stone while a chorus of cicadas rose and fell in the trees above, their chittering eventually winding down like a worn-out clock. I often tried to imagine what had happened to Caitlin. Try as I might, a coherent, sensible narrative concerning the events that had taken place just yards from where I stood in the cemetery never formed in my mind. But I did hear the sound track in my head. Often.
I lay in my bed at night, the lights from passing cars dancing on the ceiling and walls, and I heard Caitlin’s screams, the sound of her voice rising in terror and growing hoarse. Did she cry? Was her face soaked with tears and snot? Did she suffer? How long did she call for me?
I pounded the mattress in frustration, buried my face in the pillows until it felt like my head would explode.
I knew the statistics. After forty-eight hours, the odds of a child being found alive were next to none. But I managed to ignore the numbers and pretend they didn’t apply to me. Not then. Not ever. I still stopped at the front door every night, flipped on the porch light, and made sure the spare key-the one Caitlin occasionally used to let herself in after school-lay under the same flowerpot, right where she could find it.
But it was difficult to argue with a headstone.
Frosty came back and nudged at my calf with his snout. I could tell he was growing impatient and wanted to move on. He didn’t like to stand still when there were sticks to fetch and trees to mark. I shooed him away, lost in
