At my mother\u2019s funeral, the last thing I expected was for the gravedigger to quietly step away from the group, peel off his gloves, and motion for me to come closer as if we were discussing private family matters. His name tag read Earl, and his face looked older than the cemetery itself. He kept his voice low.Ma\u2019am,\u201d he said, glancing toward the casket, \u201cyour mom paid me to bury an empty coffin.\u201dI stared at him, convinced grief had made me hear wrong. \u201cStop fooling around.\u201dEarl didn\u2019t smile. Instead, he slipped something cold into my hand. A brass key. Tiny black numbers were stamped onto the metal tag attached to it: 16.\u201cDon\u2019t go home,\u201d he murmured. \u201cGo to Unit 16. Right now.\u201dBefore I could ask what he meant, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I looked down and felt my stomach twist. A text from Mom flashed on the screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Come home alone.My mother had been dead for six days. I had identified her body myself at St. Joseph\u2019s. I had signed the insurance forms. I had spent the morning shaking hands with people who kept telling me she was in a better place. And now her name was glowing on my phone as if she had simply gone out to run errands.I looked up, but Earl had already walked back toward the grave. The pastor was speaking. My aunt Linda was crying into a tissue. No one else had noticed anything.I should have told someone. Instead, I slipped the key into my purse, walked to my car, and left my own mother\u2019s burial before the first shovel of dirt touched the coffin.Unit 16 was inside a storage facility at the edge of town, twenty minutes from the cemetery and about a mile from the interstate. The place was almost deserted\u2014just rows of metal doors and a flickering office sign that read SAFELOCK STORAGE. My hands shook so badly I dropped the key twice before finally sliding it into the lock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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