A Short-Lived Miracle

           Lightning struck, momentarily illuminating the graveyard before them, but, just as quickly, darkness swallowed it again. Rain pattered on Annabelle’s raincoat and mingled with the sweat on her palms. In one, she held two shovels; in the other, a flashlight that provided only a narrow strip of amber haze about three yards long. Did she really want to do this? she asked herself. She could not excuse what her brother had done, and she had always thought that, if it came to this, she would make the perp face as much justice as the system could dish out—no matter the perp’s identity. In theory, it was the only course of action that made sense.

           In practice, however, it was not nearly so simple.

*         *         *

           It had started as a civilized dinner for three at Jackson and Catherine’s house. Portions of the roasted chicken Catherine had prepared sat on Jackson’s and Annabelle’s plates. That of Catherine, who had never cared for the dish, held only mashed potatoes and green beans.

           Jackson took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Well, Cat, if the goal was to turn my mouth into Death Valley, you nailed it.”

           Red blotches climbed Catherine’s face. “Funny how critical a man who can barely toast an Eggo can be.”

           Annabelle’s and Jackson’s eyes widened.

           “And it’s not just this,” Catherine continued, the words gushing from her mouth like water from a burst balloon. “It’s everything. My cooking. My clothes. My makeup. My hair. My driving. The way I sign my name. The way I chew. The—“

           “Enough, Catherine,” Jackson, recovered from the initial shock and now glaring at Catherine, growled through clenched teeth.

           “You know,” Catherine said, ignoring him, “your mother was right; you’ll never please a woman.”

           He jumped up and lunged across the table. Catherine screamed but didn’t have enough time to dodge him; he slammed into her, and she toppled over backwards. Her head smacked the travertine tile she had hated since he’d picked it out at the Home Depot with a nauseous thud. Then, she fell limp.

           Jackson scrambled onto his haunches, eyes widening.

           “Oh my God, Jackson, what’d you do?”Annabelle demanded. Knowing that she couldn’t afford to wait for an answer, she heaved herself onto wobbly legs, staggered to her fallen sister-in-law, squatted, and placed two trembling fingers on her neck. Nothing.

           She jerked her hand away, dizziness warping the room. She staggered and grabbed a chair for support.

           Jackson stared at her, face as pale as belly button lint.

            “I’m calling the police,” she said, heading for the phone.

“No—I can’t go to jail, Annie.”

She swallowed, heart spinning. “Then why’d you do it?”

           “I didn’t mean to,” he said, rushing through the words as if convinced that, at any moment, she would strike him. “But she was pissing me off—on purpose. She knows all the wrong things to say, and I…I lost it.”

           She shifted.

           “Please, Annie. You can’t wanna see my life ruined by one mistake, can you?” He looked at her the way he’d looked at her when, as a child, he’d begged her to tell their mother that he’d sustained the lacerations he had actually gotten by losing a fight, rather, when he’d fallen off his bike. The way he’d looked at her when, after devouring what little food their mother provided them, his stomach continued to growl. The way he’d looked at her when asking her whether their mother was right, whether she really shouldn’t have kept him after the no-good father he resembled had left her. She had told the lie; she had given him her dinner; she had told him that he made the world a better place, whether their mother thought so or not. Her little brother, his fate perpetually in her hands.

           “Well, what do you suggest we do?” she asked, swallowing bile.

           He nodded at the body. “I don’t think anybody’ll find her if we go deep enough into the woods…”

           Her stomach heaved. “We’re not leaving her there. She doesn’t deserve that.” Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them away. She couldn’t afford to cry now. Not if she didn’t want to see two lives ended tonight.

           He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Then what do we do?”

           She forced herself to think through the screaming in her ears. At last, she recalled a conversation she’d had with Catherine a few months ago. “She wanted to be buried next to her dad…”

           His eyes widened. “Oh, no. We can’t let them get their hands on her—they’ll know.”

           He had a point. He hadn’t exactly committed the crime in a hazmat suit, and police almost always looked at the victim’s spouse first in cases of foul play, anyway.

           But the thought of stashing her out there, like a bag of trash, all alone, she could not stomach. That left only one option.

*         *         *

           Footsteps sounded behind her. Jackson, struggling beneath the tarp-wrapped remains he’d carried from the Toyota Annabelle had bought him for his twenty-first birthday, lumbered over. She gestured for him to lead the way; he had come here a few times with Catherine, so, hopefully, he remembered the location of her father’s grave.

           They padded through the headstones, the moist soil trying to suck in their sneakers, rain pelting them like rapid-fire paintballs. It seemed that they trudged on for miles—did he really remember the place?

           “Here,” he said, stopping before an arching headstone. She shone the flashlight on it, confirming its owner’s identity. Wordlessly, he dropped the corpse; the thud dropped a boulder into her stomach. “Which side?” she asked him, nodding first to the left of the gravestone, and then to the right.

            “Does it matter?”

           This was their last penance to a woman who should not have perished; everything mattered. Sniffing back tears, she studied the spaces and then gestured toward the right one. Grass seemed a little perkier on that side—a pittance, but she hadn’t gotten to know her sister-in-law well enough for a more meaningful judgment.

           She handed headed to the chosen spot. Jackson turned toward the body, preparing to haul it the remaining six feet. Before either of them could proceed, however, a flash shot from the sky and exploded on the body. Annabelle staggered backward, heart in her throat.

           Before she could fully recover, another shock: the corpse moved—it moved, she swore it did!

           No. Impossible. The shock had made her mind slip away from her. She crouched like a fielding baseball player in attempt to catch her breath, staring at the tarp. Daring it.

           It did it again. Oh, God, it did it again. Bile surged into her throat.

           “Oh, no,” Jackson said, approaching the tarp. It thrashed and struggled. Annabelle’s heart stopped.

           The ropes groaned and snapped. They and the tarp fell away, revealing Catherine. Her eyes had opened, color having returned to her face. She looked at Annabelle, and then at Jackson. Her lower jaw trembled. “Oh my God, Jackson, you—“

           He slammed the shovel into her head with a sickening crunch. Catherine fell limp, eyes rolling back, color once again draining from her face.

           Annabelle stared at him, jaw nearly hitting her chest.

           “I—“ he stuttered, still holding the shovel up, as if to strike again. “For all we know, she could’ve been, like, a zombie or something…” Silhouetted in rain made fluorescent by the glow of her flashlight, his features had stiffened. But not immediately—not until he’d seen her expression.

           She stared at him, willing the scene to fade, proving it all a nightmare. It didn’t. “Come on,” he beckoned, nodding toward her shovel. “Start digging.” She didn’t.

           Another lightning lance plunged from the sky, striking the gravestone between them, splitting it.

           She dropped the shovels and took off running.