We Already Dug the Grave

Prologue

Before

We had pancakes for breakfast the day Mama killed Daddy.

They were my favorite—made from scratch, with the blueberries Mama and me picked ourselves. They were in the shape of lopsided hearts, and so large that the pointy end hung off my plate.

If I’d been older or wiser, maybe I’d have seen those pancakes for what they were. A harbinger of how everything was about to change, because Mama only made them for special occasions.

Later, when the officer who talked to me at school asked if anything odd had happened that morning, I’d think of the pancakes but keep my mouth shut.

The four of us sat around the table in our eat-in kitchen.

Frances on her knees, chattering and mashing her breakfast into a sticky mess with the back of her fork, while Daddy read the Lundinville Record without looking up.

From her place beside him, Mama watched, her coffee growing cold as her mechanical smile never quite reached her eyes.

Everybody said Mama’s eyes were the prettiest they’d ever seen—two coal-dark pools that seemed to almost glow against her milky complexion—but the thing I remember about Mama’s eyes was how they could see all the way inside me.

They absorbed every little thing I did, every shrug of my shoulders or curl of my lip.

Those eyes saw when I rubbed the sore place on my upper arm.

As Frances chattered, Mama sat quietly, never saying or doing anything to give away the fact that she’d finally had her fill.

Her hair was pulled into its usual neat ponytail and her makeup was in place before she even came downstairs.

The only evidence of what had happened after me and my little sister went to bed were the finger-sized bruises that wrapped Mama’s wrists like hateful bracelets.

I’d learned to ignore these things, like the nights I had to pull my pillow over my head to muffle the yelling.

By eight years old, I’d gotten good at ignoring.

Until the bad feeling came.

It started like fingernails tracing the length of my spine.

A tickle. An awareness that froze me in place, bursting open somewhere behind my ribs, until I could feel it, an impending something.

Sometimes it was a scream in my head or a whisper against my skin.

It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. The words kept rhythm with my heartbeat.

I never knew what exactly was coming. It was different every time.

Once, at school, I’d felt it right before the boy next to me, Camryn Jones, puked all over my friend.

Another time, my chest had grown tight, and again there was that opening inside me, mere moments before my teacher Ms. Sibley’s phone rang.

She stepped into the hallway to answer it.

Ms. Sibley never came back to class, and we’d had a different teacher after that.

When I’d told Mama about the feeling, she got real serious, cupping my face in her hands. “That’s nothing but anxiety. That’s all.” She’d looked nervously over her shoulder, toward the front door where Daddy had been due to appear any moment. “Best not to talk about it,” she’d said.

Only, I wasn’t anxious. I didn’t care if Camryn Jones threw up, and I’d never liked Ms. Sibley, but something in Mama’s expression had told me to drop it. So I had.

The night before the pancakes, it had happened again.

I snuggled beneath my comforter in my dark bedroom, my eyes squeezed shut. Every time sleep found me, the rumble of Daddy’s voice would cut through the silence.

As a loud thud reverberated down the hallway, the feeling slid over me, like slipping beneath the surface of a swimming pool.

The overtaking was so seamless that I didn’t even realize what was happening until everything was muffled.

And then that feeling inside, opening wider and harsher than it had before, like a door yanked from its hinges.

My room faded, and for a moment, I thought, maybe I was dying.

A friend at school had seen her grandpa die.

She’d picked the pepperonis from her lunchroom pizza as she’d explained how he’d closed his eyes, then, after a few gasping, choked breaths, his chest stopped moving.

As I slid deeper into myself, I thought maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad. To be gone.

My mind flashed, and I was somewhere else. Lost inside myself.

Something heavy and cold in my hands. A bright burst of red light. A sound that echoed. Fireworks! But why fireworks in September?

I blinked, and whatever had opened inside me slammed shut. I was back in bed. Alone. Very much alive. Very much here.

Only, was I here? It was like I’d seen a secret that wasn’t meant for me. I was breathing heavy. Is this more anxiety like Mama said?

My heart stuttered, and I jumped out of bed and barreled from my room. I rubbed my free hand against my pajama pants, trying to erase the phantom coldness from my palm.

“Mama,” I yelled, pausing outside my parents’ open bedroom door and sniffing back my tears just in time. Daddy didn’t like it when we cried. Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about!

“What’re you doing up?” Daddy grimaced and dropped Mama’s wrist, striding toward me.

“Chris, no,” Mama said. “She’s had a nightmare.”

I wanted to tell her she was wrong. It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. I’d felt that coldness in my palm. Fireworks echoed in my head.

“I—” I started, but Daddy’s fingers wrapped my arm.

“That’s enough. You’re supposed to be asleep.

” He yanked me into the hallway, his grip squeezing while I stumbled to keep up.

When we got to my bedroom, he peered down at me.

“Go to bed.” He slung me across my carpet.

Without another word, I climbed back under my covers.

That feeling—the muffled drowning—didn’t return.

The next morning I woke up and pulled on my school uniform. When I whined that it was too hot for the long-sleeved shirt she’d laid out for me, Mama had told me to hush.

Just that single word. Hush.

I dressed, brushed my teeth, and sat at the table, eating my heart-shaped pancakes. At 7:15, Frances and I hugged Mama goodbye while Daddy started the car.

Mama’s arms wrapped around me, and the memory of the banging door, the muffled drowning, flooded back. Heavy. Cold. Loud. So loud.

“I want to stay home,” I whispered into her neck.

“I know, baby.” Mama pressed her palm against my cheek. “But you can’t. Not today.”

“Please, Mama.” Tears sprang to my eyes, but it was okay, because Daddy was already outside in the car. “My stomach hurts.”

“I know. But you’ll be okay.” Mama stood, her eyes darting away from me. “And you’ll make sure your little sister is too. You’re a good girl, Milly.”

From the driveway, the car horn beeped. Frances grabbed her Minnie Mouse lunchbox from the counter. “Bye, Mama,” she called as she walked out the front door.

Mama nudged me to follow her. “Everything’s going to be fine. Now go on. Don’t keep Daddy waiting.”

Sometimes when I think about that last hug, Mama kneeling with her arms around me in the kitchen, I imagine that she held on to me a little longer than usual.

But I’m not sure.

* * *

My life changed forever later that afternoon.

Summoned over the intercom during lunch hour, I marched toward the office to find my sister sitting on the bench outside the office doors, staring down at her feet that swung like pendulums on toothpick legs.

“Frances?” I smoothed back the blond flyaways that had escaped her ponytail. “What’s going on?”

She bit her bottom lip and shrugged. My gaze went from my sister to the office door and back.

“Stay here.” I slung my book bag to the ground and stomped into the office, where our school secretary, Ms. Loeb, stood behind her desk.

Only, Ms. Loeb didn’t wear the quick smile she gave all the students.

Instead, her mascara trailed down her cheeks.

The inky tracks fanned across her face like the map of tributaries I’d been forced to study in science class.

Mr. Jansen, the headmaster, pulled his lips into a fake smile when he saw me, which, I knew, meant something was wrong. That wrongness catapulted me into the memory of last night: the cold in my hand, the bang in my ears. And the pancakes this morning.

Then there was a policeman standing in the back. He introduced himself as Officer Gregors. Officer Gregors’s voice was deep but soft. Kind, like his eyes. “Milly, everything is going to be okay.”

“Why are you saying that? What’s going on?” I looked into each of their faces, my cheeks growing hot as I remembered how Mama had said the same thing.

This time, Mr. Jansen spoke. “We have something important to tell you, and I’m going to need you to be brave.”

“All right,” I said, though nothing, in that moment, felt all right.

Minutes later, I hated Officer Gregors and Headmaster Jansen and Ms. Loeb with her rivers of mascara tears. They were all liars.

I thought of how Daddy said he loved us and how Mama had stacked pancakes on my plate then promised that everything would be okay. They were liars too. Because if they weren’t, and if everything was going to be okay, Mama would’ve let me stay home, and this wouldn’t be happening.

I bolted for the hallway, to the bench where Frances still slumped like a rag doll, and I slid my arm over her shoulders. The truth was right there on my tongue: We are in trouble. But when she looked at me with our mama’s dark eyes, I heard myself repeat everything I’d just been told.

“Everything’s okay, Frances. I promise. We have some aunts who want to meet us, that’s all.”

I was no better than the grown-ups.

I was a liar too.