THE GROUND BENEATH OUR SECRETS

Mark’s eyes were bloodshot, his face gray and hollowed out like a man who hadn’t slept in weeks. He looked down at the open safe, then at the silver watch clutched in my dirt-stained fingers.

The rifle barrel was pointed toward the straw-covered floor, but his knuckles were white against the walnut stock.

“You got out,” he whispered, his voice trembling so violently his teeth clicked. “Clara... you dug her up.”

“Put the gun down, Mark,” Clara said, stepping boldly between me and her brother. Her small frame was rigid with an anger I had never seen in her before. “Put it down right now before you turn into what Mom wants you to be.”

Mark flinched as if she had struck him. He looked at my mud-crusted sweater, at the purple swelling along my jawline, and at the gentle swell of my stomach where my hands instinctively rested.

A ragged sob tore out of his chest, and he let the rifle slide from his grip. It clattered against an empty feed bucket and rolled harmlessly into the hay.

“I didn't think she’d actually do it,” Mark choked out, dropping to his knees on the dirty floorboards, burying his face in his hands. “She told me we were just going to drive you out to the county line and leave you at the bus depot with enough cash to get to your aunt's in Ohio. She swore she just wanted to scare you into signing the quitclaim deed!”

“She buried me alive, Mark!” I snarled, stepping around Clara, my voice a fierce, venomous whisper. “Your father held me down while your mother shoved dirt onto my chest! They left a shovel in front of my face and told me they’d be back! You stood there and watched them do it!”

“I was terrified, Elena!” he cried, looking up with tears spilling over his stubbled cheeks. “Dad told me if I stepped in, he’d put me in the ground right beside you! You don't know what he’s like when Mother gets in his head! He isn't human!”

“And you are?” I challenged, holding up the cassette tape. “You knew the survey was real. You knew my father left me that land fair and square. You knew this baby was yours, Mark! You knew it every single day I carried it!”

Mark wiped his nose with the back of his dirty sleeve, pulling a crumpled piece of yellow paper from his flannel shirt pocket.

“I knew,” he whispered brokenly. “I never doubted you, Elena. Not for one second. The watch Mom threw on the table... it was an old Timex I bought at an auction last summer. I swapped it out because I knew she was going through your things. I left Dad's watch in the safe for you.”

“Then why let them drag me out there?”

“Because Arthur had the truck running at the front porch before I could even get my boots on,” he gasped, his chest heaving. “He found the safe open this morning. He knew I’d moved the papers. Mother told him that if the surveyor showed up on Monday morning, the bank would foreclose on the dairy trust by noon. They’re broke, Elena. They owe three hundred thousand dollars on the cattle feed loans. If they don't get the mineral rights from your father’s estate, the sheriff is seizing the farm on the first of November.”

A sudden revelation hit me, cold and sickening.

“Your mother isn't trying to save the family name,” I realized aloud. “She’s trying to pay off Arthur’s debts.”

“Arthur’s gambling debts,” Clara added, her voice deadly quiet. “The trips to the riverboat in Metropolis. That’s where the lease money went three years ago. Not the drought. Not the milk prices.”

Mark nodded miserably, staring at the floor. “Mother covered it up with the trust accounts. She’s been juggling deeds between four different shell accounts at the county seat. But Judge Vance wouldn't sign off on the title transfer without your signature on the probate decree. That’s why she needed you gone. Under the old state statute, if an heir disappears and is declared abandoned for thirty days during a probate dispute, the adjoining property owner can petition for an emergency administrative conservatorship.”

Thirty days.

They weren't planning on coming back to dig me up tonight. Evelyn threw that shovel down to make me struggle, to make me panic and exhaust my oxygen while they went to the diner to build their alibi. By the time someone found that mound in the woods next week, the dirt would have settled, and Arthur would have claimed I must have been attacked by a stranger while walking the logging trails.

Before I could speak, two sharp, frantic horn blasts echoed across the meadow from the distant willows.

Hank.

Mark shot to his feet, his eyes widening in terror. “They’re back. Arthur drove the flatbed through the front gate.”