I closed my eyes. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered that his answer about the scarf had come a beat too quickly. But I trusted him.
“Glad you’re home.”
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***
I felt a tiny hand gently shaking my shoulder, pulling me out of sleep.
I opened my eyes to the dim outline of my six-year-old son, his little hand still resting on my arm.
The clock on the nightstand blinked 5:00 a.m.
“Mom,” Noah whispered, standing beside my bed.
I blinked at him, trying to focus.
He looked scared.
I opened my eyes.
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He was hugging his stuffed dinosaur against his chest.
“Baby, what’s wrong? Did you have a bad dream?”
He leaned closer and whispered, “Mom, Daddy is burying your suitcase in the backyard.”
For a second, I thought I was still dreaming.
I’d completely forgotten about the suitcase.
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
I actually smiled. My brain was still half asleep, and the sentence sounded like something made up.
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“Sweetie, I think you dreamed it or imagined it. Come on, let’s get you back to bed.”
“I didn’t dream it,” Noah insisted, shaking his head hard. “I woke up because I heard digging, and then I saw him through my bedroom window. There’s a hole.”
Something in the way he said, “There’s a hole,” made me sit up.
My heart started pounding.
“I think you dreamed it.”
“What do you mean, a hole?”
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“In the grass. By the big tree. Daddy’s putting your suitcase in it.”
Carter wasn’t in bed, so I slowly pushed the blanket off.
“Stay here, okay? Don’t come downstairs. I’ll be right back.”
“Is Daddy in trouble?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said honestly, and it scared me that I couldn’t lie to him.
“Stay here, okay?”
***
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I padded to the window at the end of the hall and eased the curtain aside.
Our backyard sat under a wash of porch light and moonlight. The old oak threw a long shadow across the lawn. Right at the edge of that shadow stood my husband, holding a shovel, with a fresh mound of dirt beside him.
My suitcase was on the grass.
For one absurd second, I thought, Well, at least he wasn’t lying about unpacking it.
I padded to the window.
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Then my eyes caught the second figure, and my stomach dropped.
She was small and wore a hood, with her face turned away.
She crouched beside the suitcase and lifted one end while he lifted the other. Together, they started lowering it into the hole.
Recent events rearranged themselves in my head in about three heartbeats.
My stomach dropped.
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