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A shiver followed Elizabeth as she stepped from smooth path to rock-rutted gully. Although she moved carefully and cautiously, the way her mother had taught her, her foot almost twisted out from under her and she saw herself sprawled unladylike in the dirt, skirt thrown back, legs spread wide.

Stop that!

Elizabeth kept her footing but stopped when another gust of wind rustled the maple leaves in front of her. That was the sound she’d heard. There was no one in the woods besides her. No children, no adults, no one to see her kneel in front of the tiny headstone.

It was pink granite flecked with black and silver; and it was cold against the palm of her hand, its edges smooth as butter, the chiseled inscription all but obliterated. With one finger, like a kindergartner connecting the dots with an oversized pencil, Elizabeth traced the letters carved into the stone one at a time.

This was no childish project or joke. No animal rested beneath the stone.

M. Y. P. R. E. C. I. O. U. S. O.

“My Precious One.”

Elizabeth dropped her hand and sat back on her calves, felt the left knee of her nylons pop and send runners halfway up her thigh.

The grave was real … but she’d never noticed it before. But more importantly, none of the generations of schoolchildren she told to “Hush” and “Be quiet” had noticed it either.

And Heaven knows they noticed everything else worth whispering about during Free Reading Time: the broken water main that flooded out the toy shop, the broken-down car, the funny-looking cloud that had been all purple and orange, the new traffic lights, the old park benches, the way the sky looked before it snowed. They noticed everything but the grave. And they should have.

Because a grave, a real grave, was something much too wonderful and much too terrible not to talk about.

Rustling again. And not the wind. This time directly behind her. Louder. Closer. Rustle. Rustle. Thump. Thump.

Footsteps.

Elizabeth twisted toward the sound and leaned back against the small headstone. Protectively. The way a good mother … but not this child’s mother would.

“Who’s there?” she said in her Librarian’s voice. “Is someone there?”

Rustle, thump … and what was that? A giggle? Sitting straighter, Elizabeth took a deep breath and began mentally going down her list of school troublemakers.

“Kenny Wisman, is that you?”

A brilliant boy with more energy than control, he was always looking for better and bigger pranks to justify his existence. Creating the small grave would be a minor accomplishment for a boy who had not-so-secretly christened her Mz. Hesse-the-Pest.

“Kenneth? If that’s you, speak up now! I dislike being snuck up upon.” Without thinking, without caring that she might be laughed at, Elizabeth reached back and hugged the headstone. “Show yourself this instant, young man, or else I’ll be forced to call your mother and—”

A tufted blue jay screeched as it shot, arrowlike, from the underbrush in front of her and she screeched with it. When it called again, it was already a hundred yards away.

“Foolish,” she said as she turned back to the grave and smiled. “I scared myself, wasn’t that silly of me?”

Elizabeth brushed a fallen leaf off the stone. Perhaps no one, including herself, had noticed the grave until now because now was when she was supposed to find it. Perhaps it had been waiting all these years until she was ready to find it. To notice it. To care.

My Precious One.

“You’re late.”

Elizabeth carefully hung her shoulder bag on the coat rack and took a deep breath before answering.

“Yes, Mother. Sorry, Mother.”

She had said the same thing (yes Mother sorry Mother) for as long as she could remember, with no variations or modifications, but tonight she noticed that the words stuck a little in her throat.

The same way she noticed how old and used up her mother looked when she walked into the dining room.

“My God, what have you done now? Just look at your clothes!”

Despite every effort not to, Elizabeth looked down and felt the same kind of chill that she had at the grave … a cold numbing