Seven Sisters - Earlene Fowler [86]
He sneezed twice in reply.
I started on my end, doing my best not to miss any graves, easy to do in this old, very disorganized graveyard. I was assuming the four sisters would all be buried together, but since the fact they were even buried in this old cemetery wasn’t logical, I didn’t expect how they were buried to make any more sense.
Once again I was struck emotionally by how many of the dead were infants and small children. So many of these graves hadn’t been disturbed or visited in years. One especially touched me, bearing the inscription NATHAN RAY MONROE—AUGUST 10, 1882-DECEMBER 12, 1882, “CROWN’D WITHOUT THE CONFLICT.” The baby had been four months old when he died. Walking in and out of the light cast by the thick maples, cottonwoods, and oaks, I felt a chill, as psychological as much as physical, when I read the headstones. One whole family, a father, mother, and six children, surrounded by a rusty Victorian iron fence, had been wiped out by influenza during the same month in 1917. I sat down on a flat rock, overwhelmed for a moment by the tragedy.
“I found them!” Detective Hudson’s voice echoed from across the cemetery.
“Scout, come,” I called and started running toward the detective’s voice, dodging broken markers and uneven sunken spots.
He stood in front of four identical markers, standing in a row like a just-started fence. On the front of each of them was carved a lily of the valley.
“It is about the babies,” I whispered.
Then there was a sharp pop, and something whizzed past my ear. With a howl, Scout started toward the trees.
“Scout, down!” I started to run toward him, then found myself flat on my chest, the breath knocked out of me. Detective Hudson’s solid, muscular body pinned me to the ground.
“Don’t move,” he snapped. His thighs instinctively tightened around mine.
Move? I couldn’t even get a breath. Gasping, I tried to talk. To tell him I needed oxygen. To tell him it felt like I was dying. I felt his hip bone jab into me as he struggled to pull his gun out of his holster.
Another pop cracked through the silence. Dirt and leaves jumped a few feet from our prone bodies. His thighs tightened again.
I moaned, trying to get a breath, trying to tell him to get off me.
“Hush,” he said, pushing my face into the sharp, dry leaves. They scratched my face, and I squirmed, trying to get a hand out to push them away.
“Lie still!” His harsh voice caused me to freeze. My heart thump-thumped in my ears, sounding as loud as the ocean.
Though his body grew heavy on mine, gradually my breath came back, and I managed to take short gulps of cool, soil-scented air. As we lay there, the noise of the forest slowly resumed, the chirping of crickets and the chattering of birds telling us our assailant had departed. I could feel Detective Hudson’s breath warm and rapid on my neck, then gradually felt the muscles in his arms and legs relax around me.
“Listen,” he whispered. In the distance the rumbling sound of a truck’s engine moved farther away.
“Good,” I mumbled into the dirt and leaves. “You can get off me now.” With the immediate threat of danger gone, our position was entirely too personal for my tastes, though I had to admit he had pretty nice thighs.
He laughed softly in my ear, his lips brushing against my hair. His thighs tightened around mine again, voluntarily this time. “I don’t know, it was just starting to get fun.”
I spit a leaf out of my mouth. “Get off me, you jerk.” I shoved my elbow as hard as I could into his chest.
He laughed again, then rolled off me and stood up, reholstering his pistol. He held out his hand. “Someone sure isn’t happy with us finding these graves.”
Ignoring his offer of help, I scrambled up. “Where’s Scout?” I looked around frantically for my dog.
He lay flat on the ground a few feet away, whimpering.
“Scout, come,” I said. He jumped up and ran over to me. “What a good, good boy you are.” He licked my face as I ran my hands over