Page 75 of The Five Year Lie

While we’re side by side at matching cutting boards, I size her up, wondering how she’s doing. Her anxious behavior makes more sense to me now that I know she got a rogue text, too.

“How was your day?” I ask, because in this family we don’t ever get straight to the point.

“Fine,” she says, predictably. “Buzz has been whistling the same tune over and over again. It’s a tune I know and couldn’t name. He—” She breaks off and holds up a hand.

And I hear whistling from two rooms away. It’s the same tune he was whistling on the way to preschool today. “That’s...” I listen a little harder. “What is that tune?”

She laughs. “Welcome to my world. I’ve spent the whole day trying to figure it out.”

Buzz whistles again, and I try to supply the lyrics in my head. But I can’t.

“Ray will be joining us for dinner,” my mother says. “Oh, and I might have found a wedding dress this morning. What do you thinkof this?” She sets down her chef’s knife and pulls her phone out of her apron. She opens it up to a photo of herself in a dress shop, smiling at the camera.

“Oh, wow, Mom. That’s agreatpick.” The dress is white, but not a traditional wedding dress. The length is above-the-knee. The fabric has big round flowers embroidered onto it. Like giant white-on-white polka dots. It has blousy elbow-length sleeves that lend it a casual whimsy. “You look great in that.”

“Is it too short?” she demands. “Do I look like I’m trying to be twenty-five again?”

“No!” I insist. “You look fashionable but not silly. The neckline is super modest.” Boring, even. “But that only makes those sleeves stand out. And you have great legs for someone so ancient.”

“Young lady.”She plucks a wooden spoon from the ceramic utensil holder and pretends to swat my backside with it. “Thatwas uncalled for.”

“Oh, come on. There was a compliment in there, too.”

She smiles as she puts down the wooden spoon and picks up the knife again. “I do like the dress. I think I’ll buy it.”

“Still planning for October?” I ask.

“Absolutely,” she says firmly. “I can’t wait.”

I peel the rest of the cucumber without comment, until my phone starts to ring in my pocket. I pull it out and see an unfamiliar number with a 910 area code. “Spam, probably.” But something tickles my subconscious about that area code. So I answer it. “Hello?”

“Hello, have I reached Miss Ariel Cafferty?”

The accent is Southern and genteel, and it makes me answer with an uncharacteristic formality. “Yes, this is she.”

“My name is Elizabeth Carter, and I’m calling from the Cedarwood Cemetery. You called recently looking for a friend’s grave?”

My stomach does a loop-de-loop, and I walk immediately toward the back door, where I let myself out onto the driveway. “Yes ma’am, I did.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long to return your call,” the woman says. “We don’t have lengthy office hours, and I was away on vacation last week.”

“That’s all right,” I say numbly. But my heart is beginning to pound, and I lean against the shingled exterior wall of the house, because I feel suddenly light-headed. “Did you find Andrew Miller?”

When this woman gives me a plot number, it will be like losing him all over again.

There’s a beat of silence. “No, I’m afraid I was unable to locate anyone with the surname of Miller who was interred here in the last decade. In fact, we were largely closed to new interments after 2015. The only burials we have now are in existing family mausoleums, or plots sold before 2005.”

“Oh.” I gasp, and replay that in my head as best I can. “And nobody named Miller owns one of those?” I need her to say it again.

“We have only one Miller family in the cemetery,” she says. “And their last interment was more than fifteen years ago.”

“Oh,” I say again. I prop myself up against the house and try to remember how to breathe. “So his obituary was wrong.”

“I’m sorry to say that seems likely,” she says quietly. Somewhere in the depths of my confusion I recognize that Ms. Elizabeth Carter has the kind of gentle delivery you’d need if your job was speaking to bereaved family members. “Perhaps I could help you get in touch with another cemetery in the area? Many of them are still open, and you’re more likely to find a burial from 2018 at one of those.”

“All right, thank you,” I say with forced calm. As if I weren’t screaming inside. “Who should I call first?”

She rattles off a couple of names, which I probably won’t remember as soon as I hang up the phone.