Page 26 of Born Wicked
I don’t see any headstones reading newer than twenty-nine years ago. I start walking faster, reading every year as I pass.
“Juliet?” Jon questions as he sees my behavior shift to frantic.
I shake my head and don’t answer as I begin walking down the last aisle.
Fifty-three years ago.
Thirty-seven years ago.
Eighty-one years ago.
I see the end of the row, and there are headstones perfectly lined up the rest of the way to the stone fence.
In defeat, I stop, fifteen yards from the end.
“The entire cemetery is full,” I say aloud. I shake my head as I look around. Dawn is beginning to lighten the horizon, just barely. “There… there isn’t one bit of empty space here. And the years…” I look back at Jon as he stops behind me. “The last year I can see that anyone was buried here was thirty years ago.”
I was born, and my mother was killed twenty-nine years ago.
“What does that mean?” Jon asks, and I see the panic and fear creeping into his eyes.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe… there must have been a mistake. She must be in a different cemetery. I think… I think we need to go to that police station and ask them to look at the records again.”
Jon looks around once more. I see it in his eyes. He wants so badly for Ingrid to be here. He wants to know. After twenty-nine years of not knowing, he just wants toknow.
“We’ll find her,” I say, reaching for my father’s hand. “We’re going to find her.”
Silent and still searching, we weave our way between the perfect rows of headstones. As horrible as it was walking into that cemetery in south Chicago with Roman months ago, I wish an exhumed grave was what I was looking at now. I wish it was bones I was walking out of here with instead of empty hands.
We slip into the car, closing the doors behind us in defeat.
On my phone, I look up directions to the police station and their hours. Non-emergency operations don’t start for another two hours, but we find a diner that’s open just across the street.
With grim expressions, we head back the way we came and pull into the parking lot.
Killing time is the last thing I want to do.
We walk in, and just five minutes later, we place our orders with the exhausted-looking waitress who must be at the end of a long graveyard shift.
Everyone processes anxiety and stress differently.
Maybe it says something about our shared DNA that Jon and I say next to nothing the entire time we wait. We both pick at our food minimally once it comes. For the most part, we both sit with our eyes fixed on the table, each of us thinking about what this means, imagining where Ingrid really is.
Finally, it’s opening time. I pay for our meal, and the both of us walk outside and across the street, sunglasses in place at the rising sun.
There is a man at the counter, typing something into a computer.
“Excuse me?” I say through a thick throat as I walk up to him. He glances up at me once and keeps typing. “I’m looking for someone in records who can help me. We’re here looking for information on a Jane Doe from nearly twenty-nine years ago.”
“You’re going to want to talk to Mark,” the man says as he keeps typing away. “Down the hall, last door on the left.”
“Thanks,” I offer, immediately heading that way.
It’s dead inside. Because nothing happens in this dusty place.
Jon and I follow the hallway, and I don’t realize it, but I’m holding my breath when I spot the last door on the left. Affixed to the door is a little sign that reads “Records.”
Through the glass window, I see a woman flipping through a binder. When I try the door, I find it unlocked, so I push it open, and Jon steps inside behind me.