Chapter 2 - The First Evidence
The paramedics would not let anyone pull me straight out.
They said the pressure of the dirt had been supporting my body for too long.
Removing it too quickly could make everything worse.
So they dug by hand.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Every scoop of earth exposed another part of me.
My shoulders.
My arms.
My chest.
Then finally the curve of my stomach.
One paramedic stopped when he saw the bruising where the packed soil had pressed hardest.
He did not say anything.
He did not need to.
My husband kept insisting from the porch that I had climbed into the hole voluntarily during an argument.
His mother agreed.
Mara claimed she had spent most of the weekend inside.
The deputies separated them immediately.
That was when their stories began breaking apart.
My husband said I had been buried for six hours.
His mother said one night.
Mara told another deputy she thought it had been “maybe two days.”
I closed my eyes.
Two days.
Hearing it spoken aloud made the time feel real.
A paramedic placed oxygen beneath my nose after they finally lifted me onto a stretcher.
The sky looked impossibly wide.
I had forgotten what it felt like to see more than the porch roof and the lower branches of our maple tree.
Deputy Cole walked beside the stretcher holding my phone inside an evidence bag.
“Is this yours?”
“Yes.”
“Were you recording?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe fifteen.”
He nodded.
“Do you know whether anything uploaded?”
My eyes opened wider.
My husband had once complained that my phone automatically backed up large files whenever it connected to our home Wi-Fi.
I had forgotten.
“Maybe.”
Deputy Cole understood immediately.
“Do you know the password?”
I gave it to him.
My husband shouted from across the yard.
“You cannot search her phone without me.”
The older deputy actually laughed.
“It’s her phone.”
My husband’s face went pale.
The ambulance doors closed.
Inside, a monitor was strapped around my stomach.
Static filled the small space.
Then a rhythm appeared.
Fast.
Tiny.
Alive.
I burst into tears.
The paramedic squeezed my hand.
“There’s your baby.”
I listened to the heartbeat all the way to the hospital.
At the emergency entrance, a nurse rushed me toward obstetrics while another cut the filthy clothes from my body.
Mud filled the seams.
Mud filled my hair.
Mud had dried beneath my fingernails.
I stared at my hands.
They looked like someone else’s.
A doctor named Rachel Barnes entered ten minutes later.
She examined the monitor.
Then she looked at me.
“Your baby is under stress.”
My stomach dropped.
“Are we losing her?”
Dr. Barnes did not answer immediately.
“We’re going to do everything we can.”
The door opened again.
Deputy Cole stood there.
He was holding a tablet.
“We recovered the recordings.”
I looked toward him.
His expression had changed.
“How bad?”
May you like
He swallowed.
“Your husband confessed to more than burying you.”
