The world narrowed. “What did you say?”
Behind her, Chad’s voice snapped, “Hang up.”
Veronica started breathing fast. “Marcus, listen to me. You don’t understand. Mom signed things. She was going to ruin everything.”
My hand tightened around the phone. “What things?”
Another silence. Then Chad came on the line.
“You need to leave this alone, man.”
That was when I knew my mother had not simply been left in a pit. She had been put there because she was standing between them and something they wanted.
I went back inside and asked the nurse for a sheriff. Then I asked for a social worker. Then I asked whether Mom’s clothes and the dirt from her feet could be preserved.
The nurse looked at me differently then. Like she understood I was not only a son. I was the first witness.
Within an hour, Sheriff Donnelly stood beside my mother’s hospital bed. Clara was barely conscious, but when he asked who hurt her, her fingers moved against the sheet.
