Chapter 3 - The Empty Grave
The next morning, I left Marcus at the hospital to guard Lily’s room.
I drove straight to the Whispering Pines Cemetery.
For twenty years, I had believed my baby sister Nora was buried here under a beautiful oak tree.
Whenever I asked to visit as a teenager, my mother would say it was too painful and forbid it.
I walked into the cemetery's main office and approached the clerk.
"I need help locating a plot," I said, sliding my driver's license across the desk.
"Nora Sterling, passed away in 1999."
The clerk typed the name into his ancient computer, his eyebrows furrowing.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we don't have a Nora Sterling in our system," he said.
"Could it be under a different last name?"
"No, that's impossible," I insisted, my hands trembling on the counter.
"My parents bought a family plot here in the nineties."
He clicked a few more buttons and turned the screen toward me.
"Your parents, Richard and Margaret Sterling, do own a plot here."
"But it’s completely empty."
There was no body.
There was no grave.
I rushed out of the office, struggling to breathe as panic consumed me.
If Nora wasn't dead, where had she been for the last two decades?
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
May you like
It was a text from an unknown number.
"If you want to know what happened to Nora, go to the attic of your parents' house. Tonight."
