I looked at the key.
Then in Unit 17.
The door of the storage room was only six meters away, but suddenly that distance seemed impossible.
“What’s inside?” I asked.
The officer's face was strained.
“That’s enough to explain why your father needed an empty coffin.”
Then my phone started ringing.
My mother again.
The officer looked at the screen and then looked at me again.
“Don’t answer that,” she said.
And behind it, within Unit 17, something began to cast a beep.
“By the grave of my father, the gravedigger grabbed me by the arm and whispered, ‘Lord, your father paid me to bury an empty coffin.’ Before I could even talk, he put a brass key in my hand. “Don’t go home,” he warned. “No matter who you call, no matter what you say. Go to Unit 17 of Route 9. Right now." Then my phone vibrated. A text message from my mother appeared on the screen. Come home alone. My father had been buried less than five minutes ago. Or so I thought.
The final anthem still appeared to float in the icy New Jersey air. Relatives and neighbors moved slowly down the cemetery lawn, speaking quietly, promising food, touching my shoulder, offering the kind of words people use when they know nothing has a solution.
My mother stood by the black hearse, with one hand covering her mouth.
My wife, Celeste, kept our two children close.
And there I stayed, trying to be the son that everyone expected me to be.
Strong.
Useful.
Still standing.
My father, Raymond Mercer, was sixty-six. They said he had suffered a heart attack in his study and died before the ambulance arrived.
For three days, I chose flowers, signed documents, comforted my mother and became convinced that the only thing that was happening was the pain.
Then the gravedigger stopped me.
“Your father paid me,” he said.
I stared at it.
“Did I pay you for what?”
He looked over his shoulder before leaning closer.
“Bury an empty coffin.”
For a moment, my mind refused to accept those words.
“My father is dead,” I said. I saw it.
Man's expression did not change.
“You saw what he wanted you to see.”
I was about to back down.
Some phrases are so impossible that your mind rejects them even before fear can arise.
Then he pressed me a little cold in the palm of my hand.
A small brass key.
The number 17 was stamped on it.
“Don’t go home,” he repeated. It doesn't matter who he calls. It doesn't matter what they tell you. Go to Unit 17. Storage Route 9. Your father left instructions.
“My father passed away three days ago.”
