Her younger sister Teenie was shown in her school picture, the saddest accompaniment to an obituary. She’d been a little over made-up for the occasion, and her hair was dramatically combed in two solid falls of darkness on either side of her face. She had her mother’s narrow features and small build, and she had a sharp nose, perfectly straight. It was hard to extrapolate anything about her character from a class picture. She was smiling, of course, but it was just an arrangement of her lips. There wasn’t anything genuinely happy about it. She was a deep well, and I wasn’t surprised Dell Teague had been intrigued.

Dell Teague was blond like his mother. I found a shot of Dell on an old sports page, where he was shown dressed in his football uniform. It was enough to break your heart—even my heart—seeing the young man standing there smiling at the camera, full of youth and pride and strength. I wondered if he’d known what was happening to him, or if the shot had been a complete surprise—if he’d had a chance to worry about his girlfriend’s fate. The feeling I’d gotten, while I stood on his grave, was that he had known what was happening. I felt sorry for that.

I looked at Dell’s picture, then back at Teenie’s. Then again. They shared something, these two. I checked the years the pictures had been taken. Teenie’s had been taken earlier in the fall, so had Dell’s. Too early for Teenie to think she might be pregnant. What secret was it they shared? I wanted to print out the articles and take them with me. Then I realized I was getting too caught up in the lives of these two teenagers who were dead and buried.

While I was getting so much good stuff, I searched the computer for any stories or pictures including Mary Nell Teague. Mary Nell was in lots of pictures; she was a cheerleader (no surprise there), she was her class president, she’d been on the homecoming court. I even took a second to look at a picture of Dick Teague, the deceased husband of Sybil. He was a medium man; medium stature, medium brown hair, light complexion, narrow shoulders, and a tentative smile, at least in the newspaper pictures. He had a definite overbite, a generous nose, and he’d died of a sudden heart attack in his home.