Emily and I were married for just over seventeen years. We never once discussed funeral or burial plans for each other. And we certainly never contemplated the possibility of our son dying. We thought we had years and years together. Endless years. So when the time came and I faced that awful decision on my own, I made the best choices I could in the midst of my confused grief.

The city of Gatewood maintains an old cemetery outside of downtown. Some of the first settlers to the town were buried there, and for many years no new burials occurred because it was full. Not long before Emily and Jake died, a city surveyor went to work there and discovered a number of unused plots, which were then made available for the public to buy. Do I consider it good fortune that I was able to take advantage of that surveyor’s ingenuity and purchase three plots on a gently sloping hill overlooking the river?

I park on the narrow road near the gate to the cemetery, where the tree has grown against the fence, and get out of the car. In the weeks and months after Emily and Jake died, I’d wake during the night and come out here, sitting on their graves in the pitch dark, kept company only by the night birds and the skittering skunks and opossums.

I know Preston is right.

I know I should go to the police and explain what I wanted from Zach.

I know I should call Diana and let her protect me. And explain that I didn’t write the book.

I will.

But it’s not his choice when to do it. It’s mine.

I’m happy to be able to stretch my legs. I squeeze through the fence—thankful that of all the things I’ve done, I’ve at least managed to stay trim—and head in the direction of the familiar headstone with one name chiseled across the top: nye. I know that below Emily’s and Jake’s names, as well as their dates of birth and—exact same—dates of death, an empty space remains for me to be added.

For the first six months after they died, I couldn’t come out here without completely losing control of my emotions. For the next year or year and a half, it was hit-and-miss. Sometimes I sobbed. Sometimes I felt like shit. Sometimes I managed to summon a happy memory—Jake’s first bike ride, a trip we all took to the Grand Canyon, Emily’s thirtieth birthday party—and I would drive away from the cemetery feeling better.

The past few years I’ve found the visits mostly comforting. I always thought the notion of burying someone, of paying a ton of money to put someone in the ground with a rock over their head, was silly. But when it happened to my family, I got it.