The wind has eased. I checked the weather earlier and saw we’re in for a warming spell. I can already feel the temperature climbing a bit, and I hope like hell it continues, because I didn’t move to southern Kentucky expecting to be cold all winter.

I stop about thirty yards from our headstone and see its outline at the top of the little hill. I wait while my eyes slowly adjust to the dark. I’m about to move forward when I notice a lump to my left, about twenty feet away.

I squint. It looks like a large animal—a dog? a deer?—has curled up and gone to sleep. But the animal doesn’t stir as I approach, hasn’t dashed away as I would expect.

Maybe it’s simply part of the landscaping. The maintenance crew takes good care of the property, and from time to time they plant new grass or a tree.

My heart thumps a steady beat. My fingertips are cold. Stinging.

“Scat,” I say. If it’s an animal, it will go.

But the lump remains, still and steady. I feel like a child, spooked by a pile of clothes in the corner of my bedroom. For weeks after Emily and Jake died, I slept with every light on in the house, trying to bring myself comfort and security. I imagine my early-rising neighbors saw them and knew what I was doing. A grown man sleeping with all the lights on.

Speaking of light . . .

I slide my phone out of my back pocket. I activate the flashlight, which illuminates a bright cone around me. It shows the brown grass, scattered twigs, a fake flower petal blown here off someone’s bouquet.

I move forward slowly. I lift the phone, shifting the light away from my feet toward the lump in front of me. At the edge of the cone, I see a pile of debris. Twigs and leaves that the landscaping crew has gathered from around the cemetery grounds and mounded until they can come and cart them away.

I almost laugh out loud.

I spooked myself over a pile of yard waste. That’s how on edge I am.

My breathing starts to calm, and I lower the phone. But as I lower it, I see something—

No, I think. No. I’m imagining things again.

But I lift the phone and aim the light at the edge of the pile of debris. And I see my mind hasn’t been playing tricks on me. It’s really there. . . .

A brown boot and, above it, a ragged cuff at the end of a pant leg. Sticking out of the pile.

My heart goes into a higher gear.

My hand trembles, and I concentrate to hold the phone. A homeless person? Someone seeking refuge in the cemetery?

I will myself forward, taking two more steps.

“Hey,” I say. “Hey! Wake up! Get up!”