“Your boys,” she continued quietly, “they are not buried there.”
Meredith froze, her sobs cutting off so abruptly it was as if someone had closed a door inside her chest. She lowered her hands and stared.
“What did you just say,” Evan asked, his voice tightening despite his effort to keep it calm.
The girl swallowed and took a step closer, as though she understood the danger of what she was saying and chose to speak anyway.
“They are alive,” she said. “They live where I live, at a place people do not like to look at.”
Meredith straightened so fast she nearly stumbled.
“How could you possibly know that,” she demanded, her voice trembling on the edge of hope and fury.
The girl hesitated, then answered in a whisper that carried farther than she seemed to intend.
“I saw the bands on their wrists. The ones with their names.”
Something shifted violently inside Evan, as if the ground beneath him had cracked without warning.