The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter 1)

Gamma’s mouth opened, but she did not speak. Her face began to age. Sam felt a longing for the mother she would never see grow old. Fine lines spread out from Gamma’s mouth. Crow’s feet around her eyes. The wrinkles deepened. Streaks of gray salted her dark hair. Her jawline grew fuller.

Her skin began to peel away.

White teeth showed through an open hole in her cheek. Her hair turned into greasy white twine. Her eyes grew desiccated. She wasn’t aging.

She was decomposing.

Sam struggled to get away. The smell of death enveloped her: wet earth, fresh maggots burrowing underneath her skin. Gamma’s hands clamped around her face. She made Sam turn around. Fingers reduced to dry bone. Black teeth honed into razor blades as Gamma opened her mouth and screamed, “I told you to get out!”

Sam gasped awake.

Her eyes slit open onto an impenetrable blackness.

Dirt filled her mouth. Wet soil. Pine needles. Her hands were in front of her face. Hot breath bounced against her palms. There was a sound—

Shsh. Shsh. Shsh.

A broom sweeping.

An ax swinging.

A shovel dropping dirt into a grave.

Sam’s grave.

She was being buried alive. The weight of the soil on top of her was like a metal plate.

“I’m sorry.” Hightop’s voice caught around the words. “Please, God, please forgive me.”

The dirt kept coming, the weight turning into a vise that threatened to press the breath right out of her.

Did you know that Giles Corey was the only defendant in the Salem witch trials who was pressed to death?

Tears filled Sam’s eyes, slid down her face. A scream got trapped inside her throat. She couldn’t panic. She couldn’t start yelling or flailing because they would not help her. They would shoot her again. Begging for her life would only speed up the taking of her life.

“Don’t be silly,” Gamma said. “I thought you were past that teenager stage.”

Sam inhaled a shaky breath.

She startled as she realized that air was entering her lungs.

She could breathe!

Her hands were cupped to her face, creating an air pocket inside the dirt. Sam tightened the seal between her palms. She forced her breaths to slow in order to preserve what precious air she had left.

Charlie had told her to do this. Years ago. Sam could picture her sister in her Brownie uniform. Arms and legs like tiny sticks. Her creased yellow shirt and brown vest with all the patches she had earned. She had read aloud from her Adventure handbook at the breakfast table.

“‘If you find yourself caught in an avalanche, do not cry out or open your mouth,’” Charlie had read. “‘Put your hands in front of your face and try to create an airspace as you are coming to a stop.’”

Sam stuck out her tongue, trying to see how far away her hands were. She guessed a quarter of an inch. She flexed her fingers, trying to elongate the pocket of air. There was nothing to move into. The dirt was packed tightly around her hands, almost like cement.

She tried to glean the position of her body. She wasn’t flat on her back. Her left shoulder was pressed to the ground, but she wasn’t fully lying on her side, either. Her hips were turned at an angle to her shoulders. Cold seeped into the back of her running shorts. Her right knee was bent, her left leg was straight.

Torso twist.

A runner’s stretch. Her body had fallen into a familiar position.

Sam tried to shift her weight. She couldn’t move her legs. She tried her toes. Her calf muscles. Her hamstrings.

Nothing.

Sam closed her eyes. She was paralyzed. She would never walk again, run again, move again without assistance. Panic rushed into her chest like a swarm of mosquitos. Running was all that she had. It was who she was. What was the point of trying to survive if she could never use her legs again?

She pressed her face into her hands so that she wouldn’t cry out.

Charlie could still run. Sam had watched her sister bolt toward the forest. It was the last thing she’d seen before the revolver went off. Sam conjured into her mind the image of Charlie sprinting, her spindly legs moving impossibly fast as she flew forward, away, never hesitating, never stopping to look back.

Don’t think about me, Sam begged, the same thing she had told her sister a million times before. Just concentrate on yourself and keep running.

Had Charlie made it? Had she found help? Or had she looked over her shoulder to see if Sam was following and instead found Zachariah Culpepper’s shotgun jammed into her face?

Or worse.

Sam forced the thought from her mind. She saw Charlie running free, getting help, bringing the police back to the grave because she had their mother’s sense of direction and she never got lost and she would remember where her sister was buried.

Sam counted out the beats of her heart until she felt them slow to a less frantic pace.

And then she felt a tickle in her throat.

Everything was filled with dirt—her ears, nose, mouth, lungs. She couldn’t stop the cough that wanted to come out of her mouth. Her lips opened. The reflexive intake of air pulled more dirt into her nose. She coughed again, then again. The third time was so hard that she felt her stomach cramp as her body strained to pull itself into a ball.

Sam felt a jolt in her heart.

Her legs had twitched.

Panic and fear had cut off the vital connections between her brain and her musculature. She had not been paralyzed; she had been terrified, some ancient fight or flight mechanism pushing her out of her own body until she could understand what was happening. Sam felt elation as sensation slowly returned to her lower body. It was as if she was walking into a pool of water. At first, she could feel her toes spreading through the thick earth. Then her ankles were able to bend. Then she felt the tiniest amount of movement in her ankles.

If she could move her feet, what else could she move?

Sam flexed her calves, warming them up. Her quads started to fire. Her knees tensed. She concentrated on her legs, telling herself that they could move until her body sent back the message that yes, her legs could move.

She was not paralyzed. She had a chance.

Gamma always said that Sam had learned how to run before she’d learned how to walk. Her legs were the strongest part of her body.

She could kick her way out.

Sam worked her legs, making infinitesimal motions back and forth, trying to burrow through the heavy layer of dirt. Her breath grew hot in her hands. A dense fog clouded out the panic in her brain. Was she using up too much air? Did it matter? She kept losing track of what she was doing. Her lower body was moving back and forth and sometimes she found herself thinking she was lying on the deck of a tiny boat rocking on the ocean and then she would come to, would realize that she was trapped underground and struggle to move faster, harder, only to be lulled back onto the boat again.

She tried to count: One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi …

Her legs cramped. Her stomach cramped. Everything cramped. Sam made herself stop, if only for a few seconds. The rest was almost as painful as the effort. Lactic acid boiled off her spent muscles, causing her stomach to churn. Her vertebrae had twisted into overtightened bolts that pinched the nerves and shot an electric pain into her neck and legs. Every breath was caught in her hands like a trapped bird.

“‘There is a fifty percent chance of survival,’” Charlie had read from her Adventure book. “‘But only if the victim is found within one hour.’”

Sam didn’t know how long she’d been in the grave. Like losing the red-brick house, like watching her mother die, that had been a lifetime ago.

She tightened her stomach muscles and tried a sideways push-up. H

er arm tensed. Her neck strained. The earth pressed back, grinding her shoulder into the wet soil.

She needed more room.

Sam tried to rock her hips. There was an inch of space at first, then two inches, then she could move her waist, her shoulder, her neck, her head.

Was there suddenly more space between her mouth and her hands?

Sam stuck out her tongue again. She felt the tip brush against the gap between her two palms. That was half an inch, at least.

Progress.

She worked on her arms next, shifting them up and down, up and down. There were no inches this time. Centimeters, then millimeters of dirt shifted. She had to keep her hands in front of her face so she could breathe. But then she realized that she had to dig with her hands.

One hour. That was all Charlie had given her. Sam’s time had to be running out. Her palms were hot, bathed in condensation. Her brain was awash in dizziness.

Sam took a last, deep breath.

She pushed her hands away from her face. Her wrists felt like they were going to break as she twisted her hands around. She pressed together her lips, gritted her teeth, and clawed at the ground, furiously trying to dislodge the dirt.

And still the earth pushed back.

Her shoulders ignited in pain. Trapezoids. Rhomboids. Scapulae. Hot irons pierced her biceps. Her fingers felt like they were going to snap. Her nails chipped off. The skin on her knuckles peeled away. Her lungs were going to collapse. She couldn’t keep holding her breath. She couldn’t keep fighting. She was tired. She was alone. Her mother was dead. Her sister was gone. Sam started to yell, first in her head, then through her mouth. She was so angry—furious at her mother for grabbing the shotgun, livid with her father for bringing this hell to their doorstep, pissed at Charlie for not being stronger, and fucking apoplectic that she was going to die in this God damn grave.

Shallow grave.

Cool air wrapped around her fingers.

She had broken through the soil. Less than two feet separated Sam from life and death.

There was no time to rejoice. She had no air in her lungs, no hope unless she could keep digging.