A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

grimace. The coloration of her skin has changed.
But she’s shifted positions since we laid her in the trunk. This
bothers me.
Was she alive and deliberatively moved inside the trunk, trying
desperately to get out?
Or was she dead and kinetic energy moved her?
I can’t stop thinking about it, obsessing over it.
But other than to assuage my guilt, it doesn’t matter. Shelby is
dead.
I’ve lost all track of time. I don’t know how long ago the accident
was, or how long we were driving.
The rain is steady. As we carry Shelby deeper into the woods, she
slips. Her ankles, in my wet hands, are like sardines. They’re hard to
hold on to. The ground is soft, wet. We trip over tree roots. We sink
into the mud.
Here, we don’t have to worry about being quiet.
We go a couple hundred feet, deep into the trees. I hear the river
flowing in the distance. It moves fast. My first thought is that Bea is
going to toss Shelby’s body into the river.
But then she stops short of the river. She sets her half of Shelby
on the ground. It’s ungentle.
With her gloved hands, Bea starts digging into the softened earth.
“You just going to stand there and watch?” she asks. I gently lower
Shelby’s legs to the ground. I drop to my knees. I start carving away
at the dirt, with my hands still covered by my shirtsleeves. Shelby’s
body lies beside me, watching. My actions are reactive,
unconscious. I go through the motions, because I don’t know what
else to do. I can’t leave. Bea is the one with the keys. She’s calling
the shots. I cry as I dig. For a minute my whole body heaves. I try to
get control of myself but I’m so overcome with emotion. Shock,
horror, guilt, fear.
It takes forever to dig a hole big enough for Shelby’s body. It’s
sloppy at best. It’s not nearly deep or wide enough. We don’t have a
shovel. But at some point Bea finds an ice scraper in her trunk and
we take turns with that. We find tree limbs and use those, too, to
chisel away the dirt.