Dig Two Graves: One for Gold, One for Me
I'd dig up all the treasure in the world for you, Sawyer.
Rory’s voice was a warm murmur against my hair, his arms a familiar cage of comfort around me.
We were parked at a scenic overlook, the city lights below a distant, glittering promise we were about to leave behind.
His engagement ring, a simple silver band with a tiny sapphire, felt heavy on my finger.
It was a promise of a future I desperately wanted to believe in.
"Just… maybe not the treasure in my family's backyard," I said, trying to keep my tone light.
"They say it's cursed."
He chuckled, a low, rumbling sound that usually soothed me.
"Every good treasure story needs a curse."
He pulled back, his eyes catching the dim light of the dashboard.
They were bright with an excitement that, for the first time, felt unsettling.
"Don't worry," he whispered, kissing my forehead.
"I'll protect you from all the ghosts."
But as we drove into the encroaching darkness of the Louisiana backroads, I couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't bringing me home to face my ghosts.
He was bringing me home to feed them.
§01
A shovel, a slit throat, and a ghost story about cursed gold.
That’s all I had left of my father.
More than a decade later, the memory was still a shard of glass lodged in my mind, sharp and immovable.
Now, Rory’s Ford F-150 was kicking up that same red Louisiana dust, rattling down the gravel road that led to the place I swore I’d never return to.
Blackwater Parish.
Even the name tasted like stagnant water and decay.
"You okay?" Rory asked, his hand finding mine.
His touch was warm, solid.
The opposite of everything this place represented.
I nodded, a lie that felt thin even to me.
"Just… memories."
The Ramsey property came into view, a tired-looking farmhouse sagging under the weight of the humid air and its own history.
And there, behind it, was the old barn, its paint peeling like sunburnt skin.
The land behind that barn was where my grandfather had supposedly buried his life savings during the Great Depression—a fortune in gold.
It was also where my father had died.
My mother, Judith, was standing on the porch.
She hadn't changed.
Her hair was a cascade of premature gray, her face a mask of stoic neutrality that I could never quite decipher.
She didn't smile as we got out of the truck.
She just watched, her eyes passing over me and landing on Rory with an unreadable intensity.
"Mom," I said, the word feeling foreign on my tongue.
She gave a curt nod.
"Sawyer."
Then, her gaze fixed on Rory.
"So, you're the one who convinced her to come back."
"I thought it was time," Rory said, his voice laced with the easy charm that had won me over.
"A family should be together."
My mother’s lips thinned into a line that was almost a sneer.
"This family," she said, her voice low and brittle, "has a history of being buried together."
§02
The engagement barbecue was my mother’s idea of a concession.
Which meant she'd allowed me to use the grill in the backyard, not twenty yards from the cursed ground.
The air was thick with the smell of charcoal and cheap beer, a flimsy veil over the scent of damp earth and secrets.
Townsfolk I hadn't seen in years milled about, their eyes flicking from me to Rory, then to the infamous patch of land behind the barn.
"Heard you two are getting hitched!" a woman named Brenda, whose face was a roadmap of small-town gossip, chirped loudly.
"Just keep him away from the family 'investment portfolio'," her husband added with a greasy wink.
Rory laughed it off, but I saw the flicker in his eyes again.
That unsettling gleam of interest.
I found my mother by the rickety fence that separated the yard from the overgrown woods, a bottle of water in her hand, untouched.
"They're all talking about it," I said quietly.
"They always are," she replied, not looking at me.
Her gaze was fixed on Rory, who was now deep in conversation with Jedediah Gable, the town's unofficial patriarch.
Old Man Gable was a pillar of the community, which meant he owned half of it and held the other half in his debt.
"What did you say to him?" I asked, following her gaze.
"When we arrived."
Judith finally turned to me, her eyes the color of a stormy sky.
"I told him the same thing I told your father."
"What was that?"
"That some things are buried for a reason," she said.
"And that greed is a shovel that only digs one kind of hole."
A grave.
She didn't have to say the word.
It hung in the humid air between us, heavy and suffocating.
§03
Later, as the party began to wind down, I saw Rory slip away from the crowd.
He was heading toward the barn.
A cold knot formed in my stomach.
I followed him, my steps silent on the overgrown grass.
He thought he was alone.
He pulled out his phone, his back to me.
His voice was a low, urgent whisper.
"I'm here now... I know, but it's not that simple."
A pause.
His shoulders tensed.
"Look, her mother is watching me like a hawk. She knows."
Another pause, this one longer.
Rory’s hand clenched into a fist.
"Don't you threaten me," he hissed.
"You know what's on the line. I'll get it. Just give me time."
He ended the call, his whole body radiating a frantic energy I’d never seen before.
He turned, and his eyes met mine.
He froze.
"Sawyer," he breathed, his face paling.
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