later that same day

Her wrists strung with grocery bags and her girls' school bags slung awkwardly over her shoulder, Berenice struggled to fish the front door key out of her purse. Behind her, the girls (carrying nothing) were bickering over a Hatchimal that had been snuck into school against the school's unambiguous no-toy policy.

***

When Berenice had arrived to pick the girls up, the teacher pulled her aside.

"You're aware, of course," the young teacher frowned prettily at Berenice, "That the children are not allowed to bring toys from home on regular school days. They find it very distracting. So we ask that home toys stay at home."

"Yes, I understand the policy," snapped Berenice, glaring over the teacher's shoulder at her eldest. "I didn't encourage her to bring the toy."

"But in future, could you check to make sure she doesn't have any? This isn't the first time," the teacher pressed.

Berenice switched focus back to the young woman before her. She felt her face heat up.

"Are you suggesting I should frisk her every morning before we leave the house? Don't be ridiculous."

The teacher looked embarrassed but held her ground. "Of course not, frisk. Of course not. But, maybe remind them of the policy and enforce it consistently. Noemi told me that her father said it was okay for her to bring it, in fact."

"I think you've been told a fib. Her father wouldn't have said any such thing." Berenice stopped herself from drawing on her personal grievances about her husband's lack of engagement in parenting matters.

"Well," the teacher continued, "I've told Noemi that next time, she'll lose a point on our class reward chart."

Berenice stifled a laugh. She knew her daughter, and she knew that her daughter wouldn't give a punishment like that a second thought. Good luck to you, lady, she thought to herself. Hoping to disengage herself from the conversation then, she offered, "Well, that certainly sounds like a fair punishment. I'll leave that with you then, Miss."

***

The bickering behind her escalated into shoves as she continued to struggle with the groceries and the door. Lucille started to cry, immediately achieving that particular pitch that is genetically designed to pierce the parental brain.

As the key finally turned and Berenice shouldered the door open, she shouted angrily, "FOR GOD SAKE STOP IT BEFORE I KILL THE BOTH OF YOU!"

"Hello, Berenice," said a voice from inside the unlit living room.

Berenice dropped her bags in surprise and pushed the girls behind her. She wasn't expecting anyone to be home. Her mind jumped to prowlers lying in wait, a serial killer waiting to add her family to his list of horrors, driven to violence by the lunar cycle and a terrible childhood. But then it was only 4 pm. The sun was still out. There was no evidence of a break-in.

"Who is that?" she called into the dim hallway ahead of her.

"It's your father in law," came the reply. "Here to stop you from killing the two most adorable girls I know." The bear-like figure of James Ross lumbered into the hallway. He bent down awkwardly over his sizeable middle with his arms outstretched. "Come say hello to your Granda, you skinny little things."

The girls dropped the Hatchimal and ran, delighted, into Jim's open embrace.

***

In the kitchen, Berenice was busy making tea (in a pot) the way Jim required it to be made. He sat, supervising her movements, awkwardly perched on a breakfast bar stool.

"Couldn't help but notice the yard's full of Russians," he said, nodding toward the back window, which served as a frame for the activity taking place outside. They watched for a moment while Vlad worked to negotiate the bobcat around the deck debris and toward the patch of exposed gravel and dirt that had lain unseen underneath it.

Berenice laughed. "How do you know they're Russian? Did you talk to them?"

"I most certainly did not," he answered. "I can spot a Ruskie a mile off, young lady, and you would be wise to think twice before engaging one in any kind of business. Hard people. Unforgiving."

She shook her head and reminded herself that her father in law was of a different time -- a time still smarting in the shadow of world wars, inclined to divide people into allies and enemies. On top of that, Jim was the dictionary definition of WASP and part of that identity seemed to be the assumption that any culture NOT in the British commonwealth was foreign and, therefore, worthy of skepticism. People like that indulged in a kind of systemic antipathy for otherness that extended itself to any perceivable difference, no matter how small.

"He's a reputable landscaper, Jim. He's just doing a job."

The kettle dinged. She moved to pour the boiling water into the teapot.

"Whoa! Warm the pot first, for god sake!" Jim held up his hand from across the island with the same urgency one might throw themselves between a stroller and an oncoming bus.

Berenice exhaled slowly and turned away so he couldn't see her arched eyebrow. She was on the verge of suggesting that Jim make the tea himself if he was that particular about it when the sound of raised voices reached them from the backyard. They both looked out the window again, but could only see that the bobcat had been abandoned, its excavation shovel still full of dirt, beside a sizeable hole in the yard. The men were crouched around that hole, gesturing into it and saying indecipherable things in raised voices.

"Ne trogay eto!"

"Vladimir, voz'mi zhenshchinu." At this, Vlad stalked over toward the house. He looked more grim than usual.

Berenice opened the back door before he had a chance to knock. She smiled winningly at his serious face.

"What's the matter out there? Is the ground still frozen? I worried it was too early to start. I'm so..."

"Lady," Vlad held a meaty hand up to stop her. "My men have found something in ground. Something..." he looked uncharacteristically uncertain for a moment as he reached back to rub his broad neck. He sighed a great fatalist's sigh and said, "You better come look. But don't touch, okay. I make the phone call. You go."

"What? What is it?" she asked even as she struggled to put her rain boots on. Jimmy stood back, arms crossed as if waiting to catch one or both of them out in a lie.

Vlad just gestured out toward the yard and put his phone up to his ear.

***

Later, when Berenice thinks back on this bridge of time between the part of her life where everything was normal and the part where everything got very unusual indeed, what she would pick out as most surprising was the amount of time it took the police to arrive.

While it was evident to her that the length of bone just uncovered by the digging bobcat had nothing to do with her, you'd think the police might have had concerns in the other direction. What if she were, in fact, the serial killer that she'd dreaded just hours earlier? Shouldn't they respond with slightly more urgency when gardeners uproot human remains in a person's yard?

Honestly. The state of public service these days.

***

"You've taken your time about it," Jim declared unhelpfully when the officers finally arrived. One male, one female, both in plain clothes. The sun was already setting and Berenice was feeling conflicted about whether to order the girls a pizza or to wait until the police had finished whatever they'd need to do outside. Did ordering a pizza in the midst of possibly getting found out as a body-burying serial killer make one look more or less guilty, she wondered. Less, surely.

Vlad and his crew had vanished silently after the phone call had been made. He'd left his card in case they needed to speak to him but did not seem inclined to hang around. So, it was only Jim and Berenice left to answer the officers' many questions.

They started with a look around the garden and, of course, into the hole. One of them held a ruler near the partially uncovered bone while the other took a photograph of it. They did not remove the thing. She wished they would. She didn't like the idea of there being a body part so close to the family kitchen and, besides, wanted to be able to get on with the renovation work.

"Will you send someone to get rid of it in the morning?" she asked naively as if it were nothing more problematic than a raccoon they'd found under the deck.

The officers exchanged a glance.

The woman replied blandly, "No, ma'am. First, we need to determine the age of the scene. Forensics will come in to do some analysis. Doesn't look recent to me, but I'm no expert."

To which the male officer added, "Could be a few days before they come. They work on fresh scenes first. Do you have a tarp or something? We can throw it over the hole in case it rains."

Berenice assumed he was making a joke and laughed. She'd watched enough crime shows on TV to know you weren't supposed to interfere, touch or even breathe around a crime scene for fear of contaminating the DNA evidence.

The officer didn't smile. Just looked toward the shed in the back.

"Oh. Um. I don't think we have a tarp or anything. I'm not really a camper you see, and Berry's not, well, we don't have much need of tarps, I guess." She made her way to the shed and opened the door, peering around in the dim interior for something that might do to cover the hole. "How about... how about this patio umbrella? We could position it over the... Over the... thing?"

The male officer nodded and came to help her shift it.

While they did that, the female officer jotted notes on her small notepad.

As the dark of evening descended, they made their way back inside, leaving the bone and the hole and the patio umbrella as they were.

At the kitchen table, the officers asked a series of benign questions ranging from her ownership of the home (ten years), her knowledge of past owners (none), her husband's whereabouts (presumably at work) and the reason her landscapers had been digging down. She tried to show them her drawn plans, which they waved away, disinterested in the particulars.

Just then, Berry emerged through the back door, the left leg of his pants muddied up to the knee.

"What the hell is..." he stopped abruptly upon seeing the two strangers at the kitchen table with his wife. He looked between them, momentarily lost. "There's a huge bloody hole back there where the deck used to be. I nearly fell in!"

"This is my husband, Bertrand," she said by way of apology to the officers. "Sorry, I meant to text you, but things have been a little... strange here."