Page 31 of In Her Mind

“Are those graves?” Jake’s tone was suddenly serious.

“Almost sure of it,” Jenna replied, recalling the vivid images from her dream—the dirt freshly turned, the hollow beneath the earth awaiting its secrets to be buried. “I have a shovel in the car. We could start digging...”

“Whoa, hold up,” Jake cautioned, placing a hand on her shoulder. “We can’t just start unearthing graves, Jenna. There are protocols.”

“You’re right,” she conceded, embarrassment tinging her cheeks. Her impulsive desire to excavate clashed with the reality of their duty to uphold the law. “But I do know how to go about that.”

Pulling out her cellphone, Jenna’s fingers worked quickly, capturing the morbid tableau before her with the camera. Then she scrolled through her contacts and entered the Genesius County Coroner’s office phone number.

“Melissa, it’s Jenna Graves,” she said tersely when the call connected with the coroner herself. “We’ve got something odd out here in the woods near the Freeport Road crossing—looks like two old unmarked graves.”

“You think someone is buried out there?” Dr. Melissa Stark’s voice held both concern and professional curiosity. “Can you send photos?”

“Sending them now,” Jenna replied, her thumb already hovering over the “send” button of the text message loaded with ominous pictures.

After a few moments, Melissa spoke again. “Alright, Jenna, they do look like graves. I need to sort out the legalities—you know, the formalities involved with disinterring unmarked graves.”

“If bodies are actually buried there, it could be an urgent connection to a current investigation,” Jenna told her. “That’s why I’m calling you instead of just filing a report.”

“In that case, my team and I will get right on it,” Melissa assured her with calm efficiency. “Just give me an hour. If it’s what you think, we should be able to start the process of trying to identify them right away.”

“Thanks, Melissa. See you soon.” Jenna ended the call. She could always count on Melissa for swift action when it was needed, no questions asked—a trait that had fortified their friendship over the years.

She felt a surge of anticipation; these graves in the woods might just be the break they needed in Amber Stevens’ case—or they might open up an entirely new mystery. But since they had appeared in her dream, she felt confident in following up on them.

“An hour, huh?” Jake commented. Then he suggested, “Breakfast? We got up and out awfully early, and I could use some more coffee.”

“Sounds good,” Jenna replied, though her thoughts were elsewhere. “The truck stop is just down the road. They have good food.”

She and Jake walked along Freeport Road, the stillness of the morning in Trentville giving way to the muffled sounds of Hank’s Derby truck stop. The place was a time capsule, a slice of Americana with its neon sign flickering even as they sky brightened.

They settled into a booth by a window, vinyl squeaking beneath them. The waitress, a middle-aged woman with an apron that had seen better days, brought coffee, then took their orders and disappeared behind the counter.

“Tell me about the dream, Jenna,” Jake said, leaning forward, his elbows resting on the tabletop. His eyes searchedhers, seeking to understand what lay beyond their emerald depths.

Jenna wrapped her hands around the warmth of her coffee mug, grounding herself. She recounted the vision, starting with the oak tree and the carving hand. “It was the same tree, but the initials carved into the wood kept changing, The last time I saw were just like they are now, SV + NS.”

“So those initials—they didn’t mean anything to you?” Jake asked, sipping his coffee, his brow furrowed.

“Not yet.” Jenna shook her head slightly, her chestnut hair swaying. “But then there was a woman— one I thought could be Amber Stevens when she appeared in my last dream.”

“Could be? Or is?” Jake pressed a note of urgency in his tone.

“That’s where things get complicated.” Jenna paused, her gaze unfocused as if she were seeing through the diner walls and back to the dream landscape. The clink of cutlery and the smell of frying bacon filtered through the air as she pieced together fragments of her visions with Amber’s case and the graves they had found. As she recounted the details of her dream, the fog in her memory began to dissipate, allowing her to interpret features with greater clarity.

“Then,” she continued, “another woman appeared beside the one I had thought was our missing girl Amber.”

Jake’s hand paused mid-air, his coffee cup an inch from his lips. “Another one?”

“Identical almost, in a haunting way. But as the mist cleared, it was obvious—neither of them was actually Amber.”

“Do you think that could mean that Amber is still alive?” he ventured.

“Perhaps,” she conceded. “In my dream, I followed those two women into the woods.” She gestured vaguely with her hand, mimicking the motion of pushing through unseen branches.“They led me to that clearing where the ground was disturbed—two graves, freshly dug. The same ones we saw today.”

Jake set down his cup with a soft clink against the slick tabletop, his expression somber yet alert. “In your dream, you saw graves when they were new? Before anyone was buried there?”

Jenna nodded, her mind’s eye retracing the steps through the dream’s wooded labyrinth. “We returned to the tree afterward. That’s when I saw it—the pruning scar was different. It bore initials: SV + NS. Carved deeply, like they were meant to endure time itself.”

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