It wasn’t quite dark when Valerie slipped from their home and headed towards the grave where Mom had been buried earlier that day.

She knew she was acting crazy, but her desperate desire to hold Mom’s amber beads outweighed petty considerations like sanity.

She had been looking for the beads since Mom had died. Then she saw them during the viewing, hanging on Mom’s corpse- her brother Antoine must have handed them over to the funeral home in the blurred confusion of those final days of disease and death, without consulting her. He did that sort of thing- it drove her mad. But, in his defense, everything had been so busy- Mom had been a beloved, active community member, on all sorts of charity boards, and a constant stream of visitors, well-wishers and waifs had frequented their place, most of whom Valerie and Antoine barely knew.

Valerie was almost certain one of the waifs had taken the beads, probably that scrawny half-wit Charlie. Valerie and Antoine were united in their barely-disguised jealousy of Charlie, Mom’s favourite, who seemed to be everywhere those last days. Valerie pushed away the image of Charlie’s narrow shoulders shaking with loud obnoxious sobs at her funeral, and concentrated on the task at hand.

Valerie’s earliest memories were of tugging the magical glowing orangey-red beads on her Mom’s chest – they smelled of her and her milk, her warm flowing goodness. Mom had prettier and more expensive jewellery but the beads were her constant, her essence of “Mom-ness”. The thought of Charlie or anyone else handling them was driving her mad, and she had been relieved when she actually saw them at the funeral home. She had assumed they would be taken off and sent back- then Antoine told her they were burying Mom in the outfit they had viewed her in. Valerie was angry, but held her tongue.

For now, she knew where the beads were.

After hours of digging in the dark, Valerie’s shovel finally struck the top of the coffin lid. Clearing away the loose earth she readied herself to pry back the lid. She heard a noise, and the grave shook as someone jumped in behind her. Her anger the intrusion swallowed up any fear.

“Charlie! You can’t leave me alone with Mom even here?!”

“I guess I should thank you for doing all the digging.”

“Antoine? What the hell are you doing here?” As they tussled like they used to, both failed to see the coffin lid begin to shift and slid open. The smell of musk and formaldehyde mixed with the scent of fresh earth filled the narrow space.

“Children, my dear children, you know how I hate seeing you fight. Come to me.”

In stunned silence, Valerie and Antoine stared at Mom’s rising corpse. Her arms reached out, and the last thing they ever saw were the amber beads catching the moonlight as she drew them to her bosom.

The earth above began to tumble back into the grave.