Guilt by Leen Elle

appeared to be so mature to me. Looking at him twelve years later, though, I could see the ingenuous innocence and the young boy that he really was. Oh, God, he was too young to die.
    He deserved to live . . . more than I did. I felt like I was wasting my life. And there's the irony of it all, since wasting my life was exactly what I swore to myself that I would never do.
    The obituary mentioned Kain as part of the family that the deceased left behind, but didn't note anything about him beyond stating that he was Corry's brother and a senior at Brickerton High School. I moved my attention back to the charcoal drawing that Corry allowed me to keep. It still looked magnificent to me.
    The scene was so well detailed that I couldn't imagine how he had finished it in only two fifty-five minute class periods. It was a wooded landscape, detailed down to the individual maple trees, the scant undergrowth and the decaying leaves on the ground. The intricate weaving of the tree branches and the scattering of boulders that had most likely been deposited by glaciers eons ago exhibited the care that had been taken by the artist's hand.
    The truly amazing feature about the drawing was something that almost escaped the eyes, but once caught, it held you: the faint suggestion of a gravestone. Barely discernible, it blended itself amongst the leaf covered forest floor, sandwiched between two slopes of a dry gully. Almost invisible, as though the grave was there, and yet not.
    I never really looked at the drawing this intently before. I had shoved it into my portfolio when Corry gave it to me, and didn't want to look at it after he had died. Then, it was forgotten. Studying it now, I felt sure that is was Corry's way of giving the missing girl a marked grave. Her body was never found and the case went cold, so the poor child never received a proper burial. Corry's drawing gave her something she never had in reality. A type of closure.
    Was I the only one who couldn't get closure from Corry?
    I dragged myself away from the gravestone, and looked at the big picture, again. That's when I recognized the landscape. It was an unmistakable place.
    The depiction showed an unusual landmark, a large mound of earth, I knew to be about ten feet high and located deep in the woods beyond the high school. It was surrounded by a steep gully that led to sloping cliffs, which enclosed the mound on three sides like a horseshoe. The whole area was blanketed in dead leaves and shadowed by a thick tangle of deciduous trees.
    The mound itself was long and broad, which gave someone the idea at some point that it looked like the burial mound of a giant, and it had been referred to as The Giant's Grave ever since. A small circular indentation at the top of the mound had been dug out long ago to create a pit that could contain a fire. I called that the Giant's Belly Button, but I doubted that anyone before me ever named it as such.
    My Great Aunt Mimmsy used to tell me stories about her childhood in Brickerton, back when it was still a thriving railroad metropolis. According to her, The Giant's Grave was a favorite Sunday picnic spot for the locals during the late spring and summer months. People would come from miles around after church to socialize and share picnic lunches.
    Great Grand Uncle Willard (who died long before I was born) had a well of mineral water outside the front door of his house, which happened to be near the entrance to the Giant's Trail. He would pump water out as people filled up their jugs, and they'd all trek up to the Grave together. A parade of Sunday revelers.
    The tradition had died out at least two generations ago, much to my disappointment. I'd always wanted to partake in that particular community gathering. Perhaps I romanticized it, but the idea of it seemed so quaint and peaceful in my imagination. The place wasn't much to look at by the time I'd seen it, but I loved to fantasize what it was like to have a Victorian picnic or roaring