One Grave Less

girl who couldn’t have been three years old emerged at the edge of the forest. She appeared, as if just birthed by the jungle. She was defenseless and alone. It was a miracle she had survived to find her way to them.
    She was dirty and crying, which wasn’t an unusual occurrence—there were many orphans. But this little girl was different. Diane remembered that as soon as the little girl looked at her, she smiled through her tears. Diane picked her up and carried her into the mission and took care of her for the next two and a half years. The sisters who ran the mission tried to find the little girl’s parents or relatives, but no one came forward. Diane spent all her free time with her and, as time passed and still no relatives were found, decided to adopt her. She gave her the name Ariel Fallon. Then the massacre occurred.
    Tears welled up in Diane’s eyes and spilled onto her cheeks as she remembered Ariel’s raven hair and velvet dark brown eyes. She couldn’t count the number of times she cursed herself for not just taking Ariel out of there to a safe place, even if it meant smuggling her into the United States or . . . or just someplace that was safe. Diane had the connections to do it. But she wanted to do everything legally. That was what she and her team always did—they followed the rule of law. If she had been a good mother, she told herself over and over, she’d have taken her daughter to safety.
    Diane sat down on the bench near the wall and put her head in her hands, regretting all the death that had come from revealing the dictator’s atrocities. She shivered as the memories swept through her mind—Ariel’s bloody little shoes, her CD player that Santos left in the compound playing the child’s favorite songs. So much blood everywhere . . . but few bodies. He had carried most of the bodies away, probably to one of many hidden mass graves.
    She hoped that somehow Ariel had managed to slip away and hide in the Incan ruins or in the jungle. Diane had run through the bush yelling for Ariel, searching deep within the ruins, heedless of the dangers, until her friends had dragged her away.
    Diane lifted her face from her hands, wiping the tears off her cheeks. She looked back up at the facade. This is absurd , she thought. I’ve replayed the horror in my mind a thousand times. I’ve been over it and over it. Why again now? What the hell’s wrong with me? But she knew. It was her engagement to Frank. She was feeling guilty about her upcoming marriage . . . about her happiness. Deep inside her a little demon said she didn’t deserve to be happy, because Ariel was not there to share it with her. Diane stood and took a breath. I have to keep moving forward with my life , she said to herself.
    The daytime lighting switched to night, startling her out of her thoughts. With only floor lights providing illumination, the facade was now bathed in long shadows, adding stark drama to the fake edifice. Diane shivered again.
    When she first heard the moan she thought it was her imagination, or maybe her own tortured voice escaping her in the dark. She stopped a moment and listened. There it was again . . . a soft moan, a whisper, a wheeze . . . a person.
    Diane called security on her cell and asked for the daytime lighting to be turned on again and for an officer to bring a first-aid kit to the Mayan exhibit, just in case. She listened as she walked through the short fake-stone-lined tunnel to the room beyond.
    The room was like a cave—dark, rocky-looking. The false rock and empty glass pedestals that would hold the artifacts stood like shadowy stalagmites. Suddenly the room lit up as the lights came back on, and the analogy was gone. Diane was standing, from all appearances, in a Mayan ruin. The exhibit designers had done an outstanding job.
    The thought popped into her head that the sounds might be of an amorous nature. If that were the case, there was going to be some embarrassment. Diane stood in the entryway looking and listening.
    “Is someone in here?” she called out.
    Quiet. No shuffling sounds of people scrambling for their clothes. Diane walked in, listening, looking behind the soon-to-be-filled pedestals. Maybe she had imagined it.
    But she heard it again—a soft plosive sound that she might not have heard if she had not been listening so intently. She followed the sound to the back of the exhibit room.
    “Is anyone there?” she asked again.
    A groan. Louder this time. Behind a display