And Then She Was Gone

by Noonan, Rosalind

  “Well, we finally got a flat screen,” Sierra said.

  “Finally,” Dan said quietly. “We couldn’t stand another minute watching that old box.”

  “Dad, it was awful and you know it. The new one’s not even that big, but it’s HD. It’s in here.”

  Lauren popped the rest of the cookie into her mouth as she followed her sister into the den. The TV room seemed smaller than she remembered, as did the living room and the dining room with its six wooden chairs that once had seemed hulking and heavy.

  Without fanfare Sierra moved the house tour upstairs, showing off her room, recently painted apple green with her name in carved pink letters on the main wall. There was a poster of a boy singer with droopy pants and a sweet smile, and her bedspread was a patchwork of dark green, white, and pink.

  “That’s a pretty quilt,” Lauren said.

  “And I made the bed in your honor.” She looked up at Rachel. “Mom made us clean up for you.”

  “I hardly think pulling the quilt over the pillow constitutes cleaning. And your room looks very nice with your clothes off the floor.”

  “Do you want to see your room?” Dan asked Lauren. “Your mom made sure that no one messed with it while you were gone.”

  Rachel’s smile was tight but full of hope as Lauren passed her and followed Dan down the hall. The pink and beige of her old room felt like the inside of a candy store at first, but as she paused, then crossed to the single bed and sat on the edge, the cocoon of memories closed around her.

  How she had longed to return to this room!

  She used to feel so cozy there. As promised, all her things had been left as they were, giving the room the eerie sense of a person missing not for six years but only six days. Her box of broken charcoals. The shelves containing very rough statues she had sculpted in a ceramics class: a stiff horse, a circular pile of snake, a duck without feet. There was an open tin of colored pencils—special pencils with colors that came alive when you brushed them with water.

  Even her stuffed toy Mr. Toad was there, resting on the bed. She picked it up, immediately thinking that Mac would have enjoyed the ugly creature with the huge grin and bulgy eyes. “Do you remember teasing me about Mr. Toad?” she asked Dan. “You used to say that someday I would kiss him and turn him into a prince.”

  Dan rolled his eyes. “Was I that corny?”

  She nodded. “And I would answer that I didn’t want a stuffed prince sitting on my bed.”

  “Oh, that sounds like me.” Chuckling, Dan moved next to Rachel and put his arm around her.

  Lauren closed in on the shell-pink wall where her artwork seemed silly and whimsical. The art of a child. A dragon with glittering scales. A winged horse. A poster Lauren had made for a contest, in which it won first prize. It showed a silhouetted girl leaping through the air, and inside the silhouette, where her heart would be, was a glowing flame. She ran her fingers over the caption: A Single, Beautiful Light. It was something her mother had told her about.

  “Do you remember this?” She turned to Rachel. “You used to say that every person has their own light inside them, and that it was up to you to learn how to let your light shine.”

  “That’s right. A single, beautiful light.”

  “I used to wonder what Kevin’s was.” At the mention of her abductor, a chill descended over the room, but Lauren plodded on. “Even though he was nice to me sometimes, it was a false sweetness. Like he was wearing a mask, and that mask could come off in an instant.”

  “We should have taught you to be more on guard,” Dan said.

  “I’m so sorry, honey.” Rachel stepped forward, but Lauren moved away before her mother could touch her. She didn’t want pity pats or gushing sympathy. She wanted them to face the truth, face the future. “I’ve learned that there are some bad people in the world,” Rachel said. “Bad apples. I’m so sorry that I didn’t prepare you for that, but I thought we could protect you, at least until you were older. I was wrong, and I’m so sorry.”

  Lauren wondered if she would ever feel safe and happy again, the way she did when she lived in this room. She was afraid that Kevin had taken that away from her. He had robbed her of happiness, and there was nothing she could do but mourn the shell of her past, like a wimpy little hermit crab without a home.

  The white dresser seemed impossibly small. Its crystal knobs belonged in a dollhouse or a little princess’s room. When Lauren gripped the small knob and pulled open a dresser drawer, she found that it was stuffed with T-shirts, just the way she had left it.

  “Are these my old clothes?”

  Rachel nodded. “Just as you left them.”

  She stared at the neatly folded shirts, mostly white, with some pink and black mixed in. “I didn’t think my room would exist anymore. I thought you would have changed the furniture or maybe moved. Kevin told me you moved.”

  “Honestly, the idea of moving did come up,” Dan admitted. “A therapist told us that it might be good to start fresh in a new house, and I thought we should give it a try. But these gals wouldn’t consider it.”

  “I was worried that you would come to the door and find us gone,” Sierra said.

  “And your mom put her foot down,” Dan added. “She was the one who preserved everything in this room, keeping it intact.

  “She wouldn’t even let Grandma sleep in here when she visited,” Sierra said.

  Lauren looked to her mother, who was suddenly quiet. Rachel hadn’t given up. None of them had.

  Lauren plucked a T-shirt from the drawer and held it up to herself. It seemed like a doll’s shirt against her small breasts.

  “That’s way too small now!” Sierra scoffed.

  Of course it was. Lauren was not the person she used to be. And she was not sure if the person she had become belonged here in this house.

  “None of this is going to fit.”

  As if reading her mind, Rachel grabbed an armful of T-shirts from the drawer and tossed them onto the floor. “We’ll make space. We’ll adjust to the new you. Whatever you need, honey. Whatever it takes to welcome you home.”

  “Hold on a second, I’ve got something.” Sierra ran out the door and returned with a tie-dyed T-shirt. “This’ll fit you, right?”

  Lauren held it up to her chest and smiled when she noticed the heart shape at the center. “It’s cute.”

  “We got it for you,” Sierra said. “But it’s not like a trap gift. You don’t have to move back here just because you want the T-shirt.”

  “Sierra . . . ,” Rachel sounded annoyed.

  “Well, it’s true.” Hands on her hips, Sierra faced her mother. “Can’t you tell she’s still uncomfortable here? She’s not ready to come home.”

  Thank you, thank you, little sister. Lauren held the shirt to her face, taking in the oddly familiar scent of incense.

  “Lauren?” Dan touched her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Lauren said, instantly thinking that Yoda would know she was lying. “I . . . I just need to go now.”

  Dan took a set of keys down from a rack in the kitchen. “I’ll drive you back to the lake house.”

  “Thanks,” Lauren said, “for everything.”

  On the way out, she avoided meeting Rachel’s eyes, not wanting to see the disappointment there. Horses weren’t the only creatures that could see into the soul.

  PART 3

  Jump Up Behind Me

  Chapter 31

  Sloping green hills, bold blue skies, a fringe of white-capped mountains, and sunshine that could blow you out of bed in the morning—this was the sort of summer Dan O’Neil remembered from growing up in Oregon. He sat on the steps of the ranch gazebo and watched his daughters straddle the post-and-beam fence to lure the horses closer. Lauren was amazingly agile in her bright walking cast, but then she’d had a few weeks to get used to it.

  “Come here!” Sierra waved her arms wide, as if flagging in a jumbo jet. “Over here, you big lug.”

  “His name is S
ocks, and he’s kind of sensitive because he was in a car accident. You’ll be able to see his scars when he turns around.” Lauren leaned over the fence, beckoning with her sad smile. “Here, boy.”

  How could a horse resist?

  But the brown horse with white legs kept his wide posterior facing them, swatting flies with his tail. There must have been some hay or oats to chomp on in the lean-to.

  The girls turned their attention to two other horses that seemed to be contemplating life in the corner of the paddock. An enormous tan horse that seemed to be shadowed by a brown and white pony.

  “Penny! Here, Penny!” Lauren called. “Why isn’t she coming?”

  “How do you know all their names?” Sierra asked.

  “Because I’ve been working with them, and they all have personalities, like people. But I don’t know why they’re not coming over.”

  The girls couldn’t attract the horses, so they decided to skirt around the paddock fence to get closer. Dan was amused to see the two of them working together on this: Lauren the practical one with some information about the horses, and Sierra the instigator who needed to make a connection now.

  This was Lauren’s choice—family therapy in the form of equine-assisted therapy. Wynonna had gone over the history and goals when he and Rachel met with her. Dan could see she was a person who believed in her horses and her program.

  “Equine therapy has been effective in helping trauma victims and seniors, and most recently I’ve had success working with veterans. The goal is to create a bond between the client and the horse. Since horses are prey animals, they’re very sensitive to human behavior and intentions. There’s a certain immeasurable ‘feel-good’ sensation a lot of our clients report when they learn how to care for and handle a horse. When clients learn to understand and guide a horse, they, in turn, learn to understand and guide themselves.” The therapist had explained that learning to ride was not Lauren’s chief goal; the focus was on learning to communicate with the horse, and eventually with others.

  Dan knew jack about horses, but he was glad his daughter had picked Spirit Ranch. Anything out in the open air, even air tinged with horse dung and sweet hay, was preferable to being stuck in an office with pallid gray walls and a leather sofa as slick as a black hole. Dan had never liked therapy. To start with, an office was a stifling environment for him—one of the big reasons he’d chosen his profession as a firefighter. Being outdoors was key. And Dan didn’t like therapists on principle. If a person had one friend they could trust, they shouldn’t need to dish out cash to spill their troubles to a stranger, should they? He trusted Rachel with his life. And his friends Sully and Tuna were great sounding boards for issues that Rachel wasn’t inclined to understand.

  But this therapy was designed to get Lauren back on her feet. To heal her heart. To help the family learn how to love and support her. To launch her back into the world that she’d missed during some crucial growing-up years. Yeah, his attitude about therapy was shifting. Thank God for Wynonna Eagleson and this amazing ranch. Sitting here on the steps, gazing off at the glacier peak of Mount Hood, he could find his own piece of serenity.

  Two horses with riders appeared at the edge of a field of tall-grass wildflowers. Dan recognized one as his wife. Rachel had come out earlier to meet with Wynonna, and apparently their session had turned into a horseback ride. Dan’s wife had been a horse girl back in New Jersey; though she’d never owned a horse, she’d traded off grooming and stall-mucking for the chance to ride. So that was probably good—two women riding together. He didn’t know much about horse etiquette or female bonding, but being a firefighter, he understood how adventure bonded people together. That was one of the distressing aftermaths of Lauren’s captivity—the way she defended Hawkins from time to time. It made him sick to think of his daughter forming an emotional attachment to that monster, but it had happened. And now, it was time to deal with it—even if that meant getting up on a honking big Budweiser Clydesdale and riding down the main street of Mirror Lake.

  At the edge of the corral, Rachel and Wynonna dismounted and handed the horses over to one of the hands. When the dark-haired boy spoke to his mother and led the two horses back to the barn, Dan recognized him as one of Wynonna’s teenage sons, working on the ranch for the summer. With family security and privacy a priority, the therapist had made it a point to introduce the O’Neils to all the ranch staff, from the horse handlers to the cleaning lady. Dan had gotten a solid hit off Wynonna’s husband, Vic, and their sons, though the teenage boys, Jazz and Chance, were a little too good-looking for his comfort. When he’d noticed Sierra’s wobbly smile, it was a reminder that those years of heartache and hormones were right on his doorstep.

  “Hey, Dan.” Wynonna tipped her Stetson back. “I’m thinking we’ll start inside the round corral, if you want to head on down.”

  He rose from the steps, thinking that this outdoor therapy might be better than their last vacation at Disneyland. Definitely shorter lines.

  The family looked like a scrappy circle of cowboys in their straw hats as they gathered round Wynonna listening to her instructions.

  “We’ll start simple. I want each of you to catch one of the horses here and slip a halter on.” She pointed to the leather strappy things sitting on the fence.

  “Something tells me it sounds easier than it looks,” Dan said.

  Wynonna’s smile seemed to hold mystery. “Sometimes.”

  “Do the horses bite?” Sierra asked.

  “Some of them might snap if they think you have a treat for them, so don’t tease them. But these horses are gentle. Lauren, do you remember the names of these four in the corral?”

  “There’s Penny, the pony, and Flicker. Hero is the chocolate brown stallion, and the brown horse with white socks is Socks, of course.” Lauren’s eyes were bright with enthusiasm.

  “Good. So . . . ,” Wynonna gestured toward the open pen. “Have at it.”

  As he grabbed a halter with the others, Dan assessed the horses, all four of them now hanging around the lean-to. He would have liked to go after the smaller pony, but being the only man in the group he felt obliged to take on a bigger challenge.

  He swallowed, taking the measure of the three taller horses.

  “Can I have Penny?” Sierra asked as the four of them crossed the corral. “I’m the smallest one here, and so is she.”

  “You can try,” Lauren said. “But sometimes the horse chooses you.”

  Words of wisdom, Dan thought, as the four horses stirred and began to scatter at their approach. The big tan horse, Flicker, loped off to the back of the pen, and Penny followed, as if trailing her mama. That drew the two girls away in pursuit.

  “I’ll give you twenty bucks if you catch and halter my horse for me,” he muttered to his wife.

  Rachel’s chuckle eased his worries. “Don’t be a big baby. You got this, O’Neil.”

  It turned out she was right, but only because his horse was a pushover. He later learned that Socks, the horse he chose, was one of the most docile of the group, having been injured in a car accident and nurtured back to health by Wynonna’s family. The horse waited patiently, even willingly, as Dan slipped the halter over its head, realized it was upside down, and then got it right on the second try.

  “Piece of cake,” he said as he finished with the last buckle.

  Rachel and Sierra also had quick success, but the exercise wasn’t so easy for Lauren, who had trouble capturing Flicker, the alpha horse of the herd. Every time Lauren approached her, the mare turned and scampered away.

  Dan felt a pang of regret that Lauren had ended up with the difficult horse; hadn’t she dealt with enough difficulties in her young life?

  Sierra tried to help by chasing Flicker toward Lauren, but the horse was far too quick and smart to fall for that one. Lauren’s face was ruddy, her hands balled in fists of frustration.

  “Why don’t you take my horse?” Dan called over. “I’ll do a trade with you.”


  “I can’t do that. I’m not a quitter. I just need to get this halter on Flicker.”

  The corral was quiet for a moment as the breeze blew up red dust and helplessness.

  “Why don’t you play hard to get?” Rachel suggested. “Get close and turn your back on her. That might pique her interest.”

  “Yeah, Mom.” Sierra was skeptical. “Or maybe she’ll ignore her for a few hours.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Dan said. The friction between Sierra and Rachel could scrape at his patience, but he understood the source. Sierra was pushing for independence but also feeling abandoned by Rachel’s obsession with Lauren’s recovery. But wasn’t this exercise about showing mutual support?

  “Okay.” Lauren took a shaky breath and turned away from the big tan horse. “Okay, Flicker. I’m not going to chase you anymore. You’ve got to come to me.” She folded her arms and frowned. “I can’t believe I can’t even get a halter on a horse. I’ve been here a lot more times than you guys. I should know how to do this by now.”

  “But you’re just learning,” Sierra said as she patted the pony’s neck. “We all are. And you know lots more about the horses than we do.”

  “But I can’t even catch a horse.” Lauren sniffed and scratched at her cheek. Was she wiping a tear?

  Dan shot a look of concern at his wife, who winced. This was all going south; he had to stop it, now.

  Just then Flicker stirred and swept her head toward Lauren, as if just noticing her.

  “Hold still,” Rachel said. “Looks like you’ve caught her interest.”

  They stood stock still and expectant in the midday sun. A light breeze rattled the back of Dan’s shirt as Flicker inched closer to Lauren.

  “Getting closer . . . ,” he narrated, “closer . . .”

  At last, the mare lowered its head in submission and nuzzled Lauren’s back.

  “Who is that?” Lauren asked, turning slowly until she was staring into one eye of the big horse. “Was that a sympathy nudge, or do you like to be courted?”