In the first few days, Mom and Dad did their best to help Lauren adjust, but Lauren mostly latched on to Sierra. During meals, Sierra felt her sister watching and following her motions like a shadow. Fork down between bites. Napkin on her lap. Second helping of beans . . . whatever Sierra did, Lauren mirrored.
At first it was annoying. It was like Lauren was trying to climb inside her skin. Then, on the second night at dinner, Lauren reached for the ketchup Sierra had just put down, and she knocked Dad’s water over. In seconds, Dad’s plate and half the table were swamped with liquid and melting ice.
Lauren’s hands flew to her face in horror. “I’m so sorry. I . . . I’ll clean it up.” She rose from her chair too fast, knocking it back to the ground behind her.
Dad and Mom were saying it was okay. Dad joked that he liked his burgers extra juicy. But Lauren was too freaked out to hear them. With the cry of a wounded animal, she fled up the stairs.
Mom gave Dad the worried look. “Want me to go?” he asked. “And you do the cleanup.”
“I’ll go.” Sierra stood up, a little surprised by her own initiative.
“That’s okay, honey.” Mom waved her back down, but Sierra was already backing away from the table.
“She’ll talk to me. If you haven’t noticed, she imitates everything I do. I think she looks up to me, even though I’m the little sister.”
She bounded up the stairs, not sure what she would say, though she knew that anything would be better than the drizzled honey that would come from Mom or Dad.
Lauren was in her room facing the open window.
Sierra couldn’t see her face, but she was pretty sure she’d been crying. “Hey. You okay?”
“I can’t do anything right. I can’t even sit at the table and eat dinner like a normal human person.”
“You’re nervous, right?” Sierra said, taking a wild guess. “You probably feel like everyone is watching you, and you’re sort of right. Mom and Dad can be that way, staring. Like they’re picking you apart in their minds. I always yell at Mom when I see that look in her eyes.”
“It’s not their fault. It’s me. I don’t belong here. I don’t know how to act. All these things—sitting at a dinner table or shopping at the store. When you don’t do them for six years, you botch everything up. It’s awkward. Seventeen and I can’t drive or work a cell phone. You said it yourself, I’m a dinosaur.”
Sierra was cocking her head to the side, forming a sympathetic look, when the words sank in. Had she really said that? Well, yeah, maybe, but it had been a joke. Mostly because Sierra couldn’t believe someone wouldn’t know how to use an iPhone.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Sierra said quickly. “And you’ve used a cell phone. You had one with you when you were kidnapped.”
“Not a smart phone! It was a stupid phone.” Lauren’s irritation was showing. “A stupid phone for a stupid girl.”
“Nobody thinks you’re stupid.” Sierra stood next to her sister, staring out at the treetops illuminated light green by the evening sun. This was the season of long days, sunlight from six in the morning to after ten at night. Sierra loved the sun. She had already decided that she would only apply to colleges in sunny places.
The sight of the tall trees and the talk of cell phones made her think of the Tillamook forest. “I remember when the police followed the beacon to your cell phone. Do you know they traced it to the Tillamook forest?”
“Yeah.” Lauren sighed. “We stopped there for a bathroom break, and when Kevin wasn’t looking I gave it a toss with all my might. I didn’t realize we were already way off the main path. Mom said it took days to find it.”
“That was really smart of you to leave a clue. Everyone said so. The police said you did the right thing.” She swayed against her sister, giving her a bump with her shoulder. “That’s how smart you really are. So don’t beat yourself up about the little things.”
“How do you separate the little things from the big things?” Lauren asked slowly.
That was when it clicked, when Sierra realized that her sister really, really needed her. “Easy. You just ask me.”
Chapter 38
From Lauren’s Journal
Crazy thoughts
Ever since I found out Mac is alive, I can’t sleep at night. Crazy, crazy me. As soon as my head hits the pillow my thoughts go to her, and I can’t sleep. It’s like I can’t rest until everything is right with her, and I know it’s not.
I am so mad at Kevin for taking her away from me. It’s like he stole my life a second time when he took Mac away. I don’t understand why he would do that to her or to me.
Last night, my window shade looked sort of bright. When I opened it up, I saw it was lit by the moon—a big orange moon with the laughing man’s face. I remembered looking up at the moon through that skylight in the beach house laundry room, just after I had been taken from my mom. Mac is a lot younger than me, but last night I was thinking the same thoughts of years ago.
Is she looking at the moon now? Same moon, same stars.
What if Mac is being held in a house near here, just like I was? What if she’s back at the compound? I mean, it’s possible she would find her way back there if she got away from whoever has her. She’s almost four. Is it really possible? I don’t know! I have to go check the compound.
I miss the tent I used to sleep in. It was small but cozy. Mom says we can get this drapery thing from Ikea that will hang over my bed. It’s nice of her to try and help, but a pink net is not a tent.
Isn’t it weird that Sierra is now about the same age I was when Kevin snatched me away? If I was still eleven, I could go to school with Sierra and have a normal high school experience. I know that’s trying to change reality, but that’s why I called this section crazy thoughts.
I can’t do it! I can’t sleep alone in my old bedroom. It’s too lonely at night, too quiet, and I keep wondering about Mac. I started going into Sierra’s room to sleep on the floor, and she caught me. But she didn’t seem mad. She said I could sleep in the bed with her. I just want to be close to someone else. The soothing sound of her breathing reminds me of having Mac nearby at night. When I hear the breathing sounds, I can almost trick myself into believing that everything is okay. Almost.
Chapter 39
The first few nights after Lauren’s return, Dan had barely slept. Like a zombie, he’d risen from bed in the middle of the night and plodded downstairs to check door locks and windows. As if that would ward off further evil in his daughter’s life. As if she had been stolen in the night from her crib instead of snatched while walking down the street.
“If you want to be really safe, you’ll move to another house,” one of the guys at work had warned him. “Your place has been on the news a hundred times. People know it. It only takes one crazy copy-catter to lock on to your house and come after Lauren. I’d get out of that house. Get the hell out of Mirror Lake. Go somewhere out east where no one can find you.”
The air had locked in Dan’s lungs at the man’s insinuation. Was he really telling Dan to turn his family into fugitives on the run because of the existence of evil in the world?
“Yeah,” Sully had joined in, sliding a sponge over the table in the firehouse break room. “You can’t be too safe.” He winked at Dan. “You could even be targeted by aliens with two beauties like that. Better lock the girls in the house. Don’t ever let ’em out.”
“I’m just saying, you can’t be too safe,” Trevor Van Allen said, with a scowl for Sully.
Later, Dan and Sully had both expressed relief that Van Allen usually worked an opposite shift. “That kind of careful, I can live without,” Sully had said, though the underlying message was one Dan had heard over and again. You could never be too safe. But you couldn’t live in a bubble either, and the therapist’s warning on that point had been clear. Lauren had been held in tight spaces, but over time she had come to enjoy the open space of the compound. Keeping her penned up in the house was not an option.
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So Dan checked the windows and doors and peeked into the girls’ rooms after they were asleep at night. When he’d checked on Lauren her second night home, he’d nearly had a heart attack at the sight of the empty bed.
“Holy crap,” he breathed.
He checked the floors and closets. The window was cracked open, but the screen was intact. Hoping he’d missed her slipping downstairs for a snack, he began a search through the house.
Thank God he didn’t have to look for long. Lauren was in Sierra’s room, a small tangle of comforter and pillow on the deep pile carpet between the bed and the window.
His pulse slowed as he crept into the room. Sierra was out like a light, but Lauren’s head turned to follow him as he approached.
He squatted down and whispered: “Hey, I’ve been looking for you.”
“I can’t sleep,” she said softly, her hair silver in the dim light from the hallway. “I can’t stop worrying about Mac, and being in here with Sierra, hearing her breathing, it reminds me of sleeping with Mac.”
She looked so small in the fat comforter, small and vulnerable. He wanted to take her in his arms and rock her like a baby and tell her she would always be safe, but of course, he couldn’t.
He sat down on the rug and leaned close. “You know what my mom used to tell me? Never worry alone.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“That you should share your problems with someone who cares.” Dan noticed a box on the floor beside Lauren’s pillow. A box of Pop-Tarts. Paula had told them that Lauren still felt the need to keep a stash of food nearby, though she rarely tapped into it at night.
“I bet you forgot that I make a pretty good ice cream sundae,” he said quietly. “Should we go down and raid the kitchen?”
She popped up to her knees. “Sure.”
Down in the kitchen, the ice cream was like a brick. As Dan set it out to thaw and assembled sundae fixings, he got her talking about Mac. Dan realized that there were many topics he could not discuss with her, things that had happened to her that he couldn’t bear to think about. Most people thought he was remarkably easygoing about the whole ordeal, but Rachel understood. She knew that Dan could keep moving ahead and smooth over the surface wounds as long as he was spared the horrific details of the trauma. The same went for Mac; he had not been able to let his mind go there when he’d thought the little girl was dead. But now . . . now he faced the prospect of meeting his first grandchild with curiosity and anticipation.
Lauren described Mac as cheerful and industrious. “She could make a game out of a handful of pebbles, and she had a great vocabulary.” Lauren told the story of how, one spring evening, she lifted Mac out of the slop sink where she’d bathed the little girl. “It was chilly that night, and she had goose bumps on her arms. She shivered and started poking at the little bumps, really upset about them. She asked if she had a disease, and I said no, that it was just goose bumps. She shook her head, insisting that it was impossible. ‘But Mama, I didn’t bump into a goose!’ ”
Dan chuckled as he chiseled away at the edges of the ice cream. “Makes perfect sense to me.”
“Even before she had her words, I knew she was smart,” Lauren said as she snitched a chocolate chip from the sack. “When she was really little, not even two, I think, I was doing a project with old crayons. Kevin found a bucket of them somewhere. I was melting the crayons down to paint them onto the wood, and Mac kept taking a blue crayon and trying to put it in her mouth. I took it away, over and over again. Finally, I told her to stop putting it in her mouth because the crayon wouldn’t taste good. She said, ‘Okay, Mama.” And then she picked up a yellow crayon and said, ‘This color taste better?’ ”
They laughed together, the buzz of connection filling the kitchen.
“She sounds like a great kid,” Dan said. “I know it’s hard to think of her out there, but trust me, the worry thing can zap your energy. I’m not saying you can’t worry about Mac, but you need to take care of yourself. Food and sleep, they’re important for a kid your age.”
“But Dad, I can’t forget about her, not for one minute.” Lauren folded a napkin into tiny strips. “When I was gone, you and Mom didn’t forget about me. I know that now. I saw the articles and reports about the searches you organized and all that you did. It’s my turn now. I need to look for Mac.”
Dan paused and put the scoop down. “Lauren, we can’t go public with this search.”
“I know that. But I was thinking we should go back to the compound.”
Dan turned to the sink to rinse the scoop. That place had sickened him, knowing what had transpired there. The perversion. The violation. The pain. “Why would you want to go there?”
“I think, if Mac got away from these people, that’s where she would go.”
“Geez, Lauren. She’s not even four. How would she even get there?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers, Dad, but that’s where I need to start looking. It’s the only place I can think of. Will you and Mom help me?”
Looking up at the young woman seated across the counter, her amber eyes confident, he felt a mixture of pride and intense wariness. It was a brave, bold move for Lauren to return to the compound, but shouldn’t he be the one to protect her from the unnecessary torture of an ordeal like that?
In the end, the supportive father won out. “Of course, we’ll help you. I’ve actually been thinking about that place. I got a call from Hank, and the lady who owns it, Vera Hawkins, she wants to tear it down.”
Lauren’s eyes grew wide. “Why would she do that?”
“Too many rubberneckers sneaking back there. There’ve been a lot of pictures of Green Spring Farm in the media. It’s giving her place a bad reputation. She wants to put an end to the negative attraction out there. She was kind enough to ask if we want to keep any of the walls—your artwork.”
Lauren frowned. “What do you think we should do?”
“I don’t know.” He had wanted to ask Lauren that question, but he hadn’t wanted to bring up that hellhole. Now he sprayed a swirl of whipped cream on one sundae and slid it over to her. “But don’t worry about it. I don’t want to add to your list of worries.”
“Thanks, Dad. I’ll think about the artwork.”
He nodded. “You know, there’s this thing called the serenity prayer. Have you ever heard of it?” When she shook her head, he tried to think of it. “I can’t remember how it goes.” He picked up his phone and searched for it. “Here it is. ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”
She sucked on a spoonful of ice cream. “It sounds simple when you put it that way.”
“It is simple.” He sprayed a swirl of whipped cream on a sundae. “But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s like trying to get a scoop of rock-hard ice cream. You saw how that worked. You scrape away at the edges and let it melt a little. Simple, but not easy. Persistence and patience.”
Chapter 40
From Lauren’s Journal
My heart is bursting with love for Mac! I’m glad people are asking about her now, and suddenly I’m remembering lots of stories about little things she did and said. I can see her holding her magic shell to her ear and telling me the stories that came out of it. And the way she used to sing along with the TV, with Bear and Elmo. But one thing I can’t talk about is those last few days I had her with me. She was so sick!
It started as a little cold—that’s what I thought. She told me her nose “was leaking.” That was what she called a runny nose. But then she started coughing, and the cough hung on. Sometimes she would cough for long spells, and when she breathed in there was that quacky sound, like her lungs were collapsing. I started to press Kevin to get her to a hospital, but as Mac started getting really sick, hot with fever and turning purple during her spells, I became sick, too.
Through my fever, I recall my little girl seized with coughing,
tears on her cheeks. “The crows! Stop the crows!” she kept crying. Mac and I spent a lot of time gardening, and it was her job to chase the crows from pecking away at our seed. When I asked her what she was saying, she said, “The crows are pecking on my heart.” I guess there was a terrible pain in her chest from the cough.
Sometimes when I close my eyes, I see her little face, cheeks tinged with purple as she rides out the cough.
And when it finally subsides, she grabs at me, begging me to make it stop. “The crows!”
And that’s the last thing I remember her saying.
“I can’t sleep.” Sierra flopped over in bed beside Lauren.
Ever since Sierra had nearly tripped over Lauren, sleeping on the floor beside her bed, the younger girl had told her she could sleep in her room. “Mom and Dad got me this double bed for sleepovers,” Sierra had explained. “So, you can sleep over.” Sierra was trying hard to be nice to her; Lauren could see that, and she was glad to have a sister here to keep her from being the only “child” in the house. Living with two parents was like sitting in a glass case, on display all the time.
“Maybe we should sing,” Sierra said. “What songs do you remember?”
“I don’t know.” Lauren didn’t lift her head from the pillow. She didn’t want to admit that she would never, ever forget the “Tell Me Why” song with its beautiful three-part harmony. She had taught it to Mac, without the harmonies, and she promised herself she wouldn’t sing it again until Mac could join in.
With a sigh, Sierra rolled out of bed and lifted the blind. There was that moon, a sliver of light in the inky sky.
“This always happens to me in summer. I sleep too late, and then I want to stay up late, and Mom and Dad give me a curfew.”
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