Over Her Head

by Shelley Bates

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2007 by Shelley Bates

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  FaithWords

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  First eBook Edition: June 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56216-4

  Praise forPocketful of Pearls

  “Absorbing and poignant. With a deft hand, Bates examines how our Lord’s unfailing grace can set even the most broken spirits free.”

  —Deborah Bedford, author of Remember Me

  “This is a book that resonates in the heart. I literally couldn’t put it down.”

  —Ciji Ware, bestselling author of A Light on the Veranda and Island of the Swans

  Praise forA Sounding Brass

  “Readers will appreciate that things are a little topsy-turvy, with spiritual insights coming from unexpected places.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A Sounding Brass grabbed me on page one . . . I couldn’t put it down. A great read for a rainy day or any day.”

  —Lyn Cote, author of the Women of Ivy Manor series

  For the kids in my life: Kailey, Derrik, Spencer, Joshua, and Sarah

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  Also by Shelley Bates

  Acknowledgments

  First of all, my thanks go to my teenage informants, Kailey Senft and Anna Lekomtseva, whose honesty and humor were a gift as they reminded me of what it was like to be fourteen.

  Thanks go to Debrah Williamson, Diana Duncan, Tina Novinski, and Catherine Mulvany, for their help with nailing the story down.

  Thank you to Captain Robert Dixon and to Lieutenant Chris Forrester of the Santa Clara County Coroner’s Office, for all the information and the tour of the facility on a busy Monday morning . . . a tour that included thirteen bodies and a homicide.

  Thank you to Angelique Bagley, Marriage and Family Therapist, who gave me all the information I needed about post-traumatic stress syndrome and how it would affect a teenager in Anna Hale’s situation.

  Thank you to Jennifer Jackson, my agent, and Anne Goldsmith, my editor at FaithWords, both of whom encourage me to “go deeper.”

  As always, love and thanks go to my parents, Dan and Carol, who are a constant source of joy as they discover a new world, and to my husband, Jeff, who makes it possible for me to write and not cook.

  And lastly, my respect and thanks go to R.V., who will never know how much her life has touched mine. The events of this book, while they were inspired by her reality, are entirely fictional.

  I love to hear from readers. You can visit me on my Web site, http://www.shelleybates.com, or drop me a note at shelley@shelleybates.com.

  If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us:

  Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us:

  Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul:

  Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.

  —PSALM 124:2-5 (KJV)

  Chapter One

  Even in November, when the trees were skeletal and the ground covered in dead leaves and puddles, the jogging trail by the river was still Laurie Hale’s favorite place to run. Not that she was wild about physical fitness—it was just that something had to be done about an hourglass figure that had drooped into more of a pear shape. She simply could not go up to a size sixteen on her next trip to the mall, and that was final.

  There are barriers in every woman’s life beyond which she will not go, and a size sixteen was Laurie’s.

  Besides, jogging got her out of the house. Going to Curves would do the same, but she’d still be in a gym with people she knew from church and Anna’s and Tim’s schools. What Laurie liked best about jogging by the river was simply that she was alone. With a ten-year-old son and a fourteen-year-old daughter, who could blame her for taking extreme measures in order to get a little peace and quiet?

  So what if her sweats were a shrunken pair of her husband Colin’s and her shoes were from the local discount store? No one was out here at seven thirty on a winter morning. The executive types had already come and gone, taking the commuter train from the Glendale station into Pittsburgh and leaving the trails to the winter birds, squirrels, and slightly chunky moms.

  Laurie’s legs were beginning to ache at the end of her mile. She wasn’t much of a goal setter, but if she had to set one, it would be getting back to the parking lot without keeling over and dying of oxygen deprivation. She’d nearly reached the halfway point where she turned around—where the Susquanny River widened a little and a sandbar had built up. Often the herons would gather there to pick over what the river had tossed up, or to spear minnows on their way past in the shallows. The kids had loved to play there in the summer. Someone had tied a rope swing into a tree, and they’d drop off it into the deep pool scooped out close to the bank.

  But now the swing was as frozen and lifeless as the tree that supported it, waiting for the sun and the return of the children.

  There must have been some high water recently. A log had washed up onto the sandbar, and crows were walking around it like car salesmen sizing up a new deal. There were clothes draped over it, too. Good grief. Surely someone hasn’t been swimming? It had to be forty-five degrees out there.

  Laurie jogged a little closer, taking one of the offshoot trails closer to the bank. Maybe it wasn’t a log, after all. Maybe someone had tossed a bag of old clothes off the bridge instead of taking them to the Salvation Army like normal people did. But weren’t those branches sticking out? And was that an animal trapped under it? With brown fur?

  The river trail, though beautiful and scenic, didn’t change much. That was why Laurie liked it. She didn’t have to watch out for hazards because she knew where they all were, and she could pay attention to seasonal changes in the scenery without worrying about falling flat on her face.

  So anything different meant a little investigation was in order. Maybe there would be identifying marks among the clothes to tell her who the litterbug was. She’d march right down to the Glendale sheriff’s office and wake up her cousin Nick or one of the other—

  Good heavens.

  Laurie slid down the bank and landed upright by sheer luck. She squinted against the sparkle of the sun on the water and focused on the pile on the sandbar.

  Not fur. Hair. Dark brown, short-cropped hair with a pink streak dyed into it, now drying and rimed with sand.

  A green jacket. Jeans.

  Bare feet. Slender, pale feet, so cold they were gray.

  Laurie let out her breath with a whoosh and then couldn’t get it back again. Her lungs and heart felt as though they were being squeezed tight with sheer horror.

  “Oh, n
o. No.” Crablike, she scrambled sideways up the bank, her gaze fixed on the sandbar. “It can’t be.”

  Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the life hadn’t yet left that pitiful, damp body on the sand. Maybe there was still something she could do.

  She yanked her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed 911.

  Chapter Two

  To group: Budz

  From: JohnnysGrrl

  Shut up. Keep it down low.

  EXHIBIT 1

  TRANSCRIPT11/07 07:43:57

  MASTER TAPE 203

  DISPATCHER: County Communications.

  UNID FEMALE: I’m—there’s a—there’s a girl. In the river. Please send someone, quick.

  DISPATCHER: Please state your name, ma’am.

  U/F: Laurie. Laurie Amelia Hale. I’m Nick Tremore’s cousin. He’s in the sheriff’s office. Please, do we need to waste time on this? She might still be alive.

  DISPATCHER: Ms. Hale, please give me your location.

  HALE: I’m on the jogging trail next to the river. [gasps] About half a mile south of the commuter parking lot. The one at the train station.

  DISPATCHER: Are you in need of assistance, Ms. Hale?

  HALE: No, it’s not me. There’s a girl on the sandbar in the river. She needs help—don’t you get it? I think she might be dead.

  DISPATCHER: Please calm down, ma’am. Is anyone with you?

  HALE: No. [Subject is weeping.]

  DISPATCHER: I’m sending a marked unit and an ambulance now. Please wait there so they can find you, ma’am.

  HALE: Tell them I’ll meet them in the commuter lot. Tell them to hurry.

  END TRANSCRIPT11/07 07:45:32

  TAPE 203

  PLEASE BE THERE. Please don’t be in a meeting. Please have your phone on you and not in a jacket hanging on a chair somewhere.

  After the third ring, Colin answered. “Hey, Lor. What’s up?”

  “This is terrible.” Her voice climbed the scale and she worked to bring it under control. “You won’t believe it.”

  “What? Was there an accident? Are you okay? The kids?”

  “No, no. The kids are in school, and I’m—” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat. “I’m down by the river. They told me to stay here until they had time to get a statement.”

  “You were in an accident? Was anyone hurt?”

  Controlling the emotions was like building a muscle. The more you used it, the stronger you got. “No, and no. I was on my run this morning and found a—a body.” That sounds so cold. “A girl, in the river. Nick and his guys and the coroner are here.”

  Static crackled in her ear as this information bounced off a satellite somewhere in the atmosphere and reached her husband.

  “Laurie, are you sure it’s not just some drunk sleeping it off under the bridge?”

  “Nobody sleeps under the bridge in November, Colin. And we’re half a mile downstream from it. It was a girl, around the same age as Anna, I think. Maybe a little younger. She was washed up on the sandbar across from where the rope swing is. I saw her from the jogging trail.”

  This unembellished recital of facts seemed to convince him, and the unflappable president of Susquanny Home Supply melted into Colin the normal husband. “Are you all right? It must have been a shock to find—her . . .”

  The nice deputy who’d responded to the scene with Nick had used the same word. Shock.

  “I’m fine. I’m going straight home as soon as they’re done with me, though. My knees are a bit wobbly still.”

  “I don’t doubt they are. Want me to come and get you?”

  He had a staff meeting at nine, and they both knew it. “No, no. I’ll see you at home.”

  She closed the phone and clipped it to the stretchy waistband of her sweats.

  The kind deputy, whose name she’d already forgotten, climbed the riverbank and angled up the slope to where she stood on the jogging trail. Below them, on the bar, two men in navy blue jackets, who had arrived in a white van with “Keystone Removal Services” discreetly lettered on the side, zipped up the plastic bag containing the girl’s body, hoisted it with a man on each end, and sloshed through the shallows to the bank.

  The tears that she couldn’t seem to control welled up again, and she focused on the deputy, trying to concentrate.

  “Feel up to giving a statement now, Mrs. Hale?” he asked. She nodded. “Mind going down to the station? It’s a lot warmer down there, and we could scare up some coffee for you. Nick should be done here in a couple of minutes, and he’ll go over what happened with you.”

  She was beginning to wonder if she’d ever be warm again. The ambulance driver had brought her a blanket, but the chill was the kind that only hot soup and a long hug could drive away.

  Much to her relief, Nick didn’t ask her to sit in the back of the police car like a criminal. Instead, she sat up front, where the blast from the heater turned her cheeks fire-engine red, but didn’t do anything to dispel those deep-seated tremors inside her.

  The Glendale sheriff’s department wasn’t very big—just a couple of offices for the sergeants and the sheriff, and an open area with workstations for the four deputies behind the main counter. Her statement consisted of a few paragraphs on the green-ruled report form. What was there to say, after all?

  I went jogging at seven thirty. I found the girl at seven forty. For once, my cell phone was charged and on me, and I dialed 911.

  So simple. And she was going to be having nightmares about it for months. Maybe even years.

  Lord, please block the sight of that poor girl lying on the sand out of my mind.

  “Nick, what will happen now?”

  “It’s too early to say. When we find out who it is, the coroner will notify the parents.”

  Laurie felt her control waver again. She could just imagine what that might be like. A stranger on your doorstep, telling you your child was dead.

  She shook her head at herself. Colin was always telling her that her imagination tended to run away with her. There were some things a person just couldn’t think about and still keep functioning.

  “You don’t look so good, Laurie.” Nick leaned over and rubbed her shoulder. “Come on. Let me give you a ride home.”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s not even half a mile. And I didn’t finish my run.”

  “Quit being brave. It’s me, remember? The guy who beat up Melvin Hartzheim for you in third grade.”

  As he’d probably planned, the tension in her shoulders relaxed. “And all because he said he had a crush on me. Good thing your methods changed later on. I’d never have been able to get a date.”

  It was a relief to be able to take refuge in silly memories, the kind that only family hung on to for years and years. That poor little girl on the sandbar had probably had friends and cousins and people she laughed with. Maybe someone had even beat up a bully for her once. But all that was over now—cut short before it had even really blossomed.

  She had to stop thinking like this or she really would break down again.

  Nick dropped her off in front of the house. When she’d closed the door of the police sedan, he leaned over and rolled down the window.

  “Make yourself a hot cup of tea, okay? And take it easy for the rest of the day. You still look a little shell-shocked.”

  She nodded and fingered the keys in the pocket of her jacket. “Thanks, Nick. I owe you for looking after me.”

  He shrugged and flashed Auntie Lou’s lopsided grin at her. “Your tax dollars at work.”

  With a wave he drove off, and Laurie let herself into the house. They’d moved in here when Anna was born—their dream home, the one she didn’t plan to leave until they pried the keys out of her age-spotted hands. The lots on their street were big and the trees were old, like the houses. Theirs had the typical Pennsylvania shape, with steep gables, thick stone walls, and ten-foot ceilings with plaster medallions around the light fixtures. When the owner of the building company had retired and Colin had been promoted t
o president five years ago, they’d remodeled the kitchen. It had taken months to transform the dark, damp lean-to that had been added in the twenties into a clean, light-filled area where people liked to congregate, but it had been worth every minute.

  A cup of stale coffee was still waiting in the pot for her to get back from her run. She poured it down the sink and then glanced at the phone. You are not going to call the junior high to ask if Anna is in class and okay.

  Because of course Anna was okay. In fact, she was probably just heading off to second-period math. If Laurie called, it would do nothing but embarrass her daughter, and then they’d all have to deal with the fallout when she got home from school.

  Was the drowned girl’s mother thinking of calling, too?

  No, that wasn’t possible. The coroner’s voice had carried, and she’d heard him mention that the girl had probably died in the middle of the night. So somewhere there was a frantic mother whose daughter had not come home. Who wouldn’t be in homeroom, or going to first period. Somewhere, a woman was probably calling in a missing-persons report.

  But if that was the case, wouldn’t Nick have known about it? Laurie made a mental note to call him at home tonight to find out if one had been filed.

  Then she stopped herself.

  This is none of your business. The police will look after it. And a few days from now, you’ll read the details in the paper, send up a prayer for the parents, and go on with your life. This is some other mother’s tragedy. It has nothing to do with you.

  Laurie frowned as her troubled thoughts took on Colin’s practical tone. Practicality in one’s husband was a wonderful thing a lot of the time, but it was just a fact that she and Colin saw the world differently. Sometimes that was good, such as during the kids’ homework, when he supervised math and grammar. But her brain didn’t run on the narrow track of rules and structure. Her skills were the kind that encouraged them to think about what the holes and the mountain really meant in Louis Sachar’s novel, or why the table of stone broke when Aslan came back to life.