Shadows of Lancaster County

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Closing my eyes for takeoff, I silently prayed that God might help dig that entire conversation from the recesses of my brain and bring it more fully to mind. I prayed also for a safe flight, for Kiki’s recovery, for Lydia’s peace of mind. Most of all, I prayed for Bobby.

  Wherever he is, whatever he needs, please keep him safely in Your hands until I can find him.

  TEN

  BOBBY

  The pain was like nothing he had ever known. The knowledge that he survived the crash was of no comfort, considering that he couldn’t get to Lydia and Isaac. He couldn’t get anywhere at all.

  He opened one eye, wincing at the pain that simple action caused to the other eye, which was swollen shut. It took every ounce of energy he had just to look around the dark, damp chamber. The small space smelled of earth and rust. No, not rust. Blood.

  His blood.

  He wanted to try and pull up on the one good leg, but he knew the waves of pain and nausea would likely put him back down again in a flash. For the hundredth time since the crash, he mentally cataloged his injuries, the cuts and gashes, the ribs that were surely broken, the bone that was still jutting out below his kneecap, the flap of skin that hung over one eye. Every movement was like reliving the pain of the crash all over again, but he knew that if he didn’t do something drastic, something to get out of here, he would die—as would Lydia and Isaac if he didn’t make it to them in time.

  He closed his eyes and laid his head back against the dirt, trying to be grateful for small blessings. At least he had some blankets. At least he had water and even food, of sorts. At least he had a flashlight, though he didn’t dare use it often, for fear that the batteries would run out. Because of the cold, there weren’t likely to be any snakes in here, nor even any spiders.

  The mice were a different story.

  He had been lying in this prison, this death chamber, for two days now, by his count. He wasn’t sure of that, though, as the fever that raged through his body had also been messing with his mind. In his nightmares, thousands of rats swarmed over him, gnawing at the open flesh at his knee. Then he would awake and hear the tell-tale squeak of mice near his head and start screaming, batting at them with his hands, kicking them away with his good leg.

  No one heard his screams, though. No one came to save him, not even Anna. Instead, he was alone. All around him, things were dark and cold and without life.

  Much like he was beginning to feel.

  ELEVEN

  ANNA

  Two questions rolled around in my head for most of the flight, so finally I took out pen and paper and wrote them down:

  Was Norman right about Bobby’s reservation to Las Vegas being bogus?

  Why had Bobby needed Doug’s motorcycle when he had a perfectly good car?

  No matter how much I thought about it, I could not make sense of either act. As we landed in my connecting city and pulled into the gate right on schedule, I tucked away the pad and pen and got ready to disembark, those questions still prominent in my mind. I glanced at my watch as I walked off the plane, glad I had time to do a little poking around before my next flight.

  According to the record I had pulled from Bobby’s credit card, last night he had purchased a one-way ticket from Philadelphia to Las Vegas for a late-night flight that would have gotten him here around seven this morning. Considering Lydia’s insistence that Bobby had no known connection to this city or to gambling or Nevada, I hadn’t known what to think—and now that I was here in Vegas, I was starting to believe Norman’s theory that Bobby had bought the ticket as a ruse only.

  Still, somebody must have made that trip in his stead, because a withdrawal from his checking account had been made from an ATM machine in this airport at seven eighteen a.m. Who was it? A friend? A girlfriend? Obviously, that was one of the biggest concerns I had run across thus far. We already knew that Bobby had been keeping some things from his wife. Was it really that big of a leap to wonder if he had been cheating on her as well? I was having trouble coming up with any other feasible explanation, but I was determined to give Bobby the benefit of the doubt.

  Out in the main lobby, I located the ATM machine in question. If I were in law enforcement, I could have requested a copy of the machine’s surveillance video and gotten an actual look at the person who had made the withdrawal. That wasn’t currently possible, however, so instead I just stood there at the machine for a moment, trying to picture the scene of what had really happened here in my mind.

  There wasn’t much to see, I had to admit. After that one withdrawal—which had taken the balance in Bobby and Lydia’s checking account from $120 down to $20—there had been no other activity on that card. There had also been no charges on Bobby’s credit card for anything in Vegas, not hotels or rental car or meals.

  Are you here, Bobby? Are you in Las Vegas?

  I turned full circle to look at the people around me. Despite the late hour, there were vacationing tourists, business folk, exhausted-looking parents, overactive children, soldiers in uniform. There were no signs of my brother, no one-dimpled smile, no handsome green eyes, no “Hey, Bobanna!”

  Feeling strangely disappointed, I headed back to my gate, wondering what I had thought I could find here just by locating that ATM machine. Had I really expected Bobby to be standing next to it, waiting for me? It felt silly to admit, but in a way I think I had, despite Norman’s more experienced opinion. Pathetic.

  Back at the gate for my connection, I found an empty seat in the waiting area and sat, still working through scenarios in my mind. By combining the two questions into one, at least I was finally able to come up with a theory: What if Bobby had needed the motorcycle because he booked the flight? If Bobby had been doing everything he could to make it look as though he flew to Las Vegas, it stood to reason that he would have driven to the airport and parked his car in a prominent spot in airport parking. That way, if someone were hunting him down, not only would they know he’d bought the airline ticket to Vegas, they would also find his car sitting there at the airport, waiting for his return. What more proof could one need that Bobby really had taken that trip? Somehow, he had even gotten someone to make a cash withdrawal from the ATM in Vegas for him, further proving that he was there.

  But if he was only making it look as though he had taken the flight, then putting his car in airport parking left him with a big problem: How was he going to get back home without his car? He would need some sort of transportation, but a car rental would be reflected on his credit card whether he paid cash for it or not. He couldn’t afford to buy a used car—not that he could have found one in the middle of the night anyway—so he was left with essentially two choices: a shuttle or the train. Neither one would get him all the way home to Lydia’s sister’s farm in Dreiheit. But the train would get him to Hidden Springs, I realized, where Doug and Haley Brown lived less than a mile from the train station.

  Pulse surging, I closed my eyes and tried to picture Bobby’s actions from last night. My guess was that after leaving the Internet café in Exton, he had driven to the Hidden Springs train station and parked his car there. Then he had jogged to the Brown’s house, borrowed money from Haley and took the motorcycle, then drove it back to the train station and parked it there. Switching back to his own car, he drove to the Philadelphia airport and parked in long-term parking, checked in for the flight, and then left the airport via train and took it back to Hidden Springs. There, he got off the train, climbed onto the motorcycle, and took off. To anyone else, his actions would have seemed nutty, but that was the sort of complicated ruse I had described to him years ago, when I was telling him how I would disappear if I could do it over again.

  If my theory was correct, then the question that remained was why hadn’t he gotten to Lydia when he said he would? Why hadn’t he come to her sister’s farm as he had promised?

  Rolling those questions around in my mind, I boarded my connecting flight. I was glad to see that the two seats next to mine were empty, so once the
flight was underway, I stretched out and made myself as comfortable as possible. Slowly, I drifted off to sleep, hoping I wouldn’t wake again until it was time to land in Philadelphia. I had a busy day ahead of me, and I needed all the shut-eye I could get.

  The night didn’t go quite that smoothly, but I did manage to grab several hours of sleep off and on, punctuated by a lot of shifting and resettling. At six a.m. sharp, the cabin lights came on, the morning beverage service rolled through, and then we began our descent. With money as tight as it was, I had been hoping for a free breakfast, but the best I got was a tiny, plastic-wrapped cheese Danish with my coffee.

  Walking off of the airplane and into the Philadelphia airport felt familiar, of course, but it didn’t give me the feeling that I had come “home.” Instead, as I walked up the long corridors, along the moving sidewalk, and then down the escalator to the baggage claim area, it just seemed more like déjà vu, as in “been there, done that.” I made a quick stop in the restroom to freshen up, and by the time I reached baggage claim, the bags were starting to come out. I grabbed my dinged-up black suitcase as it rolled past, but I didn’t head straight for the rental car area just yet. First, I went over to Ground Transportation and checked the train schedules to see if my theory held water. Sure enough, Bobby would have been able to go from the Philadelphia airport to Hidden Springs by train, with just one quick switch at 30th Street Station.

  I would have to take a shuttle to pick up my car, so I stepped outside, not thinking, into the January winter air. I gasped, shocked at the depth of the cold. I didn’t remember it being this freezing here. I quickly pulled on my coat and gloves, feeling foolish. I might as well have the word “Californian” stamped on my forehead. At least the shuttle was prompt, though once I was at the car rental company and inside their heated building, I had to take it off again as I waited in a slow-moving line.

  There was a seating area over to one side with a television flashing pictures but no sound, and underneath that a coffee service and a small tray of donuts. I took a pass on the donuts, but the coffee smelled good. As I awaited my turn, trying to decide whether to make a cup now or after I had finished my transaction, one of the images on the television caught my eye and nearly stopped my heart: It was a photo of Doug Brown’s face, smiling at the camera. That image dissolved into a picture of Bobby, with his name across the bottom and the words “Sought for Questioning.” I wanted to run over and turn up the sound to hear what was being said, but I didn’t dare. Instead I just stood there watching as Bobby’s face faded into a reporter talking into the microphone. Then, much to my dismay, the next image shown was the famous photo of the group that the press had dubbed the “Dreiheit Five.” There we were, all five of us: Bobby, Doug, Reed, Haley, and me. In the photo, we were frozen in time, walking down the steps of the courthouse together, the guys in suits, Haley and me in dresses. The first time I saw that photo was in an article in Newsweek magazine, with the heading “Final Hearing for Wild Teen Party-Turned-Nightmare.”

  The camera then zoomed in to our individual faces, lingering on each one for a moment. When they got to mine, I literally couldn’t breathe, standing there gazing at the eighteen-year-old girl with the sad face and the short, dark hair. Self-consciously, I smoothed my bangs toward my eyes, while wondering if my face was distinctive enough that I would be recognized immediately despite the change in hairstyle and color and the fact that I had aged eleven years since then. Frantically, I dug in my carry-on for my sunglasses, and I was slipping them on just as I heard the woman at the counter say “Next?”

  She must have thought I was a little bit nuts, considering that I never met her eyes or even looked up for the entire transaction. Nevertheless, she rented me the car I had reserved, the cheapest last-minute rental I could find. After I loaded my bags in the trunk, I got in the car and just sat for a while, trying to recover from the shock of seeing my old self on TV.

  I didn’t want to be here.

  I really, really didn’t want to be here.

  But what else could I do? My brother was obviously in trouble and needed my help—and to be honest, I was probably better suited to finding him than anyone else on earth. It wasn’t just my professional experience, my knowledge of skip tracing, that made me perfect for the job. It was that I knew my brother, I knew how he thought, how his mind worked. If anyone could find Bobby, I could.

  Reluctantly, I started up the car and pulled out from the lot, following the signs for 95 South. Almost on autopilot, I took that for several miles before moving to the Blue Route, which would bring me to Valley Forge without having to pass directly through downtown Philadelphia. Glancing at the dashboard clock, I was glad to see that I should make it to my nine o’clock meeting on time, even if I ran into some rush hour traffic along the way.

  As I drove along, I listened to the news on the radio, but the story told me nothing I hadn’t figured out by watching the photos flash by on the television. Turning off the radio, one photo kept coming back into my mind, the picture of the five of us leaving the courthouse. We were so young then, so burdened by what we had done. In the years since, we had each taken a different path to self-forgiveness. Bobby had lost his way for a while but eventually ended up where it had all begun, there in Dreiheit with Lydia. Haley and Doug had found solace with each other, though from what I understood their marriage wasn’t exactly a resounding success. According to Bobby, Haley spent most of her time at the bottom of a bottle; Doug had consoled himself by spending her father’s money. I had managed to carve out a life for myself once I started over in California, though it was nothing like what I had pictured when I was younger.

  Then there was Reed. As the oldest one in the group, he had suffered the harshest penalties, in more ways than one. After the fire, he had spent three months in the burn unit at the hospital. When he was released from that prison, he moved onto the next. Convicted of reckless endangerment, involuntary manslaughter, corruption of minors, and a misdemeanor drug charge, he was sentenced to a year in jail and three years of probation.

  His road had been the toughest, and yet in a way, he had managed to bounce back more thoroughly than any of us. After the fire, Doug and Bobby both gave up their dreams of medical school and, in fact, never even finished college. But Reed stuck it out. When he got out of prison, he returned to medical school, earned his degree, and then went into research.

  Nowadays, from what I understood, he lived in Washington, DC, and worked in the field of DNA—not just the science of it but also legislation and ethics. Somehow, Reed had managed to become a success in the work world despite having a police record, something not easy to do. Reed’s family was very wealthy, so I had always figured they used their money and influence to pave the way, both by convincing the medical school to let their son back in once he got out of prison and by helping him land a prestigious position once he was finished.

  I hadn’t seen Reed Thornton since the day he was sentenced. He already had a guilty verdict from the jury, and the only hope we were able to hang onto between that and the sentencing was that the judge would take into account the fact that Reed had no prior offenses, he was a first year medical student with good grades, and he had acted heroically at the scene of the fire, running inside and saving a child before nearly being consumed by flames himself. It was obvious he had already been through physical agony; did he really deserve to spend several years in prison for what was essentially an accident?

  I would never forget the first thing Reed did when the sentence was announced. After absorbing the news that he was to spend the next year of his life in prison followed by three years of probation, he simply turned around and looked at me. With his beautiful blue eyes, he looked at me, his expression a combination of fear and sadness and regret. As I met and held his gaze, I thought about what he and I could have been to each other, about how it had been love at first sight as far as I was concerned, how it had taken all summer of hanging around together and getting to know each other for him
to discover that he had feelings for me in return. Finally, I thought about that one kiss we had shared, that single kiss that had held such promise and ended up being the last good moment of the worst night of my life.

  I will always love you, I said with my eyes, hoping he understood. Then the bailiff took Reed’s arm and led him out of the door of the courtroom, and I was truly alone.

  I had never seen him since.

  Seeing his youthful face on the television screen today had brought it all back, the grief, the yearning, the loss. Bobby kept me posted on everyone, and according to him Reed had never married. Moving into the right lane for the exit that was coming up, I wondered if he was happy now, if he enjoyed his work, if he had a good life.

  Most of all, I wondered if he still thought about me as often as I thought about him.

  TWELVE

  STEPHANIE

  May 20, 1812

  I am pleased to report that though I am now five months with child, the Empire waist remains in fashion. This news is very helpful to me, as such a style is perfectly suited to my growing shape. I have kept the royal dressmakers busy this month, but I feel confident that my new gowns will suffice through the fall.

  Upon return from his most recent travels, Karl presented me with a copy of La Belle Assemblée and several yards of rose-colored silk fringe. I do believe that my husband finally has a growing fondness for me, for how else would he have arrived at such thoughtful gifts so well suited to this transplanted Parisian? Last night I dreamed of Versailles, and today my heart yearns for the beautiful gardens of home.