It Wasn't Always Like This

by Joy Preble

  Sometimes, a murder or a disappearance caught her eye for no other reason than a gnawing ache at the sheer senselessness of it all: this undef ined despair that told her if she didn’t investigate, no one else would. There were a lot of people out there—young, rootless girls in particular—whom the world saw as disposable. Or whom the world didn’t see at all. Which was worse.

  But Emma saw them. In those moments, investigating and solving crimes felt like penance—even when none had ever borne a connection to Glen Walters. She wondered if she would ever stop what he had unleashed. If you’d believed him back in 1913, his “church” had already been around for centuries. He claimed the faith traced its roots back to the Druids on one side of the Atlantic and the denizens of a lost Atlantis on the other.

  In a word, bullshit.

  The same type of bullshit that attracted people decade after decade, convinced it would make them safer or happier or righteous. They drank the poison Kool-Aid. They waited for aliens to whisk them off during the return of a comet. They holed up in compounds and bunkers. Or worse.

  The problem was, some legends weren’t bullshit. Like the one about the girl named Emma O’Neill who celebrated her f irst seventeenth birthday six years before America granted women the right to vote.

  The sheaf of police reports on the front seat next to her wasn’t a product of faith, either. It was real, and it was tragic, and it was very likely the Church of Light’s doing. Bullshit disguised as faith had a way of making reality very ugly.

  Ironic that Glen Walters was decades gone himself, but had become even more powerful somehow. Dead heroes were like that. His followers might have been mortal, but collectively, they were eternal, just like her. They’d put their faith in his bullshit. They would sink into the background. Vanish for a decade or two. Then she would breathe easier, thinking it was over—only to discover again and again that it wasn’t, that it never would be, unless she found a way to stop it.

  As the traff ic slowed to a crawl once more, she wondered, not for the f irst time, if she could put an end to Glen Walters’s mission without having to sacrif ice herself. She’d considered that option once or twice over the years: just taking an ad out in the paper, or later on the Internet, begging the Church of Light to come f ind her. It’s me, Emma O’Neill, you bastards!

  Wouldn’t that surprise the hell out them?

  But she never would, and she knew it. She couldn’t go the way of her family or those poor innocent girls or even Glen Walters until she found out what happened to Charlie. Best to focus on the present, as always. Someone knew she was in Dallas. Someone was leaving a trail of missing and poisoned girls, trying to f ind one specif ic girl. Her. And unless she was mistaken, it was the same group that had destroyed her family and Charlie’s family, that had destroyed them, Charlie and her, over a century ago.

  •

  “Exit in six hundred feet,” the bossy GPS lady intoned. “Make a right at the intersection. The destination is on your left.”

  Her mother would have loved GPS. Emma almost smiled at the idea of her mother behind the wheel of a slick automobile with a back-up camera and Bluetooth. And with the smile came a wince, because part of Emma always squeezed in pain, the part that refused to forget or toughen up. Maura O’Neill had been dead and gone for almost a hundred years. But Emma’s mother would have bitched—politely, but still—about Dallas traff ic.

  Emma exited. Checked for oncoming cars. Made her right turn. Dallas Fellowship was on her right; you couldn’t miss the huge-gated entrance to its college-like campus. She checked the signage and followed the winding road to the f lat-roofed building labeled youth ministries, which sat under the shadow of both a row of pecan trees and the church itself, a building so sprawling that she had to step back to see it all at once.

  Such a large and well-established church seemed a bit obvious for the folks who might have chased her here, but you just never knew. Hiding in plain sight was a strategy she knew better maybe than anyone else alive. The world was tricky that way.

  Emma f luffed her bangs in the rearview mirror, then gave her expensively distressed jeans, silky tank top, and red cardigan with the three-quarter length sleeves a cursory check. Her shiny pink toenails peeked out from the open toes of her heeled booties. Unlike last night’s pair, these did not have spots of taco grease. She adjusted her brown leather hobo bag over one shoulder. Matt from the bar would have observed that she looked like a high school girl.

  Which was exactly what one of the other IDs she carried in her wallet, the phony school ID, conf irmed. A second driver’s license nestled in the adjacent slot, also put her age as seventeen.

  Like so much about her very long life, it was as true as it was untrue.

  “I’m Emma O’Neill,” she told the secretary in a shy voice. She held out her hand.

  The woman—Melanie Creighton, according to the nameplate on her desk, looked up with a blank stare. Then her blue eyes widened. She took a sharp breath, an audible sound like the air being suddenly uncorked in a bottle.

  Bingo, Emma thought. So she wasn’t the only one to notice that the late Elodie Callahan bore a somewhat noticeable resemblance to Emma herself. Right track, then. But would it lead to anything?

  Melanie blinked a few times. “Sorry,” she said. “I—you look like . . .” She shook her head. “What did you say you were here for?”

  “I’m Emma O’Neill,” Emma repeated. She smiled brightly.

  Melanie f inally offered a limp hand, f ingers drifting over Emma’s, her palm waxy. Another lesson from Detective Pete Mondragon: If they just bend a f inger or two and don’t actually shake your hand, don’t trust ’em. ’Cause you can bet they don’t trust you. Recovered now—a quick recovery, Emma duly noted—Melanie peered over her reading glasses. “What can I do for you, Emma?”

  Her smile seemed genuine. That was the thing about people: They were often more complicated than they appeared. And also much simpler.

  If you’re gonna spin ’em a story, Pete had taught her, keep it simple. And at least partly true. The less you lie, the more they trust you.

  “I just moved here from Florida,” Emma said. “My parents aren’t into church, but I thought . . .” She paused long enough for Melanie’s eyes to lock onto hers. “I want to join the youth group,” she blurted when the silence verged on awkward, something she was good at making happen. You learned a lot about timing when you had a lot of time. “I heard from . . . well, the kids at school were talking. They really like the youth pastor here.”

  The tips of Melanie’s ears turned pink. This could mean many things or nothing at all, maybe just the thrill of having her day broken up. Something encouraging in the wake of a tragic and frightening loss.

  “Pastor Meehan isn’t here. But I can give you the sign-up form, dear.” Melanie spoke fast. She opened a desk drawer and extracted a piece of paper. “It’s nothing off icial,” she said, handing it to Emma. “Just your contact information. You just come to the events. You’ll see. What school do you go to?”

  Emma was prepared. “Heritage,” she said. Elodie Callahan’s school.

  Melanie’s mouth fell open. She quickly closed it and covered it with her hand.

  “I started right before vacation,” Emma went on, letting her voice waver as though she was unsure if this was a good thing or not. “But you know the last few days of school before Christmas . . .” She paused, looking down, then back up.

  Melanie took the bait. Swallowed it whole. “Oh, honey, it’s a f ine school. Lots of good kids there. Madison Faw and Bailey Beal. Love those girls. And the boys, too. Barrett Jones—he’s the quarterback on varsity this year. And I think Tyler Gentry goes to Heritage. My own two boys graduated from there. Andy’s at UT now and Christian’s up in Denton. And . . .” She trailed off, biting her lip. Her gaze roved Emma’s face.

  “What?” Emma prompted. Then, “Oh,” with
her eyes going wide. “Did she go here? That girl, I mean. The one who . . .”

  It had been all over the news the past few days. In fact, it had been the aforementioned Tyler Gentry whom Emma had followed to that bar last night; she instantly recognized the name. Tyler was fond of underage drinking and the occasional recreational pill or two. But a closer look—even before she’d been distracted by Coral and Hugo and Matt and that bottle of bourbon—had turned up no connections. Tyler Gentry had nothing to do with the Church of Light. She’d trailed him just to be certain, for the simple reason that certainty was harder and harder to come by.

  Emma, too, could be both complicated and simple.

  Still, she didn’t have to fake the tears welling in her eyes. Sixteen-year-old-girls should not be murdered. Elodie Callahan should have been enjoying her Christmas break. She should have been with her family at an all-inclusive resort in the Bahamas, possibly parasailing or f lirting with the wait staff, or at the very least sneaking rum drinks in coconuts up to her room. She should have had the luxury of going to college, of getting hangovers that didn’t miraculously melt away, of making mistakes and maybe living in a crappy apartment with sloppy roommates and realizing that however bold it felt to buy a taco off the street, a bellyache was inevitable.

  “Terrible thing,” Melanie said gently. “But don’t you worry.” She fumbled in a drawer for a tissue and dabbed delicately at her eyes. “They’ll catch whoever did it. They will. You’ve come to a good place, honey. We’re glad to have you here.”

  At least the last sentence was probably true.

  “Everyone loved Elodie,” Melanie added.

  Not everyone, thought Emma, but kept quiet. Another lesson from Pete: Be patient. People hate silence. They’ll f ill it for you fast enough. All you have to do is be ready to listen.

  Melanie wanted to talk. And Emma wanted to listen. That’s what she was here for, after all. She had all the time in the world to catch Elodie Callahan’s killers.

  A beautiful singing voice—that was the f irst thing people always mentioned when they talked about Elodie. Even her friends. Also, she’d been inducted into the National Honor Society. But according to Melanie Creighton, she had “enough of a wild side to make her interesting.” It was interesting; Allie Golden back in Albuquerque had been shy to the point of being antisocial, from what Emma had uncovered.

  Hiding in plain sight.

  Emma studied Melanie’s face as she rambled on about silly pranks, like toilet-papering Barrett Jones’s house the night after a big football game.

  “The next day Elodie brought him a dozen chocolate cupcakes. Smart girl.”

  Melanie’s expression shifted. “Her . . . poor aunt and uncle. Here they take her in after her folks were killed in a car accident in Orlando last year, and she’d been doing so well. She was like their own daughter. And now this. I don’t think you ever get over losing a child. Or a parent either, when you’re so young.”

  “No,” said Emma. “You don’t.”

  Her mind raced with this new set of facts: Elodie had been a transplant (like Allie), and her parents were dead (like Allie’s). “So she was from Florida?”

  Melanie nodded. “Oh, that’s right. You said you were, too. What part?”

  “St. Augustine originally. But we, um, moved around a lot.”

  In Emma’s head, pieces of a puzzle edged together. Tentatively. Maybe. Because lots of people could have poisoned Elodie Callahan. Maybe even Tyler Gentry, although Emma doubted it. Maybe he’d gone overboard with a date-rape drug and panicked. People thought horrible thoughts, and occasionally those thoughts turned to deeds, and girls turned up dead. That’s how the world worked. Certain parts of it, anyway. The sick parts, the parts Emma had seen again and again over the years.

  Was the Church of Light involved? Maybe. Were they connected to this place of worship in some perverse way? Looking down at Melanie’s sad face now, Emma couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Melanie certainly didn’t know if they were hiding in plain sight. But regardless of the perpetrator, the murder of Elodie Callahan was an undeniable fact, one that would be true and unchangeable forever, even if their resemblance and their Florida roots added up to nothing more than coincidence.

  Emma’s gut told her otherwise. She tried to listen to her gut, because unlike her brain, it was seldom mistaken. On the other hand, there were those tacos last night. But if she’d listened to her gut years ago, then maybe she and Charlie—

  The thought was interrupted as Melanie Creighton stood and swept Emma into a teary hug. “Welcome to the Fellowship family!”

  Chapter Five

  St. Augustine, Florida

  1913

  The f irst time Emma kissed Charlie Ryan—really kissed him the way a girl kisses a boy she loves, and who loves her back—was on the night of her real seventeenth birthday, her f irst seventeenth birthday, the one that counted.

  Both families had just sat down to a specialty of her mother’s, vanilla cake with lemon f illing. Emma was wearing the new skirt that showed off her shapely ankles and a blouse with a v-neckline her mother thought was scandalous. So did Emma. Not that she’d ever say such a thing out loud, but it made her want to wear the blouse every day. By that time, she had given up taking her mother’s advice on most things.

  Seven years had passed since the day of the hawk.

  It was Saturday, a relatively cool February night, and the Alligator Farm had done good business. The tourist population swelled in the winters. Even the gators had seemed to enjoy themselves while on display. The O’Neills and the Ryans weren’t rich, not yet, but tonight their coffers were full of admission fees. Emma had sold out of the alligator f igurines and commemorative postcards in the gift shop by the entrance.

  Now that they were closed and the tourists had all gone back to their hotels and rented cabins, it was just the O’Neills and the Ryans. Tonight they’d crowded into the O’Neill kitchen for roast chicken and potatoes and then the cake—all Emma’s favorites. Well, everyone except Baby Simon, who toddled around the house and occasionally out the door like a miniature drunk. He was not quite two, his birthday still a month away at the end of March.

  Emma had been surprised by Simon’s arrival, but then they all had; Maura O’Neill was close to thirty-eight when she’d conceived. But one thing was for sure (and thank God for that): Simon was the spitting image of his daddy. Emma was grateful for something else, too. Ever since Simon had swelled up in her mother’s belly, Frank Ryan had stopped leering at Maura O’Neill. Now Simon kept her mother so busy she barely had time to look up. Still, she always managed to hang on Frank Ryan’s every word.

  “A story!” Art O’Neill demanded as they shoveled dessert into their mouths. The grown-ups had consumed most of a bottle of Irish whiskey, too, reserved for this special occasion. “Let’s have a good one, Frank. It’s Emma’s birthday, after all.”

  No matter the occasion, Charlie’s father always told a story. And he always made a big point of starting every story with how he’d inherited his “gift of gab” from both sides of his family, as though everyone here in this kitchen might forget this fact if he didn’t repeat himself a hundred times. As he told it (and told it and told it), the Ryan men hailed from County Mayo in the “auld sod” of Ireland—hearty farmers and f ishermen and craftsmen, proud stock who had earned a living from the work of their hands. Proud of their stories, too. Or so Emma added in her head. He certainly was.

  At night, his paternal ancestors would gather around peat f ires and talk of fairy forts and Tír na nÓg, the land of the eternally young. On his mother’s side, the Montoyas, a mix of Spanish and Indian blood, also spun fabulous yarns at night—Frank knew them all. There were tales of a Calusa woman who fell in love with a Spanish shipwreck survivor named Hernando de Escalante Fontenada. Of a Calusa city that sprang up and then disappeared. Of a Fountain of Youth and its exact location. Th
e tales were passed down to the children who came after her, and their children and their children’s children.

  Frank’s maternal grandmother, Ester, swore she was a direct descendant of Hernando de Escalante Fontenada, swore that every word of what she told him was true. She barely spoke any English, apparently. So Frank would always quote her aff irming the truth: “Es verdad.”

  Here Charlie’s mom would always scoff, chiding her husband not to be ridiculous. Mrs. Ryan frequently scolded her husband when the others were around to hear. Emma liked that about her. But Charlie’s dad would go on talking, even as Charlie shook his head, embarrassed.

  “Fountain of Youth, my ass,” was Art O’Neill’s usual response, but he would laugh with the rest of them. “Do you ever see any of these folks? No. Whatever the truth is, it’s dead and buried with them.”

  None of this made Emma want to kiss Charlie any less. Charlie was not his father, any more than Emma was her mother, and thank goodness for that. But Frank Ryan always seemed stumped by one particular detail. He didn’t mention it much. Emma wondered if he’d add any details tonight in honor of her birthday. According to his grandmother, the secret of the location of this mysterious Fountain of Youth had been passed on only to Montoya girls. At some point, one of them bore only a son.

  So the chain was broken. The family secret died. If there really were a Fountain of Youth, none of them would be f inding it anytime soon. Emma hoped that this impossibility would one day make Charlie’s father shut up. That hadn’t happened yet, and she doubted it would happen any time soon. Certainly not tonight.

  “Once upon a time,” Frank Ryan began, keeping his voice low and ominous, “there was a man named Juan Ponce de León.”

  Charlie edged his chair closer to Emma’s. Under the table, his hand slid over hers. His skin was warm, and she felt a tingle. Across from them, Mrs. O’Neill stopped bouncing Simon on her lap and arched a brow. Emma pointedly ignored her. Charlie’s f ingers laced with hers.