by Amy Engel
“Who?”
“That woman in the kitchen. The one chopping vegetables.”
“Oh, that’s Sharon. She’s our maid, basically. She does the laundry, cleans, cooks. Her food totally sucks, though. I keep telling Granddad to fire her, but she’s been here forever.” Allegra stopped in front of a series of framed photographs. “Here,” she said, pointing, her cheeks feverish. “Ta-da! It’s the Roanoke girls!”
My eyes followed her finger to the biggest frame, golden and gilt-edged. Someone had carved a tiny into the bottom of the frame, the letters ragged and uneven. The hallway was shadowy, with little natural light, and I had to move closer to see. The frame held a collection of large oval-cropped photographs—two on the top row, four more below, and Allegra on the bottom. I recognized my mother in the middle row but no one else. “Who are they?”
“Us!” Allegra screeched. She stabbed at the top two pictures. “These are Granddad’s sisters, Jane and Sophia. Then this row are Gran and Granddad’s girls. Penelope. She was actually Jane’s daughter, but Gran and Granddad raised her. Then my mom, Eleanor. Your mom, Camilla. Who totally got the best name, by the way.” She jabbed me with her bony elbow. “And the baby, Emmeline. We can take a picture of you and put it right here.” She tapped the empty space next to her own face, clapped her hands like a little girl at a birthday party.
All of the pictures were black-and-white close-ups, giving them an old-fashioned feel, although even the ones of Granddad’s sisters couldn’t have been more than thirty or forty years old. They were all taken when the girls were teenagers, except for Emmeline, who was still an infant, which I figured didn’t bode well. It was eerie how much they all looked alike, how much they looked like me. As if the Roanoke genes were so strong they bulldozed right over anyone else’s DNA.
“Where are they all now?” I asked.
Allegra’s pointing finger reemerged. She started at the top, with Jane, and moved down the line. “Jane’s gone. Sophia and Penelope are dead. My mom’s gone.” She paused before lightly brushing her finger over my mother’s face. “Your mom’s dead, obviously. Emmeline died when she was only a baby. And I’m right here.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Jane disappeared right after Penelope was born, probably ran off like my mom. I was only two weeks old when she hauled ass out of here.” Allegra’s tone was matter-of-fact, but her mouth pinched up and her eyes clouded over. She thumped Eleanor’s face hard with one knuckle.
“And all the dead ones?”
Allegra shrugged, already bored. “Sophia drowned in the North Fork during the spring floods. She was twenty-something. Penelope fell down the main stairs and broke her neck. Tripped on her nightgown in the middle of the night. She was like our age, maybe a little younger. Totally tragic. Emmeline was crib death. Sharon said Gran didn’t get out of bed for six months after. They all thought she was going to waste away. Die of grief.”
Hearing their stories turned the faces in front of me from beautiful to tragic. They watched me now with haunted eyes. The only one left was Allegra. And me. I suddenly didn’t want a place on the wall. “Wow,” I said, goose bumps sprouting along my neck, even in the closed-in heat of the hall. “That’s a lot of dead girls.”
Allegra did a quick pirouette away from me, her smile a little too wide. “Roanoke girls never last long around here.” She skipped along the hall, her voice growing fainter as she moved, like we were standing at opposite ends of a tunnel. “In the end, we either run or we die.”
The call comes at three in the morning, that time of night when sleep is so deep it almost feels like death. It takes me at least five rings to surface, swimming up through layers of dreams. “Hello?” My voice is raspy, the vodka I drank before bed still coating the back of my throat.
“Lane? Lane, is that you?”
I hold the phone away from my face, squint at it like they do in the movies, before returning it to my ear. “Who is this?” I ask, although I already know, my stomach bottoming out at the sound of his deep voice.
“It’s your granddad, Lane. We need you to come home. Back to Roanoke.”
Hearing the word sends an electric shock up my spine, waking me instantly. I shove myself upright, palming hair off my face. “How did you get my number?”
My granddad sighs. I hear the scrape of a chair. “You need to come home, Lane,” he repeats.
“Why?”
“Because Allegra is missing.”
At the sound of her name, Allegra’s words from all those years ago take flight, fluttering around my skull and bouncing off the bone…Roanoke girls…gone…dead…dead…gone. “I don’t…What happened?”
“She hasn’t been seen in a week. The police are looking into it, but they don’t have a clue. We need you here.” There are voices in the background. “I have to go now. Please come home, Laney-girl.” He hangs up on me.
I toss my cell phone away, lower my head to my upturned knees. I stink of alcohol and sweat and my mouth tastes bitter, like I vomited in the night. It wouldn’t be the first time. Since I left Roanoke, I haven’t spoken to Gran or Granddad, not once. And I’ve barely talked to Allegra. Never on the phone, just an occasional e-mail, one she always initiated. I scramble for my discarded phone, scroll through my e-mails with shaking fingers. It doesn’t take long to find it. Sent nine days ago at 11:42 P.M.
Lane, I’ve tried calling you, but your voice mail is full. I know it’s been years, but I really need to talk to you. It’s probably nothing. I’m probably crazy (what else is new, right? Ha!). But you’re the only one I can talk to about this. Please get in touch. Love, A
I never called. I never wrote her back.
—
I leave Los Angeles at sunset, my suitcase in the trunk and a cooler packed with food in the backseat. I barely have enough money to pay for the gas it will take to get all the way to Kansas; I can’t afford to buy food, too.
The drive is long and uneventful. I pull over in rest areas for catnaps but never stop for more than a few hours. I try hard not to think beyond the next mile in front of me. It is early afternoon, the sun a blistering ball in the sky, when I cross the state line into Kansas. I murmur, “Welcome to Oz,” and my throat tightens painfully.
I arrive at Roanoke without fanfare. It seems like the heavens should open up, trumpets should blare as I turn off old Route 24 and pass underneath the archway across the drive. The prodigal granddaughter returns. Of the ones who left, I’m the first to ever come back. But the house remains silent and still, no cars or trucks parked on the drive or down by the barn. Seeing Roanoke again fills me with a familiar swoop of dread, followed closely by a rush of adrenaline. My head knows this place is no good for me, but my stupid, traitorous heart sings home.
I crane my neck, but from my vantage point I can’t tell if the house has any new crazy-ass additions. I sit in the car until the heat forces me to move, a tiny rivulet of sweat pooling inside my bra. When I step out, the sounds and smells assault me: grass, wheat, dust, wind, grasshopper and cicada song. It all hits me like a slap, and I take a stumbling step backward, lean against the hot metal of the car until the woozy déjà vu feeling passes. I’ve been back to New York a few times since I left, and it’s never had this effect on me. But one long summer here at Roanoke is somehow imprinted beneath my skin like a tattoo of memories running through my veins.
I leave my suitcase and cooler in the car and climb the wide front steps. The porch swing creaks in the breeze. “Gran?” I call out when I push open the front door and step inside. “Granddad?” Nothing answers except the steady tick-tock of the ancient grandfather clock in the foyer. It still, I notice, fails to keep the correct time.
Every room I pass is empty. In the kitchen a pie crust is rolled out on the counter, a bowl of plump reddish black cherries next to it, but Sharon is nowhere in sight. “Hello?” I say, before giving up and climbing the back staircase to the second floor. All the bedroom doors are closed, and the air in the upstairs l
anding is thick and sticky. I bypass my old room and head to the hidden stairway at the end of the hall that leads up into the brick turret and Allegra’s bedroom. She always loved being up high, even though the room had no air-conditioning and burned like an oven in the summer months.
Her room is not all that different from the last time I saw it, over a decade ago. The bedspread on her antique four-poster has changed from lavender to pale green, and the walls have gone from off-white to a silvery gray. But her floor is still littered with piles of clothes, her vanity table cluttered with makeup and tangles of jewelry. A remnant of her scent—coconut body lotion and musky perfume—lingers. I’m scared to touch anything in case the police haven’t been in here yet. I back out slowly, make sure the door is closed the way she likes it.
Back on the second floor I run smack into Gran, who is emerging from the master suite as I round the corner from the turret stairwell. “Lane?” she says, one hand flying up to her throat. “Lane?”
“Yeah, Gran, it’s me.” We don’t touch beyond the initial collision, not even an impersonal clasp of hands. Gran has aged a bit since I last saw her, but not as much as I’d expected. Her hair is still blond, her figure remains trim. There’s a little softening at her jaw, a new network of lines around her eyes, but she looks impossibly young to be a grandmother to grown women.
“What in the world are you doing here?” She appears mildly irritated at my presence, as if I’m a dinner guest who showed up an hour early and disrupted her careful planning.
For a second I’m dumbfounded, then hit with my own flash of irritation. “Granddad called me in the middle of the night. He said I needed to come home.”
Gran’s face tightens for a split second. “Oh, your granddad. He always overreacts.”
“I don’t think being worried about Allegra going missing is overreacting. What happened? I assume the police are involved?”
Gran fans her fingers through the air. “Well, of course they are, although it’s completely unnecessary. She’ll turn up. Probably took off to Wichita or some such.”
I gape at Gran. “For a week? Without calling?” I’ve been back in this house for less than an hour, and already I feel like I’m losing my mind, the Roanoke reality slithering into place. Where a tornado is a bit of wind or a missing woman is simply out having fun.
“She’s an adult, Lane. Just like you. We aren’t her keepers.”
“But still, Gran, something bad could have happened. She could be hurt or—”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Gran says. “You know Allegra. I’m sure she’s fine.”
“Actually, I don’t,” I say slowly. “I don’t really know her at all. I was only here for one summer. And that was a long time ago.”
Gran purses her lips, her brow furrowed. “Nonsense.” She’s already moving past me. “You two are practically sisters.”
That’s Gran. Still a master of the loaded statement.
—
When dusk falls I wander downstairs, but the kitchen remains empty, the pie makings spirited away. I poke my head into the dining room but am met with only silence and shadows. Back in the kitchen, I grab an apple and a bottle of beer from the fridge and take them out onto the front porch, where I sit on the top step and watch the night roll in.
A plume of dust rises on the road and a patrol car edges into view, pulls into the semicircular drive, and parks. The deputy inside doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry, so I figure it’s not urgent news about Allegra, but I stand all the same, set my beer bottle on the step by my feet. When the car door opens, it’s only Tommy who gets out, both hands shoved into his pockets as he walks toward me, stops on the bottom step.
He looks the same as in my memories. Dark brown hair curling slightly over his ears, serious hazel eyes. Some of his second-string quarterback muscle has turned soft—a little thickening at the waist, his face filled out around the cheekbones. But he looks good, solid and strong. His police uniform, complete with handcuffs at his hip and a scuffed silver nameplate over his left breast, suits him, although I never once imagined he’d wind up a cop.
I lean against the porch railing, a slow smile dawning. “You the law around here now, Tommy Kenning?”
“Looks that way,” he says, rolling forward on the balls of his feet.
“Damn. Guess that means no more mailbox baseball for us.”
“Nope. No shoplifting from uptown, either.” Tommy smiles and his teeth are as white as ever. He takes his hands from his pockets and jogs up the four shallow steps to pull me forward against his broad chest. I’m horrified to find myself blinking back tears as I clutch at his shirt. My hands have a hard time grabbing on, the starched cotton slick under my fingers. I let myself sink into him for a three-count beat before I pull away.
“You want a beer?” I ask, avoiding his eyes. “Or is this an official visit?”
“Nope, a beer would be good. I’m off duty. Heard through the grapevine you were back and thought I’d stop by.”
“News travels fast.”
We settle on opposite ends of the porch swing with our beers and a half-empty bag of pretzels retrieved from my car. “So, what’s going on with Allegra?” I ask him. I’m shredding the label on my beer bottle down to nothing, and I force myself to stop.
Tommy jerks his head toward the house. “Haven’t they told you anything?”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “You know what it’s like around here. Trying to get a straight answer out of anybody…” I take a long pull of my beer. “I haven’t even seen my granddad yet.” I’d expected a flurry of activity at the house, police and search teams and my grandparents frantic and determined. I should have known that’s not the way things would work at Roanoke. We are all so good at denial.
“From what we can tell, she up and vanished nine days ago,” Tommy says in a no-nonsense cop voice. “She had dinner with your grandparents. And your gran saw her late evening when she was heading up to bed. Allegra was settled in on the couch with a movie. She didn’t come down to breakfast the next morning, but your grandparents figured she was sleeping in. When they still hadn’t seen her by lunchtime, they checked her room. Found her bed not slept in, her car parked in the garage out back.” Tommy sighs, scrubs at his face with one hand. “Not a word from her, no trace. Like she disappeared into thin air.”
“What about her phone?”
“Left on her dresser.”
“Have you checked it? And her computer? What about friends?”
Tommy gives me a weary smile. “We’ve done all that, Lane. Don’t worry. We’ve done everything there is to do.”
“She called me before she disappeared,” I hear myself say, my words coming too fast. “E-mailed me, too.”
Tommy nods. “I saw that on the phone log. Any idea what she wanted?”
“She didn’t leave a message, and her e-mail just asked me to get in touch.”
“Did you?” Tommy asks after a slight pause.
“No,” I say, looking away. “Do you have a theory yet? About what might have happened?”
“I’m thinking maybe she took off,” Tommy says. “She wouldn’t be the first one of you to do it.”
I’m already shaking my head before he’s even done speaking. “She didn’t take off, Tommy. She loved Roanoke.”
“You might be right. But she wasn’t always predictable. Hard to know what Allegra would do.”
But I do know. Allegra would never leave Roanoke, not willingly. “What now?” I ask. “What happens next?”
“It’s still a missing person case. We don’t have any reason to suspect foul play at this point. So we keep looking. We keep digging. We keep asking questions.” Tommy gives my hand a quick squeeze. “Something will shake loose. It always does.”
I bark out a laugh, a little harsher, a little meaner than I intended. “You handle a lot of missing persons cases? In Osage Flats?”
Tommy’s neck flushes. “Well, nothing like Los Angeles, I’m sure. But we aren’t complet
e idiots out here in the sticks, either.”
“That’s not what I meant, Tommy.” But, of course, it’s exactly what I meant.
He waves off my halfhearted apology. “Forget it. Shouldn’t have snapped at you. I’ve had a short fuse lately.”
Which is almost enough to make me smile. Tommy’s idea of a short fuse is a regular person’s infinite patience. I lower one leg, set the porch swing moving with a gentle shove of my foot. “How have things been around Osage Flats since I left?”
“Oh, you know…not much changes. Same old, same old. Still not a decent place to eat in town. Della Ward’s on her third husband, and Cooper’s still fixing engines and radiators.”
I breathe past the swift thump in my chest and take a gulp from my beer, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand as a trickle of liquid overflows past my lips. “Cooper’s here? I thought he moved to Kansas City.”
Kansas City is less than three hours northeast of Osage Flats, but in the time I lived here I met very few kids who’d actually been there. To them it was a Mecca they doubted they’d ever reach, as exotic and unattainable as New York City or Paris. It has always surprised me that Cooper, with his lazy brand of intelligence used mainly for stealing cigarettes and charming the panties off pretty girls, was the one with ambition enough to make the journey.
“Nah. He’s been back for a few years now.” Tommy gives me a quick sideways glance. “How’d you know he moved away? You two keep in touch?”
“No. Allegra sent me the town update once.” In lieu of a newspaper, Osage Flats publishes, and I use that term loosely, a sort of roundup of its residents every six months. The bulk of the entries catalog weddings, births, and deaths, with the occasional success story—the opening of a local flower store or promotion to head cashier at the town grocery—tossed in as an afterthought.
“Oh, yeah.” Tommy smirks. “I remember that. Hell, this town will print just about anything and call it news.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I say, and Tommy snorts in agreement.