by Toni Aleo
Avery silently applauded her clever guise to avoid more pie making. Neither of them were thrilled about the time-consuming, messy process. They could’ve picked up some pies at Costco and called it good. No one would’ve minded except Emma.
“I saw her a few minutes ago. She appeared distressed by all the arguing. She probably escaped and is hiding out upstairs.” Emma cast a pointed glare at the men, standing toe to toe near the bank of windows in the dining area. The men took no notice. They were each too busy trying to prove their point and winning some insane competition as to who was right. The argument was pointless because there wasn’t a correct answer, in Avery’s opinion. Each sport had its merits. Too bad these men couldn’t see that.
“Let me ask the other kids,” Paisley said with a sigh.
“I’ll go upstairs and check,” Emma volunteered.
Paisley nodded and walked over to where her niece and nephew played Candy Land. Zeke and Paisley had custody of the children after the death of their mother at the hands of their father. They were in the process of adopting them.
Avery abandoned her pie crust and tagged along, grateful for a reprieve.
“Hey, kids, where’s Sadie?” Paisley asked.
Both children shrugged.
“Did you see her leave?”
Sophie, Sadie’s twin sister, nodded. At five years old, she was a chatterbox, while her sister rarely said anything. Only currently, she, too, had lost her gift of speech.
“Where did she go?”
“She didn’t like all the yelling. She left. I don’t know where she went,” Brayden answered and scowled at the guys across the room, still oblivious to what was going on around them.
“No one does,” Paisley said drily. They looked up expectantly as Emma hurried down the stairs.
“She’s not up there. I checked all the rooms, under the beds, the closets, the bathrooms. She’s not there.” Alarm crept into Emma’s voice, mirroring the mounting worry building inside Avery.
Sadie was a sensitive little girl, and she didn’t like conflict. She’d been cowering behind a couch when her abusive father killed her mother in the same room. She hadn’t uttered a word for months afterward. Only recently had she started to come out of her shell.
Paisley ran to the doorway and opened it, emitting a cold gust of wind. She paid the weather no mind and disappeared onto the porch. Avery followed, grabbing a coat hanging on the peg by the door. Emma was on her heels. Dusk was settling in and dark clouds threatened to unleash a nasty, drenching storm any minute.
Paisley called and called for Sadie but received no response. The little girl was nowhere to be found. Her face paled as she turned toward her sisters-in-law.
“Where could she be?” she said with a quiver in her voice.
Avery glanced over her shoulder. The other two kids stood in the doorway, both faces scrunched with worry. Beyond them the men continued their pointless argument. Anger built inside Avery. She was going to rip those jerks a new one and then some. They’d caused this. She was certain of it. Sadie wouldn’t be able to handle the animosity currently poisoning the air inside the festively decorated home.
“We need to find her before dark,” Emma said.
“We will. We’ll turn the place upside down and won’t leave one stone unturned. Let’s get the guys involved.” Avery focused her attention on the men and stalked toward them. They didn’t notice her until she stepped in the middle of their latest heated argument.
Isaac’s eyes flashed fire momentarily at being interrupted, but he must have picked up the fear in her expression because he immediately sobered and moved back a step, creating distance between him and his brothers. Both brothers stopped yelling and blinked several times as if coming out of a trance.
“What’s wrong, Avery?” Isaac asked. Concern lined his handsome face and furrowed his brow. His brothers gathered round him, finally silent.
“We can’t find Sadie.” The words came out in a choked sob, effectively transmitting the direness of the situation.
“Can’t find her?” Zeke stepped forward. His concerned gaze slid to Paisley, who was wringing her hands and sniffling. She nodded and gazed up at him, eyes brimming with tears.
“Where did you look?” Isaac asked.
“Everywhere in the house and close by outside. We need to spread out and find her before dark. The kids didn’t see her leave. Just said she was upset about all the yelling.” Avery’s final words had an effect on the brothers.
“Yelling? What yelling?” Tanner asked. As a quarterback, his normal speech was in the loud zone.
“All of you. You were yelling. You upset her.” Emma glowered at them like a mother chastising her children. She raised her chin and shot each of them a ferocious glare.
“You morons. I told you to shut up,” Isaac said, pointing a finger at both brothers.
“You dumb shit. You were just as bad as we were,” Zeke shot back.
“Yeah, don’t go all innocent on us. You were right in the middle of it.” Tanner crossed his arms over his chest and glared smugly at his brothers, as if he were innocent.
Avery gaped in mute amazement as they were off again, fighting with each other.
“Shut the hell up!” Paisley screamed over the melee. She never screamed. The entire house went silent except for the howling wind outside. “You’re not helping. Not one of you.”
Zeke stared at his feet, while Tanner shuffled his weight from one foot to the other.
“Sorry,” they both muttered together.
Isaac’s head hung with guilt. Finally, he lifted his gaze, determination burning in his eyes. “Let’s cut out the blame and start searching. Ladies, you look in every nook and cranny of this house. We’ll take the outside. Zeke, search the outbuildings. Tanner, take the yard and surrounding brush. I’ll start walking down the road.” Isaac had gone into controlling, big-brother mode. Tanner stiffened, and Avery could see him building up to a protest. Zeke pursed his lips. Neither of them appreciated Isaac ordering them around.
“Who put you in charge?” Tanner bristled.
Emma elbowed him, and he yelped. She narrowed her eyes and gave him the evil eye. Tanner wasn’t stupid.
“Okay, I’ll start in the yard,” Tanner said meekly. His cowed expression would’ve been comical if the situation hadn’t been so serious.
Zeke opened his mouth to say something, but he snapped it shut after one murderous glare from Paisley. Instead he nodded grimly. “I’m on it.”
“Then let’s get started. We don’t have much daylight to burn.” The men donned their raincoats and trudged out the door.
Paisley stood in the doorway, her fist shoved in her mouth and her eyes filling with tears. “We have to find her.”
Emma moved next to her and put an arm around her shaking shoulders. “We will. She wouldn’t have gone far.”
Avery shoved her hands in the pockets of her hoody and stared out the window at the angry clouds on the horizon and turned to call the sheriff.
Sadie ran and ran and ran to get away from the arguing brothers. Why couldn’t people just be nice to each other? Why did they have to be mean?
She splashed through a puddle, not caring about her soaked shoes and wet feet. She was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, not exactly warm enough for the chilly night.
The rain had stopped for a moment, but the clouds were dark and ugly. Soon it’d be raining again. Her feet pounded on the gravel road, harder and harder as she blindly ran away from the noise, not just in that house but in her head.
All she’d wanted for Christmas was a pony.
She tripped over a branch and fell, skinning her knees. She started crying. After crawling on her hands and knees for a short distance, she scrambled to her feet. The wind whipped her hair across her face, and a dog howled in the distance. It sounded like a big dog. Maybe one that tore little girls apart and ate them for dinner. Her daddy used to threaten her with dogs like that, said he’d throw her over the fence into the neighbor’s yard if sh
e was bad. The neighbor’s dogs were mean. They snarled and bared their teeth. She was scared of them. He new neighbors didn’t have mean dogs, and her new daddy, Zeke, wasn’t mean, either. Not to her. But he was mean to his brothers, and his brothers were mean to him.
She saw a shadow on the road ahead and ducked down a trail. The trail was steep and crooked, and she fell a few more times before the trail ended on a rocky beach. She walked down the beach a ways and stopped. It was almost dark. She turned and looked for the trail back up the hill but couldn’t find it.
Her heart raced wildly. Did sea monsters live in the dark, angry water that beat against the shoreline? Would they come after her?
She wrapped her arms around her body and cried some more.
Sadie was lost and had no idea how to get home. She wailed in despair but her cries were swallowed up by the roaring wind and the churning water.
She should go back, but in some ways the beach was preferable to her new dad and her uncles yelling at each other. She couldn’t take any more yelling. She’d stay here for now.
She looked to the sky and wished Santa would swoop down in his sleigh and take her somewhere fun, maybe his toy workshop. Huddling on a rock, she watched as the waves crept closer and closer to her. The beach she’d walked down to get here disappeared into the black, angry water. The water was like a monster ready to gobble her up. The waves hit the bottom of the rock, and she tucked her legs closer to her body.
Even if she wanted to go back to that house, she didn’t think she could go back the way she’d come. She twisted and gazed up the steep bank. She’d have to climb over big rocks and crawl up the bank to get back to the road. If she went back, the men would yell. She didn’t want to hear them yell. Yelling led to other things. Awful things.
Maybe she’d wait here for a little while longer.
Chapter Five
Isaac stood on the deck and stared at the angry waters of the inlet below. Tanner and Zeke stood on either side of him. For once, they were quiet, each deep in his own thoughts.
They hadn’t found her though they’d searched the surrounding area until well after the sun had set. His heart was weighted down with fear. Judging by the solemn expressions on the others’ faces, he wasn’t alone.
A panicked Paisley had attempted to call the sheriff’s office multiple times but the storm must have taken out the cell tower. There wasn’t any response. Most likely, they wouldn’t be able to reach an officer on Christmas Eve. He wasn’t certain whether this island had a resident officer or if one had to come over from a nearby island.
They were on their own.
“What’s the plan?” Tanner asked.
Despite the dire situation, Isaac couldn’t help being taken aback by his brother asking him for direction. That wasn’t how the brothers operated. Usually they each believed they knew better and spent the majority of their time together trying to prove their superiority, including him. They’d been raised to be competitive, even to settle their brotherly disputes with their fists, not words. Breaking those old habits was more difficult than Isaac had imagined.
Zeke stared at the shoreline, not blinking, almost zombie-like. “We did this, you know.”
Tanner nodded grimly. “Yeah, we were more interested in being the winner than creating a harmonious Christmas Eve for our families.”
“How fucked up is that?” Isaac sighed and rubbed his eyes, feeling the weary weight of this entire screwed-up family on his shoulders. He’d always thought he could handle anything life threw at him, and had, until now. This was a mess he didn’t know how to fix or where to start.
“If something happens to her, it’s on us,” Zeke said.
Tanner and Isaac nodded agreement.
“Feeling sorry for ourselves isn’t going to find her,” Tanner said. He set his jaw in grim determination.
Isaac had to agree. They would find her. They had to. They’d endured too many shitty Christmas Eves. This would not be one of them. He swore to it. “Let’s expand our search area.”
“I’m going to help,” Paisley spoke from behind them.
“Me, too,” said Avery.
“One of you needs to stay here with the kids.”
“I will,” Emma volunteered. “I’ll keep them busy. They can help me finish the pies.”
“Good idea.” Tanner leaned over and kissed her cheek. He’d been worrying about her pregnancy and hovering like Isaac had never seen before.
“Let’s do it then.” Isaac laid out their next plan of attack to continue down the gravel road both directions and knock on all the neighbors’ doors. Someone might know something or have seen something. Isaac and Avery would scour the beach. If they were lucky, Sadie was sipping hot chocolate in front of a warm fire at a nearby house right now.
A drop of rain plopped on his head. God wasn’t going to make this easy on them. They were probably still doing penance for being selfish dickheads earlier.
With a goodbye wave, Tanner strode down the road calling for Sadie. Zeke and Paisley went the opposite direction toward the paved county road.
Calling for his boxer, Hal, Isaac grabbed Avery’s hand, and they took the steep stairs to the rocky shore below. Hal slipped past them and bounded down the stairs. Isaac should’ve left him behind. The dog never came when he was called, and he didn’t need a lost dog on top of everything else, but Hal loved Sadie, and there was a chance he might be able to locate her before they could.
“You must be pissed at me,” Isaac said when the silence became too much.
“Let’s just find her. That’s all that matters now.”
“I promise I’ll change, Avery. I won’t let my brothers bait me into another argument.”
“Why don’t you work on being a good example instead of being in competition? Your brothers look up to you.”
He stopped on one of the stairs, pulling her to a halt next to him. “They do not.” He was incredulous. What made her say that? His two younger brothers barely concealed their animosity toward him. They tolerated each other for the respective females in the family. Sure, they loved him. Hell, they were blood, and they’d all grown up in the same abusive, dysfunctional household. Yet what they’d gone through and the resentment they felt toward him couldn’t disappear in a few months. It’d take years before he was truly forgiven for abandoning both of them. He’d escaped their tyrannical father the first chance he got and never looked back, leaving his brothers to cope without him.
He wasn’t that scared kid anymore, and neither were they. They’d grown and matured and learned to love again thanks to their wives. Without them, Isaac wasn’t sure where they’d be.
Hal ran ahead of them, nose to the ground, as if he knew exactly what he was doing, though Isaac had little faith in the dog. Even though Hal did have a soft spot for Sadie, he’d never been particularly good at finding his dog dish, let alone a lost girl in the rain. Regardless, his presence couldn’t hurt.
Sadie woke up to find stuff had changed. The water had risen enough that when the waves hit the shoreline, the salt water splashed on her feet. She pulled them up closer. They were frozen, and she wasn’t sure she could get them to move enough to get her out of here.
The water came closer with each crash against the shore. Water did that. It went in and out. Zeke had told her about it. They called it tides.
Zeke and Aunt Paisley wanted her to call them Mom and Dad. They told her that she’d use Zeke’s last name now. Sophie, Brayden, and she were their kids now, and no one could take them away. She wasn’t sure they were right, but she hoped so. She wanted them to be her mommy and daddy.
She started to cry. She missed them. She wanted to go back, even if they did yell. She was cold and wet and scared. Pulling herself onto her knees, she crawled onto a bigger rock to get away from the water and looked up at the steep bank. She was a good climber. She could climb way up the big tree in the backyard at home, but the bank loomed in the darkness, thick with trees and bushes and looking really scary.
Sadie was so cold. She’d try to climb the bank in a little while. Maybe after one more nap, she’d have the energy. She curled into a little ball, trying to get warm. Her teeth were chattering, and she started crying. She cried a long time until she couldn’t cry anymore.
Then she felt something. She lifted her head, looking around. Two fuzzy, glowing ladies gazed at her with fond smiles. The glow from their bodies warmed her. They didn’t talk; they held out their hands to her. She blinked a few times. She wasn’t sure who they were. Their images were too blurry and glowed and flickered like candles. She held her hand out to them.
The angels were going to take her home.
Avery and Isaac called for Sadie, their shouts drowned out by the whipping wind and pelting rain. Hal slogged along beside them, tail tucked between his legs and feet shuffling. He hated rain. Every once in a while, he’d give each of them a withering glare, blaming them for being out on a night like this.
Isaac was getting discouraged, and he hated the feeling. He never gave up. No matter how tough things were, he’d kept trying. He would keep trying now for Sadie.
They would find her.
As if by a miracle, the rain stopped, though the menacing clouds promised it wouldn’t be long. The moon peeked out from a hole in the clouds, illuminating the muddy road littered with puddles.
“Thank you, God.” Isaac, who wasn’t particularly religious, looked to the sky in acknowledgement of the minor marvel.
Avery clutched his hand with her cold one and stopped. Isaac stopped beside her. She cupped her hands to her mouth and called out, “Sadie! Sadie! Sadie!”
They barely breathed as they listened for a response, but all they heard was water dripping off the trees onto the soaked ground.
Hal’s head shot up. He sniffed the air, his ears perked, and he was on instant alert.
Isaac exchanged a glance with Avery. Hal had never been interested in much outside of his food dish, but he’d taken a liking to sweet Sadie. Hal cocked his head and listened.