by Jess Lourey
The Sunday traffic is slow on this warm, bright day. We cruise through the sleepy neighborhoods I’m familiar with, then toward the edges of town, where the houses are mismatched and in need of paint, kids and dogs playing in the yards. The south side of town looks like a whole different realm from Mill Street.
We locate the church in under fifteen minutes. “Pull in here,” I say.
Kris does. “This place should be condemned.”
He’s right. The single-story square of a church was charming in the not-too-distant past, judging by the prim, smug-looking white paint protecting its exterior. But now, “Nixon for President” posters are choking the entrance (Ursula would feel vindicated), and red paint has been poured across the front stairs. The glass is busted out of the windows, and the bushes are overgrown, the grass a wrestling tangle of weeds.
“Seems like it could be a nice area,” I say. “If it was kept up better.”
Kris throws a cursory glance around the landscape. Most every house here looks abandoned; black licks at the windows of many, suggesting they’ve had a fire; and the block is oddly quiet. It’s a ghost town on the edge of Lilydale.
“If you say so.”
I’m watching him. “Any of this look familiar?”
He glances around again. “Nah.”
“This church used to be where Paulie’s house was.”
His expression doesn’t change, but his hands grip the steering wheel tighter. “I don’t remember it.”
I feel sad. It’s not that I expected him to recognize his childhood neighborhood, but . . . he doesn’t seem to know anything about Lilydale or the life that Paulie lived here, hasn’t since I’ve met him. Regina told me to trust my gut, and it’s telling me that Kris is not Paulie.
Because Deck is.
CHAPTER 44
I immediately dismiss the ridiculous idea. Ronald and Barbara couldn’t possibly have suddenly introduced a new child, not with the attention Paulie’s disappearance got. The whole town would have had to be in on something like that. Of course, Deck being Paulie would explain why they wanted my baby in Lilydale so bad. If Virginia Aandeg was raped, Deck’s irrefutable resemblance to his father means she was raped by Ronald Schmidt, not Sad Stanley.
And my baby—Deck’s baby—would be blood evidence of this crime.
I start laughing.
“What is it?” Kris asked.
I become very aware that I’m in a car with a stranger, on the edge of town, and I haven’t told anybody where I’ve gone. Maybe I should be watched at all times. The laughter doubles until I can’t breathe and tears are streaming out of my eyes. Kris watches my hysteria grow, but he lets it happen, driving steadily until I’m wrung dry.
“I’m sorry,” I say, wiping my face. The emptiness feels good.
“No problemo,” he says.
I don’t think Deck is Paulie, not really, but I no longer think Kris is the real Paulie Aandeg, either. He knows nothing about Paulie’s life, nothing that you couldn’t find in the paper other than the smallpox scar, and for all I know, that detail was included in an article in a different newspaper. I want to ask him why he’s impersonating the abducted child, but instead I say, “That’s okay that you don’t remember that house.” I paraphrase what he told me when we first met at Tuck’s Cafe. “I heard that a big shock can wipe out memory.”
I rub my hands across my face and through my hair, still not used to the short length. I’m exhausted. “Please, just take me home.”
He turns the car around. We say little on the drive, exchange cursory goodbyes after he pulls up to my house. Once inside, I swallow a Valium and lie down with Slow Henry. I might have slept the afternoon away if Deck hadn’t appeared, shaking me gently.
“Joan! Wake up.”
It takes a while to dig my way out of the dream. It had featured a boy in a sailor suit, leading me to a river. I’m disoriented, unsure where I am at first.
I focus on Deck. “What is it?”
His expression is twisted, an ugly mix of scared and something I can’t identify. “Another boy’s been taken.”
My hand flies to my mouth. “Who?”
“A boy from church.”
I repeat the question, even though, with gruesome certainty, I know the answer. “Who?”
“You wouldn’t know him. Angel Gomez. He’s not even in kindergarten yet. He was playing outside his house with his brother. His brother went inside for a glass of water, and when he came out, Angel was gone. The whole town is joining together to look for him.”
I leap to my feet as well as I can, my expanding belly throwing off my balance.
That’s Angel, Miss Colivan is saying. A boy shouldn’t be that pretty. He’ll get snatched right up.
“You shouldn’t go,” Deck says, his hands on my shoulders to hold me back.
“I’m going,” I say, quivering. “I want to help.”
As I grab my cardigan, I realize what the second emotion on Deck’s face was: naked anticipation.
CHAPTER 45
Hundreds turn out to search the woods behind the Gomez house. I’m grouped with the Mill Street regulars. They have guns. I don’t know why.
I can’t shake the sensation that I’m part of an elaborate stage production.
The Fathers are leading the search. Ronald is barking orders. We’re all given a section to scour, holding hands so there’s no possibility a child could slip through. The foliage is thick, the jungle undergrowth making it difficult to forge through some areas. I struggle to keep my balance, my lower center of gravity throwing me off.
There is a thrum of excitement flowing through the Mill Street Fathers and Mothers—I don’t know how else to explain it. They’re out looking for this missing boy, which is the right thing to do.
But their mood feels oddly celebratory.
Me, I can’t shake the feeling that Angel could be my own child. Lost. Alone and crying for his mother. Mildred is holding my hand on one side, Dorothy on the other, as we’ve been instructed to do. Their embrace feels sticky. I don’t want them touching me but can’t think of how to say that, how to live with releasing their hands and possibly walking past Angel without knowing it.
“I am sure he’s back here somewhere,” Mildred says, smiling encouragingly at me. She seems the most animated of them all, almost competitive in her desire to locate the boy. “Or maybe he’s already home.”
“That’s such a kind thing to say,” Dorothy says. “If we don’t find the unfortunate child, it won’t be for lack of trying.”
A root grabs my foot and brings me to my knees.
Dorothy kneels to help me up. “However this goes, at least we’ll have your baby,” she says quietly, too quiet for the nearby searchers to hear.
Over my dead body, I think, brushing myself off as I stand without her help.
CHAPTER 46
Come Monday, Angel still hasn’t been found.
I cannot be the only person in town who didn’t sleep last night. Out there somewhere, a child is alone and missing his mother. He could be hurt. He could be imprisoned by the worst sort of evil.
Before Deck left for work, he tried to calm me down. Said the police were the only hope.
The same police—at least one of them, Amory Bauer—who let Paulie Aandeg disappear.
That isn’t good enough for me.
Because of yesterday’s search, I know exactly where Angel’s home is, on the south edge of town, the poor part. Deck has the car. The walk takes me an hour.
The house appears empty when I approach, but Angel’s mother pulls the door open before I knock. I learned from Barbara that her name is Mariela, and she’s unmarried. She’s aged a decade since I last saw her, her skin faded gray, her eyes muggy. She is heartbreak come to life.
“Any news?” she demands.
I don’t know if she recognizes me from church, or the search, or will simply ask this of anyone who shows up at her door for the rest of her life.
“I’m sorry. No. Can
I come in?”
She hesitates but steps aside.
The interior of her house is small and tidy. She’s burning a Virgin Mary candle below a picture of Jesus on the cross. The table beneath the candle is strewn with plastic beads and dried roses. She leads me to the dining room table and indicates I should take a chair.
I pull out my notepad. “Do you mind if I take notes?”
“What for?” She hasn’t sat down.
“I’m a reporter for the Lilydale Gazette. I’m hoping I can write a story on Angel’s disappearance, bring some attention to it.”
“You’re one of them.”
“Excuse me?”
She shifts to stare out the back window, toward the woods I searched with a hundred other people yesterday afternoon. “You’re one of the Mothers.”
I can hear her capitalization of the word. “I am a mother.” I point to my protruding belly. “I have not joined the Mothers.”
“Still.” She’s still looking away from me. “You’re one of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t ask for this. I paid the price, the Lilydale price. That should have been enough.”
My blood turns to sand. “The Lilydale price?”
She’s still facing outside. “I think you should go.”
“I can help.”
“They will take your child, too,” she says, turning finally. Her face is shadowed. “If they want.”
Her words lash me. “Who?”
She steps toward the door and opens it. “I’m sorry. I should not have let you in.”
I stand. I notice two wide-eyed children watching us from the kitchen. They are still. Scared. I don’t want to make this worse.
I pause at the doorway. “Can you tell me if Angel has a scar like this?” I lift my sleeve. She studies the figure eight but doesn’t so much as blink.
“No. He doesn’t.”
She closes the door gently in my face.
“Benjamin?”
“Who is this?”
My stomach twists with anxiety. I’m wagering so much on this call. I called the Star and was patched through to the photography department, just like before. “It’s me again. Joan Harken.”
“Joan! We must have a bad connection. I can hardly hear you. Can you switch to another line?”
I can’t tell him that I’m at a phone booth because I’m too scared to call from my own house. “I’ll just talk louder. I need another favor. Some more research.”
He pauses. For a horrible second, I think he’s going to turn me down. Finally: “What is it?”
“Do you have pen and paper?”
I hear a rustling on the other end.
“Got it.”
“A second child has gone missing from Lilydale. A boy named Angel Gomez.”
A whoosh of breath. “Oh, damn. Those are the worst stories. I’m sorry, Joan.”
“Yeah, me too. Lilydale isn’t such a paradise now, is it?” I can’t tell him I think they’re connected, that I think I know what the “Lilydale price” is, the cost of staying in this protected bubble where no one goes hungry, all have medical care, there are no homeless: it’s not speaking up when the men of Mill Street come for you, or later, when they decide to dispose of the evidence of their attack.
It all makes sense, the morbid glee in the Mill Street families when they “searched” for Angel, Angel’s mother’s strange comments, Rosamund Grant’s cackling words. Plant a seed, harvest it, plant a seed, harvest it.
I think not only is Kris not Paulie Aandeg but that Paulie Aandeg has been dead since 1944, and his mom, too. The same is probably true of Angel Gomez, though I can’t bear to think it.
I can’t say any of this, not until I can prove it. If the Mill Street families got word of my suspicions, they’d have me institutionalized in a heartbeat and take my child. Ronald very nearly promised it.
I make up a lie that will get me the same information I’m after. “I think the danger’s not over,” I say. “I think there might be a copycat kidnapper here.”
Benjamin’s whistle pierces the line. “No shit.”
“None.” I beg him to dig deeper, find out if there were any less-publicized child disappearances from this area, any other fires that got only a passing mention. “While you’re in the archives, can you look up any investigations into a Ronald Schmidt or Stanley Lily of Lilydale? Something you might have missed in a general Lilydale search?”
I hold my breath. He could hang up, and then I’ll have nothing.
“Joan?”
“Yeah?”
“What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
“Will you help me, Benjamin?”
“Yeah. But you owe me a beer next time you’re in town. Make that a whole case of beer. And you have to drink it with me. I don’t care how pregnant you are.”
I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. I hadn’t noticed the tears rolling down my cheeks. “Wild horses couldn’t keep me from paying that debt.”
CHAPTER 47
Benjamin will get me the information when he gets me the information.
If he gets me the information.
All that I can do now is wait. Deck insists he needs the car, so the next day, I repeat the one-hour walk to the Gomez house. This time no one answers, even though I see a curtain fall inside the house when I knock. Unable to sit at home, helpless, I travel house to house asking the questions I was trained to ask.
Who. What. When. Where.
No one has seen anything unusual. The Gomez family is large, but they keep to themselves and don’t cause trouble. Mrs. Gomez cleans houses. She receives food stamps, that’s what her neighbor tells me with disdain, but I suspect it’s because he believes I’d look poorly on such a practice.
You’re one of them, Mrs. Gomez had said.
The only hint of something troubling I get is three blocks down. The house is the same size as the rest in this part of town, but it’s neater, the trim a crisp black, the paint white. The lawn is mowed. The crew-cut man who answers the door stares down at me, and something about him chills me to my core.
“Hello,” I say.
He doesn’t reply.
“I’m Joan Harken, reporter for the Lilydale Gazette. I’m doing an article about the missing boy. Angel Gomez? I was hoping I could ask you a few questions.”
The man steps aside. I gulp. There’s a young man teetering immediately behind him, a lantern-jawed teenager. His eyes are vacant. He’s just been standing there, like a piece of furniture.
“Come in,” the man says.
“That’s all right,” I stammer, my heartbeat clattering in my chest. “I have a lot of houses to stop by. Can I ask you if you saw or heard anything that would be helpful?”
“No, but you can ask my stepson.” The man turns to the dead-eyed teen. “Gary? Have you seen anything?”
“Un-unh,” the stepson says.
“Thank you,” I say, stumbling backward off the steps. He should be in Vietnam, the young man, but he doesn’t look like he’s right in the head. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t been drafted? I note the name on the mailbox.
Godlin.
There’s something terribly wrong with that family. Is it enough to report to the police? I finish canvassing the neighborhood. Nobody else has offered anything of use. One moment Angel was there, and the next he was gone.
The Lilydale Police Department adds a half an hour to my walk, but I need to be thorough. I’m surprised to find Amory Bauer inside. I don’t know why. I assumed he would be in the field, somehow. He’s not pleased to see me.
“Hello, Mr. Bauer,” I say, unsure of his title at work. His uniform impossibly adds size to his already large body.
His silver-streaked hair is immaculate, his blue eyes shocks of color beneath the sagging fat of his face. “What are you doing here?”
I hold up my notepad. “I’m writing an article on the missing boy. Angel Gomez. Have you uncovered any leads?”
; “Have you?” he asks.
He means to belittle me. I play submissive. “I interviewed everyone in a five-block radius, everyone who was home. No one knows anything, but I did meet a strange man and his stepson. The Godlins?”
Amory is suddenly standing in front of me, hands gripping my upper arms too tightly. I’m caught off guard that a man his size can move that fast, but I shouldn’t be. He demonstrated his agility the night he kicked Kris out of my house. “You want to avoid the Godlins. The stepdad doesn’t do right by that boy. They’re trouble.”
I struggle to keep my voice even. “You think they had something to do with Angel disappearing?”
“Not that kind of trouble.”
I twist out of his grip. “So no news on Angel, none at all?”
The phone rings behind Amory, and he turns away.
“None,” he says, hand on the ringing phone. “I’ll let your husband know if I hear anything. Makes sense you’d be worried about a little boy with your own baby on the way. We’ll find him. I promise.”
Amory picks up the call.
I leave, taking my time, not ready to return home. I walk past the newspaper office. When I step inside, Mrs. Roth, who looks more like Pat Nixon than ever in her red suit and pearls, tells me that Dennis has traveled to Saint Cloud and that the archives are still down. I peek inside the Fathers and Mothers hall next door. It still looks like it’s halfway unpacked. That doesn’t leave much to do in Lilydale. I don’t need anything from Ben Franklin or the grocery store, and I’m not hungry.
That leaves only Little John’s. I suddenly realize how hot and thirsty I am, how much my back and feet hurt. Yet I’ve been avoiding the bar ever since Ronald cornered me outside the nursing home. While I’m now certain—almost positive—that my mugger was from Lilydale, there’s always the distant chance that Regina ratted me out. Next time I see her, I’ll have to ask about it, and then I risk losing my only friend in town.
But my feet are steering me toward the bar. Maybe it was a mix-up. What if Regina innocently let it spill? Or what if it happened exactly like Ronald said, with Deck worrying about me and going on to identify the man based on the description the night of the mugging? That’s a lot to swallow, but believing it is easier than confronting Regina.