Shadow Falls

by Wendy Dranfield

  Esme doesn’t think she could stand to be fussed over by her neighbor. Beatrice will gloat about her own grandchildren; she always has. It’s been a stupid competition between them for years: who has the most grandchildren, who said their first words soonest, who took their first steps before anyone else. She shakes her head and sips her coffee. The brandy is strong.

  “No. I’d feel useless there. I need to be here for any updates you get from the police. And I can update you on what the investigators find. Please don’t shut me out, Anna. I’m family and I couldn’t bear it.” She starts crying, despite trying hard not to. She and Anna have never really connected in the way she always wanted to connect with her son’s wife. They don’t go shopping together, or on spa breaks. Their only mutual interest is Jenny, and now she’s not here, they have nothing else to talk about. She wonders if Anna feels the tension between them as she does. Perhaps that’s why they want her to go home.

  “We won’t shut you out. It’s just that I’m not as hopeful as Grant.” Anna takes her hands. “Esme, I have to be honest with you, though you’re not going to like it. I don’t think we’ll see Jennifer again and I’m trying to prepare myself for the worst.”

  Esme looks at her, shocked. “How can you give up hope? It’s only been two weeks! She could still be found.” Her hands start shaking and she pulls them free from Anna’s warm grip. Is she going to have to prepare herself for the worst now too?

  Anna leans back. “I wish I had your optimism, Esme. I really do. But I don’t think we’ll be getting Jennifer back alive. I’ve seen this happen too many times to other families on the news. It never ends well.” Her face crumples and she pushes her hands to her eyes.

  It’s Esme’s turn to do the comforting. “No, don’t say that!” She hugs Anna close. “There’s always hope. Some children are found alive after ten years.”

  But Anna’s shaking her head and sobbing. She’s refusing to believe it. She really has given up all hope.

  Esme feels like her heart is about to explode.

  Twenty-Eight

  When Grant arrives home from work, he parks on the street, hesitating outside his own front gate. Once he presses that tiny button on his remote control, the gates will slide open and he’ll be back to living his own worst nightmare.

  He misses his daughter. He’d like nothing more than to open the front door and see Jenny having a meltdown about something stupid, like she’s lost her cell phone, or her mom added vegetables to her dinner without asking. He would walk right up to her and hug her as tight as he could, making her understand how loved she is. He would tell her he’s sorry that her parents didn’t pay her more attention before she left for summer camp, how she deserved more patience and understanding from them. How she shouldn’t have had to witness the worsening arguments between him and Anna. The tension must’ve been unbearable for his little girl. No one likes to see their parents hurting each other.

  The thought that he’ll never see Jenny again tears open his heart and makes his eyes ache with pressure. It feels like something in his brain is on the verge of exploding, and he can’t help feeling that if that were to happen, it might be a massive relief in more ways than one. Putting on a brave face for his mother is hard. Men aren’t supposed to show their true emotions; everyone looks to them for positivity and action. Everyone wants him to solve the problem.

  But how do you solve a problem with no solution?

  Everything’s out of his hands. There’s absolutely nothing he can do. He lets the tears come for the first time since that terrible night Jenny disappeared. He cries for Anna, for his daughter and for his mother. Life will never go back to the way it was, no matter what happens next.

  Twenty-Nine

  Nate takes his car and drives into town, leaving Madison at the summer camp. She had some calls she wanted to make. He thought he’d go alone, but Brody jumped into the car as soon as he opened the driver’s side. He tried to pull him out, but the dog growled at him.

  “You better be house-trained, boy.”

  Brody barked at him, and Nate took him at his word.

  As he drives out of the vast woods, he’s relieved to get away for some alone time. He never sought an employee and Madison’s already starting to rub him up the wrong way, what with her typical law-enforcement attitude and her digs about him and the girl in the office. He knows the best thing to do when he’s annoyed is to get away from the situation. He’s not the kind of guy who would explode at someone; he’d rather walk away and process his anger by himself. Maybe with the help of some coke.

  Although his prison time couldn’t have done him any good mentally, never mind physically, he feels he’s come out relatively unscathed. Rex told him that one day, when the enormity of what happened to him finally hits home, he’ll either implode or explode. Nate doesn’t agree. Sure, he has moments when he wants to throw something at a wall or shoot himself in the head, but overall he’s pretty steady, and he’s certainly never been violent toward another person. It’s just not him. He wonders if his measured personality has anything to do with the years spent in the Church growing up, devoting time to helping others. When you look outside of yourself it stops you taking yourself too seriously. There are other people going through worse than he did. Some of his fellow inmates are still in there. Somehow that seems worse than being executed.

  Hunting Stacey’s uncle keeps his mind occupied, stopping him from reflecting on his prison experience too much. He might be working on different cases in between, but that’s only because he doesn’t have any leads on Father Connor yet. Once he gets wind of his location, he’ll be off, chasing him down before the lead goes cold. Just like when someone sent him an anonymous text telling him Father Connor was living in a mission in southern Brazil. It’s just a shame Nate fell for a deliberate red herring, manufactured by Father Connor himself and designed to waste his time and money. He doesn’t mind. He’s used to playing the long game. He’s waited before and he’ll wait again. Because he knows it’ll be all the sweeter when he finally locates the son of a bitch.

  He pulls into the only gas station in Shadow Falls and fills up the car. An old woman comes out of the store and walks over to him. Brody barks in the front seat so Nate opens his door to let him out. He immediately runs off, behind the store. Shit. What if he doesn’t come back?

  “Fine-looking dog you’ve got there,” says the woman. She’s wearing grease-stained coveralls and is missing most of her teeth. Her mouth is caved in on itself, making her look like she’s gurning.

  “He’s not mine, actually.”

  The woman raises her eyebrows. “Probably why he ran off. Can I clean your windshield for you? Top up your oil?”

  Nate laughs. He’s being upsold, even out here in the sticks. “No thanks. Everything’s fine.”

  The woman gives the Jeep a look over. “Nice car. You must have some money. You connected to Camp Fearless?”

  Nate finishes filling up the car and puts the gas hose back on its pump. He takes out two twenty-dollar bills, plus a ten for a tip, and hands them to her. “I’m just passing through. I heard there was a young girl missing from the camp. Did you know about that?”

  She nods. “I sure did. The police asked me and my husband a ton of questions. They thought we might’ve seen an out-of-towner like you who could’ve abducted the poor thing. Thought he might have stopped to fill up on the way, I guess.” She looks past him into his rear windows and he can’t help but feel she’s looking for the missing girl. “They also wanted to know if we had security cameras.”

  “Is that right? Did you see anyone?” He looks around for cameras and can see two. They look modern and out of place on the old gas station building.

  She stares at him with suspicion in her eyes. “Are you with the police?”

  She pronounces it po-leece and then spits on the ground. Nate smiles. “No. I’m not a fan of the police any more than you. Which is why I’ve been asked by the girl’s family to do their job for them.”
>
  She suddenly holds her hand out. “I’m Jeanie-May. You’ll want to come in and take a seat for what I’ve got to tell you.”

  “Nate.” He shakes her hand and follows her into the store, looking around for Brody on the way. There’s no sign of him.

  “We only got cameras after the girl went missing. Didn’t want a repeat occurrence and the cops said we were in a prime position to record any child abductor driving in or out of town. Not that they’ll help the Lucas girl. Too late for her.” Jeanie-May takes a seat behind the counter and pours them both a coffee from the oldest-looking coffee machine Nate has ever seen. The mug she hands him is dirty, but he doesn’t want to be rude, so he takes a sip. It tastes fine.

  “You know that camp has been going for fifteen years without incident,” she says. “No kids have ever got hurt and it’s done wonders for the businesses around here. We get families stopping by on their way in and out of town, when they’re picking their kids up or dropping them off. We buy in extra snacks and magazines ready for them every summer. There’s even rumors of a McDonald’s being built nearby one day.”

  “Would that be a good thing?” asks Nate.

  “Oh sure. Because that will bring other fast-food joints to town and then we’ll finally grow. We’ve been too small for too long. We’re forgotten out here in Shadow Falls and the name plays a big part in it. I keep telling the mayor we need to modernize. Change our name. I thought the summer camp would help, but it’s taking a while.”

  Nate isn’t really sure why she’s telling him this and he doesn’t want to waste his time, so he moves things along. “You’ve obviously lived here a long time and you must meet all sorts of locals and visitors in your line of work. Is there anyone around town you would suspect of abducting a child?”

  She takes a deep breath and leans back in her seat. “There’s a young man who works at the camp. Big mop of ginger hair. He has a brunette girlfriend who dresses like a hooker. But a cute one, you know; before the meth takes hold.”

  Nate assumes she’s talking about Josh and Kat, but he’s not met many of the other staff yet. Maybe there’s more than one redhead with a hot brunette girlfriend.

  “What about him?”

  Just as she’s about to open her mouth, an old man walks out from a room behind the counter. “Jeanie-May, what are you doing? I’ve told you before not to spread rumors.” He looks at Nate and nods. “You take what she says with a pinch of salt, mister. She watches too many crime shows and gets reality mixed up with make-believe. It doesn’t help that she suffers with that dementia.”

  Nate realizes Jeanie-May isn’t as good a witness as he first thought. But whether she’s fully aware of things around here or not, she must have picked up on something about Josh for her to mention him.

  He puts his mug on the counter. “No problem at all. I should probably be going anyway. Thanks for the gas and the coffee.” He turns to leave.

  “Hey!” says Jeanie-May. “You didn’t pay for your gas. Are you trying to rip us off or what?”

  Nate knows he paid her but he doesn’t argue. “My mistake.” He pulls out another fifty bucks and hands it to her. “You folks take care.”

  He feels the man’s eyes on his back as he walks out the door. The sunlight dazzles him before he puts his sunglasses on, and once his eyes adjust to the brightness, he’s surprised to see Brody sitting next to the car, ready to go for another drive.

  thirty

  The office of Dr. Pamela Jarvis

  Pamela stops at one small bourbon. The last thing she needs right now is people smelling liquor on her breath. She can’t allow herself to fall apart under pressure, because today is a crucial day for her career and she has to remain professional. But she’s fully aware it could be the last day she ever gets to work as a therapist.

  There’s a knock at her door, making her jump. Her nerves are shot. Before she can tell whoever it is to go away, the door opens and Stephen pops his head in. “The police keep calling. They want an update as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, I know that, Stephen. If you stop bothering me, I’ll get through it a lot quicker.”

  He backs away and closes the door, leaving her feeling horrible. She can’t worry about his feelings right now, though. She has to read on. There’s so much to get through that she finds herself skim-reading some of the entries, like where her client talks about how difficult it is not to pick up her dead children’s favorite foods at the grocery store by mistake, and how she has to cross the street if she sees the children’s friends coming toward her.

  Suddenly she notices a change in the handwriting. She flicks back through the journal, noticing that the everyday updates—about extended family, what her husband did at work, what the neighbors are up to—are all written neatly and with care. The more serious entries she’s read so far, and the next unread passage, are barely legible; squeezed together and frantic. She can feel the strokes through the back of the page, as if the writer was pressing harder, desperately trying to get the words out quicker than her hand could keep up with her thoughts. Clearly the rushed, forced entries were the difficult days. Pamela takes a deep breath and reads on.

  Next week is the one-year anniversary of Thomas and Susie’s deaths, and I just feel numb. Summer has hit us and I think I prefer winter now. I never thought I’d ever feel that way. In winter I can stay in bed, claiming to be cold but really hiding from the world. I don’t leave the house much anymore. Not unless I really have to. When I do go out, I prefer the cover of darkness, where no one can see me coming and going.

  I’m pretty certain my husband is having sex with another woman, and I don’t blame him. I’m certainly not available to him. The thought of his touch leaves me cold, inside and out, but I know he’ll never leave me. We’re bound together until the very end because of our shared grief. We created our beautiful children together and we buried them together. Nothing will ever change that horrifying truth. It’s a macabre bond we’ll always have.

  I should stop writing. I’m having bad thoughts again. Maybe keeping this journal isn’t good for me after all. Sometimes it’s better to keep the words inside so as not to give them life. Because with life, they grow.

  Pamela closes the journal and rubs her eyes. This is the first time a client’s thoughts have made her want to cry. The awful realization hits her that she can’t tell whether she’s upset for her client or for what this journal means for her own fate.

  Thirty-One

  Madison manages to speak to some of the camp counselors while Nate’s out. She thinks she might have pissed him off with her comments about Kat. She’s still getting used to relying on someone else and realizes she needs to be less of an asshole from now on. She can’t afford to lose this job or his help.

  In a way, things were easier in prison. She learned quickly that you really couldn’t trust anyone, no matter how much you swapped stories about your family to pass the time, or how well you got on. Everyone inside was in survival mode and they would always choose saving their own skin over anyone else’s. On the outside, it’s different. You have to trust some people in order to survive, otherwise you’d spend your life alone in your house, in a self-imposed incarceration. If she wants to live again, she needs to trust someone like Nate. She just hopes her police instincts haven’t dulled while she’s been inside, as she would hate to find out she’s put her faith in the wrong person.

  She sits on the grass near the lake, watching the water gently lapping. Sunny days like these make it hard to believe anything bad could ever happen. She brushes some flies away and pulls out her phone. Once Nate left she had asked Kat to give her the phone number for the parents of Lizzie Buchanan, one of the girls who were swimming with Jenny on the night she disappeared. Madison knows it’s important to hear what happened directly from someone who was there, but the parents collected both girls a couple of days after the disappearance, despite there being over a month left of camp. She doesn’t blame them; she would do the same if Owen were stayi
ng here.

  When a woman answers, Madison explains who she is and why she’s calling. “The family have asked me to investigate, and I need to speak to your daughter to hear from her what happened that night.”

  After a brief hesitation, Lizzie’s mother agrees. “She’s already told the police what happened, so I don’t know how much help talking to her will be. Hold on while I go get her.”

  Madison is relieved. She thought she might have a battle on her hands. She watches Becky, the girl from the cafeteria, walk past. She’s alone and carrying some notebooks and pens. She gives Madison a wave as she passes.

  “Hello?” says a tentative voice on the other end of the phone.

  “Hi, Lizzie. My name’s Madison. Did your mom explain what I’m calling about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great. Could you just explain to me what happened when you first got to the lake, before you all went swimming?”

  There’s silence for a few seconds, then, “She stole my candy and Jessie’s bandanna.”

  Madison stands up. “Who did? Jenny?”

  “Yeah. None of us went swimming. I did tell the policeman.”

  She realizes Morgan isn’t being as transparent with them as he pretended. “So what happened then?”

  “I guess we saw that Jenny was about to go swimming, so we followed her. We wanted our things back but she’d taken her backpack with her so we couldn’t get them while she was gone from the cabin. She always carried it around with her and it was always full. I don’t know what else she kept in there, but I was pretty sure she had our things because we couldn’t find them.”

  “And what did you do when you caught up with her?”

  “We just asked for our things back. She said she didn’t have them and to leave her alone.”