But it was no use. He caught himself staring out the window at the emerging silhouette of Luke and Whitney’s house. The house where Joy should be safely sleeping. His mind raced and his spirit felt irritable and unsettled. He stood up and paced, tried to sit and focus on the page, then popped up again, slapped the book shut, and tossed it onto another chair. “Forget this,” he muttered out loud, and headed upstairs.
Yanking out drawers as though his anxiety were their fault, he pulled on jeans, a sweatshirt, and then his hiking boots. As he moved back through the hallway, he saw the light on under his mother’s bedroom door, and he knocked softly.
Her voice sounded distant and slow as she responded, “Come in.”
Cracking the door, he saw her seated cross-legged on the floor, her back straight and her head turned to him, but her eyes were slightly glazed. On the floor in front of her a candle burned, and smoke rose from the tiny metal brazier that she used to burn herbs and incense. A balsam pine fragrance met his senses; it was mixed with something that cleared his sinuses and head, something like camphor. It reminded him to take a deep breath and helped him to do it at the same time.
Uncomfortable with both the thought and the question, Joshua asked, “Are you trying to see something?”
She nodded.
“And, uh . . . ?”
Greer shook her head sadly. “Nothing useful. Remember I told you that I gave her the bracelet to try to bind myself to her?” It was Joshua’s turn to nod. “It seemed to work for you, briefly at least, and all I can sense is that she’s still in danger, and the death omens are growing stronger, closer. I don’t mean to frighten you more than you already are, but since you seem to already . . .” She trailed off as though, sensing his distress, she thought better of what she was about to say, and then changed the subject. “You’re going out?” she asked, seeing that he was dressed.
“I can’t just sit here. I’m gonna go for a hike,” he told her.
Concern was chased across her face by resignation and understanding. “All right. But be careful. There’s still a lot of water in that creek.”
“I know. I’ll be back in an hour or so. If I just sit here I’ll lose my mind.” He muttered under his breath, “If I haven’t already.”
Desperate for solace, Joshua plunged out into the cold predawn. The light, though still shrouded, was growing steadily now, and he had no trouble finding his way along the first part of the access road. He went past the spot where the footbridge was washed out and paused to look at the two houses that sat, isolated and cut off, across the ten-foot-wide rushing water, then continued on, the chill air stinging his lungs as the road steepened slightly and he refused to slow his rapid pace. He passed the last house on the road, which sat on the dry side of the river, silent and still, then headed onto the trailhead, pushing himself fast and hard along the rocky path that was shadowed by the overhanging trees.
But it was only five minutes before he met the first crossing. Joshua stopped and regarded the angry water. In the absence of light its depth was incalculable, and its rippled, iridescent black surface surged purposefully over large rocks that would normally afford an easy crossing. Remembering the last time he had risked it, he felt a shiver slide up his spine, and he cursed softly, foiled by his own reluctance to pursue the small peace he might find in the depth of the woods.
Backtracking to look for another way to cross the river, he came to a break in the underbrush that led steeply up out of the canyon and away from the water. He stood at the base of it and peered up. It looked like a trail, maybe just an animal trail that switch-backed up an unremitting slope. Needing the punishment, he started up.
The trail went on for about ten minutes, almost straight up, bearing slightly left, back the way he had come, but high above it. The way was rutted and crumbling from the recent rain. He was sweating. His throat felt raw and his legs burned by the time he reached the top and looked back.
He was standing on one of the firebreak roads. The sun had not yet crested over the higher hills beyond him, but the night had lost its hold here, and the day was a few breaths away. It was that moment of promise in which Joshua could feel the unbounded possibilities of the unborn day. He remembered his mother saying that his dad had always believed in the interconnectedness of all things. Today he did too. Anything could happen in this day. He felt that if he could just find the thread he needed and grab hold of it, then he could pick freely from the infinite possibilities and instinctively choose the right path.
Looking down across the canyon, he saw the break in the greenery where his house sat, and he could make out the corner of the roof of the Whitehorses’. Following the curve of the creek, he could tell where the next houses were, and he guessed that almost directly below him was the spot where the road ended and the trail began to snake its way up into the deep canyon.
Throwing his head back, Joshua let out a long, audible sigh of exasperation. “Let me find her,” he whispered to the first thin hint of blue tinting the sky. He waited, but he felt nothing except a cold wind that chilled the sweat against his body. And then with another, quieter sigh he started down the fire road toward what he guessed would be the highway.
He had been walking on the wide, twisting road for only a few minutes, and the black ribbon of highway winding down from the hills had appeared ahead of him when he saw her. Just the outline of the girl—at first he thought it was someone else out hiking—but even as his brain tried to force a rational explanation he knew that there wasn’t one.
The sun had come up, and Joshua was walking almost straight into it. The figure of the girl was not on the ground, not far away or close by, just . . . there. He stopped short and watched her. She held up one finger and spun it, then pointed to her ear, as though he should listen. At that moment a very loud motorcycle rounded a distant curve, and the sound carried abrasively through the wind-brushed air, growing as it came closer and passed, blocked from sight by trees. He didn’t understand. Was he supposed to listen to the motorcycle or something else? Once again she held up a finger and spun it. And then, moving directly in front of the rising sun, she vanished.
Joshua rubbed his eyes; the sunspot burned brightly behind his closed lids. He racked his brain. What did that mean? He considered the motion she had made. A spinning motion.
A freezing paralysis crept over Joshua’s neck and shoulders. And the hair on the back of his neck prickled like the hundred feet of a centipede. Slowly he turned around and looked behind him.
He was facing a tree: an old and gnarled oak tree. It had been through a fire; part of it was blackened, and there was a large, gaping space where a huge branch had fallen off years before. He had passed it looking at the healthy side, and it had blended into the hundreds of other oaks and shrubs that covered these miles of park. But from this angle it was clearly the tree from his dream.
Feeling as though he were trapped in a trance, Joshua moved toward the tree and walked around underneath it. He could see nothing, no footprints, no notes or scraps of fabric, nothing that might be helpful to a detective trying to find a missing teenager.
Joshua felt suddenly very alone and vulnerable. With a growing sense of unease, he moved away from the tree and ran down the remaining part of the fire road toward the highway, which curved and thinned as he came toward the bottom. There was a chained swing bar in front of it, just like the one near his house. He climbed quickly over it and emerged onto the lip of the highway. He looked around to determine where he had come out and was surprised to see the entrance to his road only a short distance away. It was so seldom used that from the street he would never have known this was a road entrance. Joshua had thought it was some kind of forest service area.
He started toward the road that would take him easily back to his house and suddenly he stopped.
It was all rushing at him: the oak tree, this spot, that morning. He spun around in place and there it was: the bench, the school bus stop. Was that what Sarah was trying to show him? The place where Joy
had disappeared? Because that, at least, made sense.
This was the last place he had seen Joy.
Chapter 46
Leah glanced at the clock on the wall in the coffee shop. Seven a.m. She was nervous; she’d arrived almost a half an hour early and spent the time chatting with Jenny when she hadn’t been serving her early customers, a steady stream of men and women dressed in well-worn jeans and quilted flannel shirts, smelling sweetly of the hay and molasses in the oats that they had fed their horses before tending to their own needs.
She had selected a table that was away from the window but where she could still see out to the parking area. She had no idea what she might say to Terry when she came. All she knew was that she would do what she could.
Jenny seemed to sense her nervousness and suggested decaf when Leah requested a second cup of coffee. “You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m, uh, meeting somebody here. It’s a little strange.” She vacillated and then dove into an explanation. “Actually, it’s my ex-husband’s new girlfriend. She asked to talk to me, and I said I would.”
Jenny cocked her head to one side. Leah felt uncomfortably as though the pretty cinnamon brown eyes understood far more than she had explained, and she was relieved when the door opened and Dario entered.
“Morning!” Jenny sang out. “You’re here early.”
“You’re telling me.” Dario’s naturally deep, husky voice sounded an octave lower. “I had to come and let the plumber in; he’s got to fix a leak in the main water line, and I want it done before we open.” A smaller-model motorcycle that sounded as though it had contracted the flu sputtered and coughed its way into the parking lot, drawing his attention. “That would be him now. That’s lucky.”
“Yeah,” Jenny agreed, “good timing.”
“No, I mean it’s lucky he’s here on time or I would have had to kill him.”
Jenny and Leah both looked out the picture window at Army climbing off his bike. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea,” Jenny said, raising her eyebrows. “From the looks of him, you might not be the first to try it.”
“You’re right; I wouldn’t be,” Dario said flatly, then turned to Leah. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” she returned, but could think of nothing else to say. She envied Jenny’s easy, gregarious manner. “How’s Greer?”
Dario and Jenny both stopped and looked at Leah. “Have you talked to her in the last couple of days?” Dario asked her.
“Uh, no.”
“You should give her a call. I know she’s been thinking about you.” Dario smiled gently, turned to Jenny, and said, “Save me.”
“Let me help you out.” Jenny smiled at him. “How about a papa latte? Three shots of espresso.”
While Dario eagerly agreed, Leah wondered to herself why Greer would have been thinking of her. She felt surprised, and oddly honored. She thought of Greer’s unusual prediction that they would be friends and felt a quivering that it might be true.
Dario went out with his liquid jet fuel and met the waiting Army; they disappeared into the salon next door. A couple of moments later, as Leah sat watching the passing traffic, she saw Vince’s bright yellow Ducati rocket up the street, slow, and then pass. She suppressed a shiver that he might have come in and found her and Terry there together. Relieved that he hadn’t stopped in, she leaned back.
The Ducati returned, cruising in from the opposite direction and parking across the lot from the shop. Leah looked around, wondering where she could go and hide. There was a restroom, but it was occupied. Shrinking back against the banquette, she held up her newspaper in front of her face and watched Vince outside. He sauntered forward without removing his helmet, and stopped by Army’s bike. She saw him look around, then take something out of his pocket and slip it into the saddlebag on the side nearest her. Then he crossed back to his bike, started it, and pulled away. Leah exhaled. But what the hell was that? Had Vince planted something on Army’s bike, or was it a delivery of some kind? Was the plumber involved with the drugs?
But before she had much time to muse on theories, a small Toyota pulled into the lot, and she recognized Terry getting out. Leah put down her paper, straightened her sweater, and tried to look casual and friendly as the young woman came in and approached her table.
“Hi, I’m glad you made it. Sit down.” Terry looked so shaky that Leah decided not to tell her she had missed Vince by seconds. “You want coffee?”
“Thanks,” Terry said. She seemed relieved to be able to answer a simple question.
Leah waited while the woman went up and got a cup, wincing as Terry mixed in a heavy dollop of cream and three artificial sweeteners. When Terry had sat back down and fidgeted herself through some awkward small talk, she fell quiet and stared down at the murky, mud-colored liquid in her cup. “I guess it must seem strange,” she said at last, “my wanting to talk to you.”
“Not at all,” Leah told her. What was strange was how calm she felt now that the woman was here. It was somehow empowering to be the stronger one, if only by comparison. The other woman’s extreme discomfort made her feel braver, more capable. She’d walked away; she’d survived a violent man. And maybe, just maybe, she could help Terry do the same. Leah felt oddly elated.
“He was different when we first met. Charming, you know?”
Leah nodded; she knew.
“But then he would drink too much, and something else would happen to him. Oh, he’d apologize the next day, cry even, and I’d think, ‘He really feels bad.’ ” She looked up at Leah with eyes like a cornered deer. “I think he needs me. I’m sure I can help him.”
Leah sighed and tried to contain her bubbling fury. “You can’t,” she said as blandly as she could manage. “He doesn’t want to change; he enjoys it.”
Terry pulled back from the table. “But he always feels so sorry later.”
Leah wondered how far she could go. She knew that it would be difficult not to infuse her own experiences into Terry’s; hers would be different. She knew that the other woman would not want to believe her, even if she knew that every word Leah spoke was the truth. “In my experience—which is extensive—that part, the being sorry, will go away.” Leah watched Terry retreat from her emotionally and threw out a line to try to pull her back. “Why do you stay with him?” she asked gently.
“He’s great when he’s sober. I mean, he’s handsome, and he’s got money, and he’s so smart, and he can be really sweet. And everybody—” She stopped, and a flush of color suffused her pale face.
“Everybody is impressed by him?” Leah asked softly.
“Well, yeah.”
Leah took a good look at the young woman. She was maybe twenty-one; her clothes and hairstyle suggested that she hadn’t been raised with money or class, much less any kind of sustaining self-image. It wasn’t hard to guess at the reason this girl stayed with a man who abused her: She thought it was the best she could do—that he was above her and she didn’t deserve more.
Leah leaned in and laid her hand on the back of Terry’s. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “If you had a child, a little girl, and Vince treated her the way he treats you, how would you feel?”
She could sense the tendons in Terry’s hand tense as she pressed down hard on the tabletop. Her eyes flickered around the room, as though searching for an escape route, her breath quickening. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” Leah insisted, but delicately. “You wouldn’t allow it. So why are you allowing him to treat you that way? You need to take care of yourself the way you would a child. Wouldn’t your mother want to protect you?”
Terry’s face had hardened, as though suddenly all the elasticity had gone out of it. “I don’t have a mother.”
“Then you have to be your own mother.”
The tears came with an almost violent force. Terry’s face contracted into a silent grimace, and then she covered her mouth with her free hand as the first sob escaped her. Jenny’s
head jerked around from where she was steaming milk, and Leah shook her head slightly to let Jenny know that she should pretend not to notice.
“I . . . can’t . . . get away,” Terry managed to get out in a forced staccato. She took a deep breath in an effort to calm herself, and looked around to see if anyone was watching her. Jenny was feigning ignorance, and the coffee shop was experiencing a merciful momentary lull. “Every time I tell him he needs to change or I’ll go, he laughs and says that he’ll find me.” She looked at Leah with her eyes flooded with tears. “And he does,” she finished in a whisper.
It’s gotten worse, thought Leah. She, at least, had fought back, had had the gumption to walk away in spite of the threats, had gone to stay with her parents, where she would be safe during the worst of it. This girl had nowhere to go, and no one to help her through it. “Can you tell me about the drugs?” Leah asked. Terry’s eyes fluttered to hers; they were filled with terror.
“Okay, okay,” Leah comforted, “I understand. You’re afraid to talk about that, and you don’t have to, but my question is this: Does he use the drugs, and does it get worse when he does?”
Terry looked around the coffeehouse again and then back to Leah. She nodded once in a jerky, secretive way. She seemed incapable of drawing breath.
“Okay. I understand. Just relax a minute, drink some coffee, breathe. We’ll figure something out. The important thing is that you came to talk to me today; that’s a huge step, Terry. I know how much courage it took, believe me,” Leah told her with a smile.
“Because you had to do it?” Terry asked in a tearful voice.
That brought Leah up cold. She felt weak and small all of a sudden. But, drawing on a new kind of courage, she forced herself to say, barely audibly, “No. Because I couldn’t do it.” And in those words she felt a kind of salvation, a release in speaking a truth, no matter how small.
Terry gazed at her for a moment in confusion, and then the understanding that Leah had shared something painful with her softened her eyes and, turning her palm up to meet Leah’s, she squeezed her hand. “Thank you,” she said.
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