Last Seen Alive

by Carlene Thompson

  Chyna could feel her face reddening even in the dark. Her life had been different for so long, sometimes she was able to forget she wasn’t like everyone else. It had been nine years since she’d been out in their cabin cruiser, with her parents and Ned, and they’d traveled down the Ohio River with neighbors who owned a cruiser almost identical to theirs.

  The adults had pulled both boats near the bank, keeping them running as they yelled back and forth about where they wanted to go next. None of them had seen seven-year-old Chyna, hot and bored, slip out of her life jacket and go to the edge of the boat to look at the opposite bank where she’d spotted a traveling carnival. Suddenly the neighbors, slightly drunk, had pulled away from the bank, banging into the Greers’ boat The Chyna Sea and knocking Chyna into the river. Only eleven-year-old Ned had heard her scream and dived in after her. The boat pulled her under it and she opened her eyes in terror to see the razor-sharp propeller slicing through the water only a couple of inches from her face just before she banged her head on the bottom of the boat and everything went dark.

  Ned, a remarkable swimmer for his age, became the hero of the day when he surfaced with his unconscious sister in his arms. Chyna hadn’t returned to full consciousness for several hours. A week later, Chyna had begun to have flashes of events that would come in the future and of things that had happened in the past, things she could not possibly have learned about by any normal means. Sometimes she even knew what people were thinking while they were saying just the opposite.

  The flashes had been vague at first, only slightly more clear than the “tingles” she’d felt before the accident. As she aged, they became stronger, clearer. By the time she was thirteen, she realized she was frightening people. It was then she had begun lying, declaring vociferously that she no longer had “spooky” thoughts. Only occasionally did she slip in front of Zoey, from whom she’d never been able to keep a secret.

  “Zoe, you’ve never mentioned my visions or the voices to anyone else, have you?” Chyna asked, suddenly anxious about what people thought of her.

  “No! Oh, I did a long time ago, but not after you made me promise not to tell anyone, not even my mom. I’d be thrilled if I had ESP, but I know it bothers you.”

  “If you really think I have it, why don’t you believe my bad feeling about tonight?”

  Zoey looked down at the ground. “Because nothing says you’re always right. Sometimes you get being careful mixed up with having a bad vibe.” Zoey rushed on. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t usually listen to you, and I feel superlucky that you’re my best friend. You’re my lucky charm. That’s why I got us these four-leaf-clover necklaces last year.” Zoey reached up and touched hers on its delicate gold chain. “Are you wearing yours?”

  Chyna pulled hers from beneath the neck of her T-shirt. “I never take it off.”

  “That means I’ll be safe forever. I’ve got on my four-leaf clover and I’m with the coolest friend anyone ever had.”

  Chyna blushed but said nothing, not wanting Zoey to know how much the compliment had touched her. Although many people would have said Zoey and Chyna couldn’t be more different outwardly, inwardly something linked them that Chyna sensed was stronger than blood. She’d never told Zoey how she felt, but she was certain Zoey knew and felt the same way. What would I do if Zoey ever went away? Chyna thought. What would I do if I never saw her again?

  Suddenly Zoey stood on her tiptoes and said excitedly, ’There’s the lake! The gazebo is right in front of us.” She pointed to a fanciful wooden structure sitting on a tiny island in the middle of the lake and approached by a narrow wooden bridge. “I can see him inside, waiting for me! I won’t be longer than thirty minutes; I promise.” Chyna opened her mouth, but Zoey cut her off. “I won’t be out of your sight and I’ll be fine. Thanks for coming, Chyna. Hasta la vista!”

  “Vaya con Dios,” Chyna returned softly, although she really wanted to shout, Please don’t go!

  She stood until she saw Zoey cross the bridge and enter the gazebo. The guy stood up, and they hugged. Chyna watched as they sat down on the bench. The light from the moon on the water wasn’t strong enough for her to make out the features of Zoey’s heartthrob, but Chyna saw their faces

  come together. Ah, the passionate kiss, she thought. The “how do we get along without each other when you leave?” feeling that would probably last about a week at most.

  You’re jealous, Chyna thought. She’d had two dates all summer, unlike Ned, who usually had at least three girlfriends at one time. Always they found out about one another. An explosion of broken hearts ensued, resulting in a barrage of phone calls that set Chyna’s parents wild. They would yell at Ned and things would quiet down for a few weeks before the next cycle began. Still, Chyna envied her brother’s popularity.

  Chyna yawned with such ferocity she thought she might unhinge her jaw. She wished she hadn’t already taken her antihistamine pills. On summer evenings, her nose stopped up, her throat tickled, and she sneezed uncontrollably without them, but the medicine always made her sleepy and she’d already been tired from the long day at the barbecue.

  Chyna sat down on the grass. After five minutes, her eyelids began to droop. She fought a losing battle with sleep. Soon her head sagged forward and almost instantly she tilted over onto the cool grass, peacefully unconscious.

  “Chyna, wake up!” Chyna’s nose tickled. Her body ached and she was damp with dew. She opened her eyes wider and looked up to see her mother standing over her as she still lay on the grass beside the road leading down from her house. “Where is Zoey?” Vivian Greer demanded.

  Chyna jumped up, instantly alert. The sun, dimmed by mist, rose from the east. It was morning, she realized, ignoring her mother’s loud, angry questions. Chyna began yelling for Zoey. Her voice sounded small, lost in the trees and the undergrowth between the house and the lake—the lake where Zoey had been going to meet her boyfriend.

  Fear clutched Chyna’s heart like an icy hand. Zoey was gone. Gone in the night, gone in the mist.

  Even six hours later, when the police, Ned, her parents,

  and a dozen friends and volunteers tramped through the woods looking for the girl while the police talked about dragging the lake, Chyna had known with sickening certainty she would never see Zoey again.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Twelve Years Later

  1

  Chyna Greer stood on the bank of Lake Manicora. The late October day was gray, the sun almost white, and the lake bank covered with faded, damp leaves brought down by a recent storm. She drew the belt of her black raincoat tighter. “Lake Manicora,” she said aloud. “A manicora—a being with the head of a woman and a body covered in scales.” She sighed. “I don’t know who named this lake, but it doesn’t seem they were in a cheerful mood that day.”

  Michelle, sixty pounds of husky dog with yellow Labrador mixed in her lineage, looked like she was frowning in concentration as she gazed up at Chyna. She seemed to absorb the information about the lake’s name, then went back to warily studying the cold, dark water.

  “Enjoying the day?”

  Chyna looked up to see a tall black-haired man approach her. He wore jeans, a brown suede jacket, and a tentative smile. He also limped slightly and leaned on a walking stick. Her heart jumped at the sight of him just as it had done when she was sixteen. “Hey, Chyna, it’s me—”

  “Scott Kendrick,” Chyna supplied quickly, too quickly, she immediately thought.

  “Well, I must not have aged so much you didn’t recognize me.” He smiled, then looked at the dog. “And who’s this?”

  “Michelle. I got her last year at the pound.”

  Scott drew toward the dog slowly, stooped down with a slight grunt as he bent his right leg, and put out his hand for her to smell. Chyna immediately noticed healing scratches on his hand and wrist. Michelle sniffed, then licked his hand, and Scott smiled, showing even white teeth against a fading tan. The smile was nice, but it didn’t have the rakish quality Chyn
a remembered from his younger years.

  “She’s beautiful,” Scott said.

  “She’d thank you if she could. I was lucky to find her.” Chyna scuffed one of her black boots through a pile of sodden, molding leaves. It seemed to her autumn had gained an early grip on the town, although she hadn’t been home in October for years.

  “Maybe you don’t care to talk about your mother right now, but I want you to know I saw her last week,” Scott said gently, still petting Michelle absently as if he didn’t quite know what to do with himself in this situation. “She looked happy and healthy. In fact, she stopped by the house with a cherry cheesecake. I couldn’t believe she remembered my favorite dessert.” He finally stood up, all rangy six foot two of him, leaning on the walking stick again. He’d always been slim, but he had the look of someone who’d recently been ill and lost weight. “She was a close friend of Mom’s, but she was always especially nice to me, too.”

  To her surprise, Chyna had not cried one time in the thirty-odd hours since she’d learned of her mother’s plunge down the stairs in the Greer home, a fall that had broken her neck. When Chyna had received the call from her brother, Ned, with the news, she’d simply packed a few clothes, stuffed a frightened Michelle in her carrier, taken the first flight out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Charleston, West Virginia, then rented a car and driven, arriving in Black Willow at dawn.

  “The autopsy showed that Mom had suffered several minor or what they call ’silent’ attacks and then a final, fatal attack. That last attack must be what caused her fall down the stairs. I didn’t even know she had heart trouble,” Chyna said,

  looking back at the lake, partly to hide the fact that she wasn’t tearful. “And here I am a medical resident.”

  “She probably didn’t want you to worry about it.”

  Chyna nodded. “Not even Ned knew Mom was sick. I’m not sure if she was getting treatment. She always avoided seeing doctors. You can imagine how that drove me nuts, because I’m in the medical profession.”

  “I guess it would.” Chyna noticed the shadows and deepened wrinkles around Scott’s dark eyes. He didn’t look as if he’d been getting much sleep. “But I want you to know how sorry I am.”

  “Thank you.” Chyna thought she sounded formal and insincere, but something inside her refused to let her emotions show, even in her voice. “So what brings you out here on this dreary day?” she asked abruptly, forcing herself to look directly into Scott’s beautifully sculpted face and stop acting like a stiff, backward child, which was exactly how she felt.

  “I didn’t really want to come out. I just needed to think. To be alone.”

  “Oh.” Chyna pulled on Michelle’s leash. “Sorry to interrupt you. We’ll be on our way—”

  “I didn’t really mean alone,” Scott said instantly. “I meant alone from Irma Vogel, who’s been helping out ever since I came home.”

  “I remember her,” Chyna said. “When I was a teenager, she worked at our house. General cleaning. A little cooking. I always got the feeling she didn’t like me. She left when I was about sixteen.” She’d left right after Zoey’s disappearance, but Chyna didn’t want to refer to that depressing incident.

  “It probably wasn’t you she didn’t like. It was your looks. Irma’s no beauty and she’s never very friendly to girls who are pretty.” Scott smiled, but Chyna kept her face down-turned, a bit taken aback by the low-keyed compliment. “I think she’s just bounced from job to job all of her adult life. I know she means well, but she empties the ashtray every time I smoke a cigarette, grabs any magazine I lay down for three seconds and puts it in the rack, and tries to feed me

  every twenty minutes. While she’s working, she sings in an indescribably awful voice. She frequently lets me know that she’s still single at forty. And a virgin. I never know what I’m supposed to say about that last piece of information.”

  “Immediately propose.”

  “I guess so, but for some reason, I’m not tempted. I wish I could get rid of her, but I don’t want to hurt her feelings. Besides, I guess I have needed some help the last few weeks, although not nearly as much as Irma is offering.”

  “I’m surprised your parents didn’t come home when you did,” Chyna said.

  “They wanted to, but they’ve been planning this cruise to the Hawaiian Islands for twenty years. They were already three days out in the ocean when I called them about the … accident. I told them I didn’t want them to come home now and Dad could tell I wasn’t just being noble or polite. Frankly, I’d gone over the details with investigators so much, I couldn’t bear talking about it anymore for a while, and you know Mom is like a pit bull when she wants information. I think I have Dad to thank for insisting they continue the trip. They’ll be home next week, though. Then I’ll have to go through a complete description again.”

  “Oh.” Chyna felt absolutely stumped when it came to saying something comforting. After all, what simple words could comfort Scott, who had been piloting a jet that had crashed in Indiana five weeks ago, killing seventy-two people? Her mother had written to her that he’d been cleared of all blame, but he was deeply depressed and thinking of giving up his career as a commercial jet pilot. After over a week in the hospital, he was now on leave, recuperating from the wounds he’d suffered in the crash. “I’m sorry, Scott.” Chyna colored, not knowing whether she should bring up the crash or merely leave the disaster unmentioned.

  He jammed his left hand in his jacket pocket and stared up at the dismal sky. “I’d planned a trip home soon. I just didn’t expect it to be under these circumstances. And the house is depressing. It’s more like a museum than a home.”

  He smiled, but his incredibly dark eyes remained sad. His

  gaze used to be confident, just charmingly shy of being cocky. She wondered if it would ever regain that look. The wind picked up a bit, blowing his black hair across his forehead. Chyna hadn’t seen Scott for five years, but she spotted wrinkles above his eyebrows and the purple-yellow remains of a bad bruise. He also had a healing laceration down his high right cheekbone and another along his left jawline. Both bore thin Steri-Strips, and Chyna guessed that stitches had been removed recently.

  “Do you mind if I walk with you?” he asked. “It might warm us up.”

  “Good idea. I’m afraid I’d gone into a trance standing here. Michelle is probably bored to death, especially with all these exotic smells around her to explore.”

  “Exotic? The rotting leaves at Lake Manicora?”

  “To her they’re exotic. She’s used to the desert. Or rather, looking at the desert,” Chyna said as they started out slowly, like two invalids. “She doesn’t like to walk in the sand.”

  “Do you like New Mexico?” Scott asked.

  “Most of the time. Occasionally the heat gets to me, but I’m usually inside in the hospital.”

  “Ah, that’s right. What are you now? First-year resident?”

  “Second year.”

  “And you probably know as much as a third year. Or more.” He gave her that pleasant smile that never quite reached his dark eyes. “What do you plan to specialize in?”

  “Pediatric oncology.”

  “Children with cancer? My God, Chyna, you’re a lot stronger than I am if you can face that every day.”

  “I’m not there yet, Scott. I might find out I’m not strong enough, either.”

  “You will be. I have confidence that you can do whatever you set your considerable mind to.” He smiled slightly. “And speaking of children, how are your niece and nephew?”

  “Kate and Ian are fine. Ned says they’re excited about trick or treat tomorrow night. I’m sure their mom is great at diverting them from dwelling on their grandmother’s death. Beverly is a born mother, even though at five and three the

  kids are really too young to let a death in the family ruin trick-or-treat night anyway.”

  Michelle began sniffing around Scott’s legs, and Chyna glanced down at the object of her curiosity
. ’That’s a beautiful walking stick you have, Scott.”

  Scott looked slightly chagrined. “I could not stand using a crutch anymore, so I grabbed this at the house.” He held it up. “It’s one of Mom’s antiques.”

  Chyna looked at the dark hardwood stick with its ivory head and frowned. “I can’t quite make out the carving on the ivory.”

  “It’s Henry the Eighth.” Scott flipped the stick over. “The Tower of London is carved on the other side of the head. Mom would probably rather I wasn’t using it, although right now I can get away with just about anything.” He sighed. “It feels good being home, though. I never thought I’d say that about Black Willow, but for once, it’s seemed like a haven. I’m afraid I’ll never want to leave again.”

  When Chyna was growing up, she’d felt connected to this place, maybe because her ancestors had lived in or near Black Willow since the mid-nineteenth century. After Zoey disappeared, though, and the police had finally stopped looking for her day and night and even unsuccessfully dragged the lake, Chyna longed to escape this town and never come back.

  She’d left a year later for college and been shocked to realize she yearned for the town. She’d tried to suppress the yearning, tried to obliterate it, but she never could. The pull of Black Willow and the pull of the lost Zoey were too strong. Still, Chyna had managed to confine her trips to Christmas. She couldn’t bear to look at the lake in the summer when it appeared just as it had the night when Zoey had seemed to walk off the face of the earth.

  “You’ll want to leave,” Chyna told Scott. “If you don’t leave, you can’t be a commercial pilot.”

  “That’s the problem, Chyna. I’m not sure I want to be a pilot anymore.”

  “But it’s what you’ve always wanted to do!” Chyna burst out. “You told me that when I was just a teenager.”