The Deepest Roots

by Miranda Asebedo

  She sighs, tossing a dismissive hand. “I don’t know exactly. It was some kind of sports car. Maybe a Camaro? Red. I couldn’t see who was driving it. Probably some high-school boy.” She gestures at Jett as an example.

  “Are you sure it was Mercy?” I ask. “She looked just like the girl in this picture?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was. She was a real tiny little thing. Hard to forget those eyebrows of hers. I’d like to know who waxes them. They were phenomenal.”

  “Could you write down your name and phone number?” I ask her, turning over one of the flyers and holding it out to her. “The police may want to ask you some questions. No one else has seen anything so far.”

  She takes the paper and goes back into the kitchen to get a pen to write down the information.

  My mind is reeling. Why would Mercy have been talking to someone in a sports car? And who was driving it? Sure, Mercy has a thing for Sam Buford, and she might talk to him, but he doesn’t have a sports car. Could it have been Aaron? Did he borrow a car from a friend? I can’t control the fear that seizes my body, making it hard to breathe.

  I thank the woman and snatch the flyer out of her hand. “Let’s go!” I yell at Jett over my shoulder as I jump off the woman’s porch and sprint toward the sidewalk.

  “Hold up!” he calls after me. “Shouldn’t we call it in?”

  “I can run faster than you can dial,” I reply. “Now let’s go!” I finally feel like we have a solid lead on what might have happened to Mercy. But it’s my imagination that tortures me, wondering if Mercy got in the car and was cut into tiny pieces hours later. Or if she’s locked in a closet somewhere. Tied up in a basement. Dead in a ditch.

  God, I hate my brain sometimes.

  We hurry back to the church, Jett rambling on as we go, as if he’s trying to keep me from imagining the worst. “This is good. This is a lead, Rome. The police will find her soon. It’ll be okay. We’ll find her soon.” It’s nearly the same thing over and over until we near the church.

  “But what if we find her and she’s not okay?” I finally ask, the words strangling me even as I speak them. I shouldn’t speak them out loud. It’s probably bad luck, or bad juju, or bad karma.

  “She’ll be okay,” Jett says stoically, his dark eyes meeting my rusty ones. He reaches down and squeezes my hand in his big one. It’s probably the only hand I know that’s as strong or stronger than my Fixer hands, and its warmth is comforting.

  I nod, and it’s a struggle not to let the hot pricks behind my eyes turn into real tears.

  Rick is at the church, speaking with other volunteers who have returned from their rounds. When he sees me, his face lights up. “Anything, Rome?” he asks. Because he knows I’m tenacious, and I won’t quit until I’ve found Mercy.

  “We’ve got a lead, I think,” I tell him. I give him the flyer with the woman’s contact information and repeat what she told us.

  “This is good, Rome,” he says. “The first good lead we’ve had all day.”

  “That’s it?” I clarify, my insides turning to concrete. I’d hoped ours might be the clue that unlocked the case. Not that it might be the only clue we had so far. Finding a sports car is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. It’s nothing. Nothing to go on other than that Mercy might have been forced into someone’s car. And who knows where she went from there. She could be anywhere.

  “It’s a good start, Rome. Don’t lose faith,” Rick says.

  Faith. Faith is something Mercy has. It’s not something I ever had. I understand the functions of gears and pulleys and internal combustion engines. I don’t understand the mechanics of faith.

  I’m scared.

  “Rome,” says a familiar voice behind me.

  I freeze. The voice is the last I expected to hear today, and at the sound of it, my heart leaps into my throat.

  Slowly, I turn.

  And come face-to-face with Lux.

  Twenty-One

  STRANGELY, LUX HASN’T ASKED HER mom to Heal her face. Maybe Tina is too weak to do it, but I want to think that it’s because Lux is finally done keeping secrets. Instead, she’s covered the black eye with foundation. A purplish bruise hides beneath the blush on her cheekbones. Her busted lip is only slightly swollen under her lip gloss. She says my name again, this time a question. “Rome?”

  I make my mouth function like it’s supposed to. “Lux,” is all I get out. I seize her in a hug. I squeeze tight, like I’m afraid she might disappear again if I let go. She tucks her face into my neck and holds on, too.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask when we let go.

  “You said you needed my help,” Lux replies, holding up her phone to show she got my message. She glances at Jett as she begins to steer me away. “Your boyfriend will have to wait. We have things to do.”

  “I’ll go see if I can do anything else for Officer Ruiz,” Jett says with a small nod like he knows that Lux and I need each other most right now.

  Leaning on Mom’s car behind the church, away from the stares of the other volunteers, Lux spills her guts. “Mom wanted us to go stay with Grandma until they’ve arrested Aaron. But they haven’t found him. And Mom’s so freaked that she wouldn’t let me leave the house. But I got your text, so I snuck out. Mom thinks I’m watching TV in the back bedroom. As if I could ever just sit around with Mercy missing.”

  “Do you think Aaron has something to do with Mercy disappearing?” I ask, guilt nearly ripping me to shreds.

  “I don’t know,” Lux admits. “But he’s sure it was us who messed with his truck, so maybe Mercy just happened to get in his way. No one’s seen him anywhere around Evanston, though.”

  “I talked to a woman who saw Mercy talking to someone in a red sports car.”

  “Well, Aaron would have been in his truck. It was fixed that afternoon. Before he came home and . . .” She trails off.

  I want to shout, to scream that I hate Aaron, and that I’ll do everything I can to hurt him like he’s hurt Lux, but I know that’s not what she needs right now. She needs me to listen.

  Lux swallows, takes a deep breath, her voice trembling a little. “We’re building a case against him. After Mom realized he’d been touching me, that he almost raped me, she sort of snapped. The police are saying she’s a victim . . . that she’s not at fault. I was scared that maybe . . . maybe they’d think she was just as much at fault as him.”

  It’s painful to hear, but it’s also the first good news I’ve had all day. “So they’ll prosecute him?” I ask.

  “If we’re willing to press charges,” Lux says, her voice getting stronger. “Mom says she wants to. She’s sorry she wasn’t stronger before, that she ever let him stay after he hit me. She was scared about being alone, about not being able to make it without him.”

  “That’s good,” I tell her. “That’s really good.”

  “You’ll probably have to teach me how to live without cable, though.”

  “Yeah, probably. There are these things called books, you know. I can show you how to read them. You can kill hours that way. Or, hell, you could even get a job.”

  “Don’t get crazy, Rome.”

  I hug Lux again, unable to express how relieved I am to have her by my side again.

  “Mercy should be here for this,” Lux says when we let go of each other.

  “So let’s find her, then,” I reply. Lux opens the passenger door and I circle the car to the driver’s side and get in. I wish I had the Mach so we could drive something faster than Mom’s Focus. And then it all seems very clear. “A red sports car. Someone talking to Mercy. What if it was someone in the Mach?”

  Lux agrees, buckling her seat belt. “Maybe Garrett sold it to someone, but she walked right up to it, automatically thinking it was you. Or maybe it was Garrett driving, and she thought she could negotiate getting the car back for you.”

  I hit the gas and we head for Cottonwood Hollow. The thought of Mercy alone with Garrett now scares me. I recall the last ti
me I saw him at the gas station. Where’s your pretty girlfriends? The man-eater and the little Finder girl?

  I can feel all the little pieces clicking together, the tiny parts that make up the whole. “Lux, the diary.”

  “What?” Lux asks, rolling down the window so that the air rushes in, tangling our hair.

  “The diary. It was in my room. We thought I brought it to school, but maybe it was taken even before I left the trailer. The morning after I showed it to you, Garrett came for the rent. And he looked through the house, saying he needed to see if anything should be repaired before he put it up for rent again. And he went through my room. It pissed him off that I’d painted it without asking.”

  “You think he took Emmeline Remington’s diary? Why? How would he even know what it was, let alone that you had it?”

  “He’s a Remington, right? I mean, he’s always bragged he was related to the original Remingtons—Emmeline and her loser husband. But if he was telling the truth, his great-great-great-grandwhatever might’ve told his kids that there was a hidden dowry chest somewhere on the land. The day of the tornado, when we found that box, what if he saw it and figured we’d found something of Emmeline’s? Something that might lead him to the dowry chest?”

  “If he read the diary,” Lux says, “he knows it’s all real, and not just some family legend. That chest has the deed to the eighty acres, not to mention all the other good stuff like the gold bar.”

  “Yeah, and he’s in real estate. Yesterday, Flynn told me that Garrett’s business is going belly-up. He’s about to lose everything over some bad real-estate investments he made in Evanston.”

  “So you think he read the diary and thought the deed was in Emmeline’s house somewhere? Like he could find it and claim it since he’s a Remington? How much would that be worth?”

  I shrug. “The Truett farm went for four grand an acre.”

  Lux’s mouth falls open. “So that piece of paper is worth . . . what, something like three hundred and twenty thousand dollars? And that’s not counting the gold and silver.”

  “Probably enough to save his business.”

  Lux shakes her head. “That’s who went through the homestead before us. We were there looking for the dowry chest, or some kind of clue. And so was Garrett.” Lux gestures with her hands like she’s strangling him. “But why Mercy? Why would he take Mercy?”

  “At the gas station the other night, he asked about my friends the man-eater and the little Finder girl. Everybody in Cottonwood Hollow knows the little Montoya girl is a Finder,” I supply. “And Mercy is a little Montoya girl. She’s tiny. What if he didn’t know that it was Neveah he wanted instead of Mercy?”

  I tell Lux about the letter hidden behind Emmeline’s hand-drawn map, about the dugout that had been present on it but not on the other version of the map that was in the Cottonwood Hollow Historical Society’s book, and her mouth falls open. “All this time, it was right there?” she squeaks out.

  “Garrett’s had the diary for days now. And that was probably him we saw poking around the Truett farm. It was too dark to tell what kind of truck it was, but I know the sound of a gas engine, and that’s what’s in his Ram. Where else did Emmeline go besides the homestead? What would have seemed like the perfect hiding place?”

  “The dugout,” Lux agrees.

  “John took Emmeline there, and she said she was happy. It was in the very first entry. Garrett’s got to be closing in on the dugout by now. The town’s not that big.”

  “Call Rick. Tell him we think Mercy’s out at those hills.”

  “Garrett’s not out there digging in broad daylight. Even if Mercy pretends to have Found it, he’ll wait until dark to dig. So he probably stashed Mercy inside somewhere. The only place nearby would be the ruins.” It feels like there’s something heavy on my chest. “Do you remember how Mrs. Montoya said they were going to burn them down?”

  “Not until tomorrow,” Lux says.

  “That makes it the perfect place then, doesn’t it? Whatever happens, all the evidence will be destroyed.”

  Lux grabs my arm. “Do you think he’s that desperate?”

  “Do you want to wait and find out?”

  Twenty-Two

  WE PARK MOM’S CAR BY the barbed-wire fence that separates the Remington land from the rest of Cottonwood Hollow. I dial Rick’s number twice, but he doesn’t pick up. He must be on the other line. The third time I just try 911, but it doesn’t connect at all because the signal is getting worse the farther we get from town.

  We follow the fence line quickly, tromping through the tall grass. Then I notice that the rusty barbed wire is sagging. I jog a little farther and see that it’s been cut. One of the posts has been torn up from the ground and the tall grass has been mashed down by tire tracks.

  No, I wasn’t brave enough to drive out here. But someone was.

  “Look,” I whisper to Lux, as if someone might hear us in this vast, open field. “Somebody drove through here.”

  “Oh, shit,” Lux hisses. “It’s got to be him, right? Come on, we have to run.”

  Lux volunteering to run anywhere means she understands how likely it is that Mercy is in the ruins.

  Waiting for us to find her.

  When we get close enough to be seen by someone in the ruins, we crouch down, picking stealthily through the tall grass. We reach the outermost trailer, the one that was hit by the tornado Sunday night. The scattering of debris from the tipped trailer spills out onto the grass, still reminding me of the entrails of a wounded animal. We move carefully near it, trying to circle around to the other side of the ruins.

  “Stay low,” Lux whispers. “In case he looks out and sees us. It’s hard to say where they are in there.”

  I’m crouched about as low as I can be, the tall grass scratching against my cheeks. It’s nearly noon and the weather is already hot and sticky. All I can think is that if Mercy is out here, she’s got to be exhausted and frightened. A whole night in the ruins would be terrifying, and that’s without having some psycho demanding she Find a dowry chest.

  When we finally circle around to the other side of the ruins, there’s no car, and that means probably no Garrett, either. Deep ruts are carved in the ground, like maybe he’s driven his big one-ton Ram out here. The Mach is nowhere to be seen. There are three red fuel caddies, the big ones that hold ten or fifteen gallons of gas. The smell of gas is strong, and I don’t know if it’s just the caddies, or if Garrett has already soaked the area. The mayor is about to burn the ruins, whether the town is ready for it or not.

  There are seven trailers altogether, lined up next to each other on towers of crumbling cinder blocks, waiting to be burned. The far west one has been ripped open by the tornado, but all the others are intact, so close together that you could pass through one with only a foot or less of open space to the next. They’re rusted and rotting, and every step inside their dark interiors will mean a chance that we’ll fall through the floor and break an ankle like the Pelter boy.

  The hills just next to us are high and unyielding, the sun beating down on the tall grass on their crests. Somewhere among them is the dugout that John Remington first lived in, the dowry chest we’ve been hunting buried inside. Cottonwood Hollow is a mile behind us, and we don’t know if Rick will even see that I tried to call him.

  Lux and I creep close enough to the ruins that if anyone’s inside, they won’t be able to look out and see us pressed up against the cinder blocks.

  Lux glances down at something by her shoe and gasps. She holds it up. It’s Mercy’s navy headband with its prim little bow.

  “We have to call Rick again,” I whisper to Lux. “Mercy’s got to be here.” I pull out my phone and dial Rick’s number.

  Thankfully, there’s enough signal now for the call to go out. But the phone rings four times and goes to voice mail.

  “Shit,” I mutter. “He’s not answering.”

  “Text him,” Lux says.

  My hands are shaking as I typ
e out the message. Lux grabs the phone from me and finishes it with quick, nimble movements.

  Come to the ruins. We think we found Mercy. Hurry.

  “What if he doesn’t know where the ruins are?” I ask Lux after I read the message.

  “Jesus, Rome, he lives in Cottonwood Hollow. Everybody knows where the ruins are.”

  We sit a few moments, just the two of us, listening to each other breathe and to the sound of the wind pushing the tall grass.

  “Do you think Garrett’s out there, on the other side of those hills?” I ask Lux. “Maybe he’s found John Remington’s dugout and he’s already got the dowry chest.”

  “I don’t care where Garrett is,” Lux answers. “All I care about is where Mercy is. And she’s got to be inside the ruins.”

  “It looks like it,” I agree. “And wherever she is, she needs us.”

  “Let’s go. Rick will probably make it here before Garrett gets back anyway.” She eyes the big gasoline caddies. “I don’t think we should leave Mercy in there any longer than she has to be. What if all it takes is a spark to light the whole place up?”

  We sneak up to the first trailer. “I’m sure she’s not just in this one,” I mutter. “That would be too easy.”

  Using the cinder blocks lying around beneath the trailer, we stack a pile to reach the doorknob, which is about six inches above our heads. The cinder blocks wobble under our feet, shifting slightly, but we manage to keep our balance. Lux turns the knob as quietly and slowly as she can, pushing the door open. It creaks, but only a little. The inside is completely dark except for the swath of light now cutting across the entryway from the open door.

  We pull ourselves up and climb inside, getting to our feet slowly as we look around. The room is full of junk, but most of it’s been pushed to the sides, leaving a little bit of a walkway.

  An empty couch sits in the middle of what would have been the kitchen. There are beer bottles piled in the sink, and what looks like part of an old stereo system sitting on the counter. My fingers twitch a little as I notice all the broken things scattered around.