by Tess Rothery
Mere minutes later Grandpa was plugged into his oxygen. His eyes cleared and his words made a bit more sense—he called her Taylor as he hollered at her. But he was still angry, this time that Laura used to steal from him, and that Taylor forced him to stick rubber tubes up his nose.
They ate quickly. Taylor paid the check and they left in their separate cars. As she made her goodbye, she paused. “Mom never stole from him. He just can’t grasp the concept of automatic deposit.”
Clark shook his head. “I only wonder what new thing will befuddle me in ten years’ time.”
“And…it could happen to anyone,” Taylor added. “The social security thing that happened to Cricket. But since her info was, um, stolen, I’d try and be extra sure that no one is using it now. You’d hate to start getting those terrible collections calls now that she’s gone.”
“I hadn’t even thought. Oh, Clark, let’s get home and search that on the Internet and find out what we need to do.”
“Good idea. Thank you, Taylor, and for dinner as well. You shouldn’t have. We’ll be back, you know, and you won’t be able to stop us from showing you how much we appreciate you next time.” They drove away in their comfortable little Beetle. A twenty-year old car now, the kind Taylor had thought was so, so cute when she was a little girl.
Belle was home when Taylor returned with Grandpa Ernie. She hovered in the background as they hung their coats and got Grandpa settled in front of the TV in his room to watch the golf channel they had recently discovered.
The second Grandpa Ernie’s door swung shut, Belle started in on Taylor. “We’ve got to do something about Dayton. You promised to help her.”
“I’m trying, but it’s not like I’m a trained cop or anything.”
“Just look at this.” Belle passed over her phone, opened to a text conversation that looked like it was between Belle and a bot. Over and over again, no matter what Belle had said or asked, all Dayton replied was, “I’m safe. I’m hiding.”
“That’s like what she said to me.”
“Exactly. Don’t film tomorrow. Take me to the sheriff instead. We need to report this.
“I couldn’t agree more.” She sent a quick text to Roxy cancelling their morning appointment.
Taylor didn’t ask for Reg at the sheriff’s office the next morning. She wasn’t even remotely inclined. In fact, if she never saw him again that would be great. Her face heated up at the thought of him, in fact. But why was she embarrassed? She hadn’t slept with him, led him on, accepted expensive gifts.
She’d have to parse out the complications of her heart some other time.
Dressed in what looked like a Target uniform of khaki pants and red sweater set, Belle was the picture of efficiency. She wasn’t chatty or even very friendly. She drove.
Taylor wanted to ask her about the surprisingly dull and old clothes she was wearing but didn’t bother. As she was wearing dark jeans and that pastel Flour Sax polo she was beginning to regret ordering, she was hardly one to comment on fashion choices.
Reporting Dayton Rueben as a missing person was disturbingly normal. The deputies didn’t drop their jaws in shock as Taylor laid out the story of the scared young adult who had witnessed a murder and whose texts seemed to be written by someone other than her. In fact, they seemed tired.
But at least they hadn’t been dismissive.
Taylor and Belle left the sheriff’s station feeling defeated.
“I guess we’re on our own.” Belle leaned on the car rather than getting in.
“They are going to look for her.”
“How hard, though? They made it clear she’s an adult with the right to move on with her life and not communicate if she wants to.”
“It’s a murder.” Taylor popped open the car door and got in.
Belle followed her.
“They will take it seriously.” It was always funny to Taylor how she could say things she didn’t mean to Belle, just to make her feel better. “But that doesn’t mean we have to stop. Let’s keep looking, keep asking questions.”
Belle nodded, her face looking young and scared.
They stared at each other. This wasn’t a game. They weren’t playing. Two people were dead, and though they both had mixed feelings about Belle’s old school friend Dayton, they very much did not want her to be the third.
“If our main goal is to protect Dayton and we were thinking of catching the killer to do that, then we failed.” Belle paced Flour Sax.
Taylor didn’t remember Belle volunteering to catch a killer but didn’t correct her.
“Your focus just needs to shift, that’s all.” Roxy was organizing the little quilt patterns that had gotten mixed up the day before. “Readjustment isn’t the same thing as failing.”
“You’ve known Dayton forever. Where would she hide?” Taylor asked.
“My first thought would be their family cabin up in the mountains, but I don’t think she’s brave enough to hide there alone.”
“How isolated and rustic is it?”
“One hundred percent isolated and rustic. It’s an old shack off the grid. No electric, no water. They bring water in gallon jugs for drinking and boil creek water for everything else. They heat with an old cast iron wood burner they brought up there a few years back.”
“If she was trying not to be found, that might be a good place to go…” Taylor mused.
“But not if she wanted to be able to summon help. No phones, patchy cell service.”
“Which could explain why she rarely answers our messages.” Taylor fussed with a chicken wire basket full of rolled-up fat quarters. They kept spilling out of the large hexagonal holes. Chicken wire, no matter how trendy, was not the best for a quilt shop.
“She would be fine while the sun is out, but once night hit, I just can’t see it.”
“What kind of family does she have in town?”
“She’s a Rueben. What family doesn’t she have in town? Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. And her mom was a Love. There’s a handful of them around still.” Flour Sax Quilt Shop sat on the corner of Main and Love. The Loves founded the town, but there weren’t many left.
“With a family that big, don’t you think she’s just hiding in someone’s spare room?” Taylor gave up on her basket of discount fabric rolls. She removed a dusty baby quilt from the front of their cutting table. It was long since time to hang new work, but none of them had made any.
“Go to the cabin first,” Roxy directed. “You won’t be easy in your mind till you do. Then come back and go door to door. Visit every Rueben and Rueben-adjacent house in the town. Someone knows where she is.”
Belle nodded, “It’s not a bad idea,” but she didn’t stop pacing.
Roxy was right, nothing Taylor could say or do would give Belle any peace. “I wish I could go with you.”
“Sorry,” Roxy’s apology was tinged with sadness. “Poor Jonah has been waiting over a year to take his driver’s test. I can’t reschedule it again.”
“I get it.” Taylor ran her hand across the clean surface of the cutting table, feeling anchored to the little metal grooves that guided the scissors. Her mother had been so proud when she’d found this old table at a going-out-of-business sale in Salem.
Clay announced his arrival with thudding footsteps as he ran down the stairs. “Good morning, pretty ladies.” He was glowing.
Taylor’s brows drew together as she looked at him. He looked happy, really, really, happy. Happy like the day he brought home his Santa Fe Blur for their failed attempt at mountain biking. She hadn’t seen him that happy in ages.
Surely Joey hadn’t really stayed the night.
Joey wouldn’t, would she?
She wouldn’t actually hook up with Taylor’s ex—the ex that lived rent free? That would be weird. Everyone in town would think so.
Clay needed to find himself and leave town, not find Joey and stay.
“I can go alone.” Belle straightened up as though trying to look older. Sh
e didn’t need to. As far as Taylor was concerned, her baby sister looked too old already.
“I’m not doing much of anything.” Clay’s giddy smile could only be called a grin. “Where do you need to go?”
Roxy brightened. “That’s a good idea. Clay, Belle needs to go up into the mountains and see if her friend is at this cabin. We would both feel so much better if she didn’t have to go alone.”
“Say no more. I’m ready for an adventure. Your car or mine, Belle?”
Belle cringed subtly and looked at Taylor.
Taylor cringed, less subtly. Then laughed. “You’ve always been good at inviting yourself along.”
“You’d rather she drive off into the woods by herself? She could get lost.”
A shadow crossed Belle’s eyes. “I could. Ugh. I don’t need a babysitter, but it’s true, I think I’d rather not go alone.”
“I’m at your service. Let me grab a coffee and get out of here.” He made for the classroom.
“I’ve got to get gas anyway,” Belle said. “You can get your coffee at Arco.”
“Aye-aye, captain.” Clay winked at Taylor and went outside.
It wasn’t that Taylor didn’t trust Clay with Belle, but this felt weird. In the almost-year he’d been living upstairs he hadn’t spent any alone time with Belle. If he had, he might have been able to win Taylor over. All she had wanted, after all, was for him to show he cared about her family.
That said, her own face brightened. Joey was definitely not upstairs if Clay was willing and ready to up and leave with Belle like that.
Taylor went through the motions of opening her store. Roxy’s comments about Flour Sax not really being Taylor’s business because it wasn’t her passion nagged at her. She felt judged as though loving business in a general sense wasn’t a good enough reason to own this business, or that you could only own a quilt store if quilting itself was your life’s great passion.
Her great passion…
After unlocking the front door, she leaned on the register counter resting her chin on her fist.
Tucked deep inside, she had a longing for one thing and one thing only. But it was absurd to dream about, because it was never going to happen. And, anyway, life with her own store offered her plenty of variety.
And she liked quilting. She really did.
But if truth be told, she adored advertising.
In her years working for the corporate craft store in Portland she hadn’t gotten to do one single bit of real advertising. No copywriting. No ad art. No negotiating co-op deals with product lines.
She planned classes and made fliers for them, and that had helped scratch her itch. But things were better here. With her own store, and the business account fattened with YouTube royalties, she could advertise to her heart’s content.
She didn’t need to work for Widen and Kennedy shooting videos for Nike to make her dreams come true.
“Earth to Taylor. Earth to Taylor.” Roxy waved a scrap of maroon cotton covered in custard colored daisies at her.
“Sorry. Lost in thought.”
“I can’t blame you. You must be devastated with worry for Dayton.”
Taylor blushed. It would have been very nice to have been worried for the missing girl instead of pining for a job she only imagined was a dream come true. “I can’t do anything about it from here,” Taylor sighed.
“We could print a picture of her and keep it by the register. Then, when folks make their purchases, we could ask them if they’ve seen her.”
Taylor shook her head. “Not without talking to her parents first. Can you imagine the outcry if we declared Dayton Rueben missing to the world like that? A lot of Ruebens shop here. They would call Dale and Dayna in seconds.”
“Have you called them? What if she hopped a plane to Montreal to be with her folks?”
“She would have if she was smart. Maybe I will call them. Or, better yet, I’ll ask Sissy to do it. I highly doubt Dale would answer a call from me, and I never did get Dayna on my side.”
Taylor knew Sissy was stuck at her salon just like Taylor was stuck at the shop, but she sent a quick text anyway. After a few minutes Sissy sent a thumbs up as a reply. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
She hadn’t stopped to ask Belle where this cabin in the woods was, so she didn’t have any idea of when she ought to hear from her. She spent the rest of the day in a sort of daze, cutting fabric, ringing up purchases, and hoping everyone was okay.
Around closing time, the shop phone rang. “Flour Sax Quilt Shop, this is Taylor.”
“Good. Glad I got you.” The familiar voice of Reg was on the other line. “Some of the guys were telling me about the missing person you reported. I thought I’d call and offer to help.”
A great big sigh of relief escaped. “Oh, Reg, that would be amazing. I don’t deserve it, but I will absolutely take you up on it.”
“Why don’t I swing by your place tonight?”
“I’ll make sure there’s something to eat. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
Reg cleared his throat. “It’s the right thing to do. See you around eight?”
“Perfect.”
She hung up. There was no one in the shop to celebrate with—Roxy had taken her son for his driving test a few hours earlier—but she was light on her feet as she closed up anyway. After the disappointing meeting at the café, she had given up hope of help from Reg.
As she made her way home, her happiness at having Reg on her side wiped out all concern about not having heard from Clay or Belle yet.
Chapter Fifteen
Ellery offered to take Grandpa Ernie out to dinner when Taylor told her Reg was coming over, but she took a pass. She didn’t want Reg to get any ideas. This was one hundred percent a meeting of minds—a concerned citizen and an officer of the law discussing an endangered teen, or something like that.
She was annoyed to find all she had to serve for dinner were two frozen pizzas, not even the rising crust kind. And there were no soft drinks to be had in the house. The local grocery had closed an hour ago, and she’d never make it to a bigger town and back by eight. She thought about running back to her shop to get some of the generic soda out of the small fridge, but it was old. She hadn’t refreshed the stock since their fall wall hanging class. The only thing worse than generic soda in a can was stale generic soda in a can. She tossed the pizzas in the oven and made a pot of coffee. It was better than nothing. She scavenged the cupboards one last time, and unless she wanted to stop and make some oatmeal cookies without raisins or chocolate chips, they were out of luck.
“You should make that Ellery go to the store for you. All she does is sit around and play cards.” Grandpa Ernie poured slightly dry baby carrots into a cereal bowl.
“I presume she plays cards with you.” Taylor set the table for three.
“She doesn’t bring boys over, that’s for sure.”
“I’d hope not. Now, did you want coffee or just water?”
“It’s eight at night, you want to go to sleep or what? Who drinks coffee at this hour? You’re not giving Belle coffee tonight, are you?”
“No, this is for Reg.”
“Reg? Who’s that?”
“My friend.”
“Why are you giving him coffee but not a plate?” Grandpa Ernie pulled out his chair at the table.
“He has a plate, Grandpa, calm down.”
“And where is Belle supposed to eat then?”
“She’s out tonight. With Clay.”
“You kids make me dizzy. What’s that little turd doing out with your sister? She’s just a baby.”
“It’s not a date, Grandpa. They were um…” She tried to think of a non-stressful way to explain what her sister and her ex were doing in the woods at a cabin, but she couldn’t, especially as now that she thought about it, they really should have been back or at least called. Fortunately, a knock at the front door saved her from having to make sense of it all for herself or her grandpa.
Belle’s memory of where the Rueben cabin was hidden away wasn’t so good, but they had found it after just two hours of hunting.
The shack had been built sometime in the dark ages, and the primordial trees that loomed over it still seemed to resent its presence.
It ought to have been deadly silent, but a healthy forest never is. In addition to the babbling of the creek that skirted the clearing, birds sung and squabbled and smaller tree rodents…maybe chipmunks…hollered at each other. Clay wasn’t up on what lived in the coast range mountains.
“Some vacation place.” He whistled and kicked a large pinecone. Fir cone? He knew there was a difference, but didn’t know what it was.
“Some Rueben built this thing a million years ago, and now the whole family shares it.” Belle poked her head into the cabin.
“I wonder how many places like this are hiding in the woods?” Clay sat on a stump and checked his phone. “No reception.”
“No Dayton, either.”
“Could she be off hiking?” Clay asked.
“There’s no sign of life. No ashes in the woodstove. No blankets or bags or anything like that.” Belle sat with Clay and shivered.
“You’re worried.” He smiled avuncularly at her. He liked that word. Fancy for uncle. Though he supposed he would have been her brother-in-law if Taylor hadn’t gone crazy when their mom died. He still couldn’t understand why she had thought she could uproot their entire life without even a conversation.
“She’s such a pain.” Belle looked at the palms of her hands. “She ran away three times in middle school. I thought she’d outgrown it.”
“But right now you’re worried that she didn’t actually run away.”
“Yup.”
“Where did she go those other times?” Clay stood and walked to the edge of the clearing. The woods were dark and damp, even on this early summer day. Rainforest. He knew he’d learned that in school. There were rainforests in Oregon, and this had to be one. But cold rainforests. Not the tropical ones that had mangos and monkeys.