“Interesting. And you’ve got those pictures?”
“I do. Nothing I can really see on them or nothing much. She liked to draw. She was so good at it.”
“I remember now that it was concluded she’d gone for a walk looking around and it happened on the way back. I forgot about the fact that she was drawing a picture.”
“It was glossed over. Just one thing that didn’t seem of importance. The house is gone now and condos are in its place.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s where I live. And now I realize it was you that was walking around taking pictures earlier this week, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. Not sure what I expected to find, but I thought maybe I’d feel something. Stupid, I know.”
“Nothing is stupid, crazy, or impossible.”
“I keep telling myself that too, but it’s getting harder to believe as the time goes by.”
“I want to help you, Rory. Not just for you or for Rene, but for this community. It’s this lingering whisper always showing up in people’s ears. Who did it? Is it someone we know? A tourist passing through? Could they do it again? We need answers as much as you do. It’s time. I feel it. Maybe it’s the break you’ve been waiting for.”
“I’ve thought that a lot in my life and it’s normally a wild goose chase.”
“I’m good at catching farm animals,” she said, smiling.
He laughed. “Thanks for that. Maybe you can teach me.”
She squeezed his hand and let go, not aware she’d been holding it as long as she was. “I’d like that.”
7
TIME FOR A CHANGE
“Morning, Rory,” his mother said when she answered his call.
“Hi, Mom. How are you doing?”
“I’m good. How about you? Are you okay being back there?”
As much as his mother wanted him to come, she also didn’t want him to have any kind of a breakdown.
They’d lost his father; they couldn’t lose each other.
But as Gale said, it was time to get answers. Too many people had waited long enough.
“I don’t feel as if I’ve got to jump out of my skin if that is what you’re asking. I’ve been walking around some. Past where her body was found, that was hard, and I just kept going.”
He wanted to look it over more closely but couldn’t. Not yet.
The bush was still there but bigger. It was close to the road and off to the side. Probably the property of the house next to it, but not maintained, mowed, or even touched. More like some wooded area that was forgotten.
Only it would never be completely forgotten.
“I don’t know how I’d feel about it,” his mother said. “I want you there and looking just as much as me, but not at the cost of your sanity.”
“Mom, I might have lost my sanity years ago right along with you.”
And his father. It was unspoken though.
His father thought he and his mother were the odd ones and he thought his father was cold.
How do you just forget your daughter ever existed? Refuse to talk about her.
