“I’ll have the same,” Dad said.
“Who else is coming?” Mom asked, standing just inside the door. I wanted to push past her, to figure out how to get a peek at the basement—there was still a chance I was wrong about which house it had been—but I couldn’t be obvious.
“I can tell you who’snotcoming,” Sheriff Nillson said to Dad. “That mick from the Cities.”
“Gulliver’s not so bad,” Dad said, smiling like they shared a joke.
“If you say so,” Sheriff Nillson said, winking before he strode across the living room toward an ice bucket and a row of bottles full of amber-colored liquor. He threw some names over his shoulder, addressing Mom this time. “I’m expecting Deputy Klug and his wife, and Father Adolph.”
“Oh,” Mom said. “Oh.”
It was all happening so fast, this normal talk and movement on the surface, and below, Mom’s terror growing. I looked around to see if anyone else had heard it, the delicate pop indicating she had left her frame of mind. She was floating, untethered, just inside the front door. She would sink her claws into the first person who could moor her. I’d witnessed it a dozen times before. It wasn’t cruel; it was survival. Her head was lolling, searching for me, or maybe Junie. Dad was smiling, chattering at Sheriff Nillson, oblivious. Behind him was an open doorway with carpeted steps leading down.
The basement.
So close I wanted to weep.
Could I dash forward, run downstairs, verify it was the room where I’d seen Maureen on her knees, and rush back before Mom came apart? I’d need a reason for my flaky behavior, and then an excuse to get Mom out of there. It was a lot, an overwhelming mountain to climb, but I could do it. If it would save Maureen, I could do it.
I almost jumped out of my skin when I felt the feathery touch.
Junie’s hand was seeking mine, her blue-lined eyes locked on Mom. She’d heard the pop, too. My heart plummeted. I couldn’t leave her. I was so close to that basement, but I couldn’t abandon my sister.
We both twitched when we heard the siren. Its keening sound was soon followed by spinning lights slicing through the descending lavender dusk and bouncing off the trees. A police car screeched to a stop in front of Sheriff Nillson’s house. Nillson reached toward his waist as ifsearching for his pistol, but he wasn’t in uniform. He hurried outside, Dad on his heels.
The driver’s side door opened, and a uniformed officer shot out. “We found the girl, Jerome. She’s over at the quarries.”
The air became thick.
Alive?I wanted to yell.Did you find her alive?
“In the car,” Dad ordered us.“Now.”
“Give me two minutes,” Sheriff Nillson said, hurrying back in the house.
“I’m going to bring my family home, and then I’ll meet you there,” Dad told the officer, his face grim. “Which quarry?”
“Dead Man’s.”
CHAPTER 27
Dad raced us home and took off toward the quarries almost before we were out of the car.
Mom watched him drive away, hand shading her eyes from the sun dropping into its violet pillow. I was a pounding ache, unable to imagine going inside or staying outdoors.
“I wonder which girl it is,” Junie asked, all three of us standing in front of the house.
I whirled on her. “What?”
But the truth smacked me before the word had fully left my mouth. Maureen wasn’t the only missing girl in Saint Cloud. Beth McCain still hadn’t returned. I felt guilty for how desperately I hoped it was Maureen, whole and healthy, that they’d discovered in the quarries.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want Beth to be found. It’s that her absence didn’t leave the same hole in my life as Maureen’s had. Before all this, Beth had occupied an untended room in my head, the one where you stored neutral people who moved at the edges of your circle, those who were not quite acquaintances but who you’d be happy to see if you ran into them somewhere foreign, a place where you didn’t know the rules.
Hey, you’re from Saint Cloud!
Yeah! You too.
Maureen, though? She was like family.
