by Diane Hoh
“At first, the child didn’t believe it. Mommies and daddies didn’t just give their children away. They wouldn’t do that. Never, ever.
“But when many long days and nights had passed and no one came to take the child home, it seemed that maybe the woman was right. Maybe some mommies and daddies gave their children away.
“And the child knew why. Because it had temper tantrums, sometimes. And spilled things. And hadn’t made its bed or hung its clothes up in the closet.
“Except … except the other child, the one they’d decided to keep, hadn’t made its bed or hung up its clothes, either. And that child was still living in the big, sunny house, and riding the pony and playing with the rabbits. The child who hadn’t called for help until it was too late was still living a fun, happy life with its mommy and daddy.
“It was so easy to figure out the truth, even at only five years old. That child hadn’t called for help when the woman came out of the woods because it wanted everything for itself. It wanted the older child gone, so that it could be the only child in the house, and would never have to share again.
“When the older child figured out this horrible, terrible truth, it was filled with a furious, burning rage, so hot it made the hands shake, made the head dizzy, made the heart pound like a drum.
“On purpose … the younger child had let its sibling be kidnapped. It had been on purpose.”
“I don’t like this story. It’s a gloomy gus story. That’s what Norrie calls stories like what you tell. When dragons blow fire at peoples and the mean witch with the big ugly nose hides little kids, Norrie hates them stories. She don’t tell them to me. You shouldn’t, neither.”
“Kiddo, I don’t blame you for hating the story. I hated it, too, and I lived it. I brought you some books. I’ll read to you. That’ll be nice, won’t it?
“The woman read books aloud. Grown-up books that the child didn’t like and didn’t understand until much later when the books were reread because there was nothing else to do.
“The child couldn’t go to school because people would have asked questions.
“Had no friends, because there were none out there in the deep, dark woods.
“There was no newspaper. No mail, ever. The woman was an obscure poet who earned a few dollars here and there publishing her poetry, but she had a post office box in town and picked up her tiny checks there.
“If it hadn’t been for the radio and the piles of magazines that the woman bought when she took the truck into town once a month for supplies, the child would have had no sense of the outside world at all.
“The child was smart enough to know that the world was still out there, and the fierce rage inside grew with every passing day. “Might as well be raised by wolves,” had been the grumbled comment at eight years of age. All hope of ever being rescued had long since vanished.
“The woman, her hair completely gray now, had taken offense at the remark. The next day, she had gone to town and returned with an armload of textbooks and a small, portable television set. She had set up a schedule, and began tutoring the child as best she could.
“The television set helped enormously, although the reception was poor. There were many nights when they couldn’t watch it at all. Those were the worst nights. But on the good nights, the child saw a whole new world that had been all but forgotten. Houses with people in them. Families laughing, arguing, doing things together. Children playing. How people looked, how they dressed, how they talked to each other.
“Even the commercials were fascinating. There was so much that was unknown. A whole new world opened up through television. Would have watched it all day and all night if the woman hadn’t insisted on the teaching hours.
“There was so little memory left now of the house in the country, of the mommy and daddy, of the sibling. Only distant images hiding somewhere in the back of the mind, too painful to be taken out and examined.
“The woman was never called ‘Mom,’ though it was what she wished for more than anything. They settled, finally, on ‘Nana,’ although when the child reached adolescence and its bitterness grew, it stopped using even that familiarity and called the old woman nothing but ‘old. woman.’”
When the child had nodded off again, her yellow curls spilling out across the white pillowcase like melted butter, she was left alone again, a second time, the door firmly closed and locked against intruders … or members of a search party seeking the small child.
The dark figure hurried away from the hiding place, its steps purposeful, as if it had someplace important to go, important things to do.
At the day care center, Nora awoke slowly. At first, when her eyes opened to darkness, she believed that she was in her room, lying on her bed. When she realized that she was lying on the ground, she remembered the heavy wooden rectangle coming at her out of the night, and she groaned aloud.
“She’s coming to,” a voice above her said.
The back of her head hurt even more than her temple did. She lifted a hand, gingerly touched the place beside her right eye that burned. Her fingers came away sticky. Blood. Her head was bleeding. She wasn’t willing to try the same exploration on the back of her skull. That had been the blow that knocked her unconscious. She didn’t even want to know what the damage was like back there.
But she did pull herself up to a sitting position.
“Ms. Mulgrew?” a deep but gentle voice said as someone knelt beside her. “I’m Officer Jonah Reardon, Twin Falls police force. We got a call that you might be here. How badly are you hurt? Can you stand?”
Nora snapped to full consciousness. Police? Again? What did they think she had done now? “Yes, I can stand,” she said curtly, only to find that when she tried, her knees buckled beneath her. An arm came out of the darkness to support her. She jerked away, annoyed, and that annoyance kept her upright.
A flashlight snapped on. She was looking then directly into the face of a tall, dark-haired officer who didn’t look much older than she. Someone named Jonah Reardon. A police officer? Had he come to cart her off to jail?
But, he wasn’t looking at her as if she were a criminal. What she saw in those dark eyes wasn’t contempt or loathing, it was, she was sure, concern.
But there was another officer with him, a woman, who aimed her flashlight at Nora and said, “So. What were you doing here? Seems like a pretty odd place to be hanging out at night, wouldn’t you say?”
“What did you mean, you got a call?” Nora asked as she steadied herself against the head of the red stegosaurus. “Someone called you and said I was here, at the center? Did they say that I’d been hurt?”
“Nope. Said you were hanging out here, that’s all, and they thought we should know. After what happened to the little girl, and all.”
“She wasn’t taken from here. She was kidnapped from her own back yard. What does that have to do with the center?”
The woman shrugged broad, navy-blue-uniformed shoulders. “The kid was enrolled here, right? At this stage of the game, we’re checking out everything and anything that could possibly be linked to her. Seems to us that a phone call about someone hanging out here, after dark, when it’s closed, is worth checking out, don’t you think, Ms. Mulgrew?”
Nora’s fingers went absentmindedly to the gash at her temple, tiptoeing across it gently to probe its width and depth. Not too deep, but wider than she’d hoped. And still bleeding. She pulled a crumpled tissue from a pocket of her khaki shorts and dabbed at the wound carefully. “They haven’t found Mindy yet?” she asked, deliberately directing her question toward the officer with the kinder expression on his face.
He shook his head. Someone had done a fine job of sculpting the bones in his face. Unlike the dinosaurs scattered about the lawn, this face was well chiseled, with no lumps and bumps anywhere in sight. No mistakes at all. “We’ve been overloaded with phone calls,” he said. “Sightings everywhere of a little toddler with blonde curls. But none of them panned out. People are still searchin
g. What happened to your head?”
He had changed the subject so fast, Nora wasn’t prepared for the question. “Oh … a swing.” She pointed. “One of those swings came at me from out of nowhere. Slugged me and knocked me over, and then,” pointing again, “I fell and hit my head on that.”
He played his flashlight over the stegosaurus. A few strands of Nora’s hair enmeshed in a thick blot of bright red adorned the horn that had knocked her out. “A swing? It’s not windy. There’s hardly a breeze at all.”
“I think someone was there,” she said, realizing for the first time that she did indeed think that. Like he said, there was no breeze. And that swing had come at her with enough force to knock her silly. No breeze would do that. “I think someone pushed it at me. Threw it, actually, as hard as they could.”
“Why would someone do that?” he asked quietly, while the other officer’s feet shifted impatiently.
“I don’t know. But I know,” Nora said, lifting her chin and looking him full in the face, “that someone did. On purpose.”
“Any idea who this person was?” the female officer asked. And although she hadn’t even hinted that she didn’t believe Nora, disbelief sounded in her voice.
Like I would throw myself down on top of a stone stegosaurus and knock myself out, Nora thought, disgusted. “No,” was all she said aloud. “Not the foggiest. Can I go now?”
“Reardon,” the woman said crisply, “take her over to the infirmary and have someone take a look at that cut on her head. Then bring her back here. She never did tell us what she was doing here. In the meantime, I’m going to call for a team to go over this place with a fine-tooth comb.”
Nora’s jaw dropped. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding! You think I’d hide Mindy here if I had her? Wouldn’t that be totally stupid? Come Monday morning, that building will be overrun with staff and kids. Why on earth would I bring her here?”
The woman shrugged again. “A temporary measure, maybe? While the building’s empty? I can’t say. And no one’s accusing you, Ms. Mulgrew. If you’re telling the truth about that swing being tossed at you, could be the person who threw it has the kid. All I know is, we have to check out every angle. If you really want the little girl found, I’d think you’d appreciate that.”
“Come on,” Reardon said before Nora could respond, “let’s go have that head of yours looked at. I’ll drive you.”
“I can walk! It’s not that far.” But even as she said it and began walking, Nora was overcome by a feeling of dizziness so strong, her vision blurred. When it had cleared, she kept walking but said, as he walked alongside her, “Okay, then, drive me. But wait for me outside because I am not walking into the infirmary in the custody of a police officer.”
“Sorry,” he said, sincere regret in his voice. “Not possible. I have to stay with you, or Riley back there,” nodding his head in the direction of the female officer, “will have my head. If anyone asks, we’ll just say you had an accident. Nothing wrong with a police officer bringing in an accident victim, is there?”
How little he knew about campus gossip! But what choice did she have?
“So,” he said when they were in the car and moving across campus, “you really think you saw someone heave that swing in your direction?”
“I don’t know,” Nora answered, careful not to lean back against the seat. The thought of the wound at the back of her skull bumping against even something as soft as the upholstery of the seat, made her ill. “I’m not sure now. It was so dark …”
But that wasn’t true. She was sure. The thick wooden swing, solid and hard as a boulder, had been thrown straight at her, deliberately, by someone she hadn’t been able to see in the dark.
What she wasn’t sure of was why someone would do that. That blow to her temple could have killed her.
Her stomach already roiling from the blows to her head, churned more violently. Killed her? Could have killed her?
Yes. Could have, should have, would have if the blow had landed just a little harder. If she hadn’t heard the chain jingling, hadn’t turned fully around …
She would be dead now.
Chapter 6
THE WOUND ON THE back of Nora’s head required three stitches, while the abrasion at her temple was treated with antiseptic and a Band-Aid. The doctor urged her to stay the night for observation, but Nora refused. She wasn’t ready to call it a night, not as long as Mindy was still missing.
“Going somewhere?” Officer Jonah Reardon asked as Nora emerged from the treatment cubicle and aimed straight down the hall toward the door.
Nora stopped. She’d forgotten about him. He was sitting on a plastic orange chair against the wall, twirling his navy-blue cap in his hands. “I’ll give you a ride back to your dorm,” he said, standing up and walking over to join her. “If that’s where you’re headed.”
She could see in his eyes that he’d guessed she wasn’t about to return to her room. She couldn’t tell what he thought about it. “Don’t you have someplace you need to be?” she asked archly. “Police business or something?”
“Can’t leave yet. You haven’t filled me in on what happened to you back there. At the center. We’ve already established that the wind didn’t do it. So what was it that sent that swing flying into the side of your head? Or should I say, who was it? If you tell me, I won’t have to take you back to Riley.” He smiled. “She’s a lot tougher than I am.”
Nora turned and began walking. “I don’t want to think about it. Why would someone deliberately try to split my skull in half? I don’t have any enemies.” Well, except for Mary. Hard to imagine her skulking around in the dark hurling swings at people.
“You must have at least one enemy,” Reardon said, and followed Nora outside.
Thunder sounded in the distance. Nora thought immediately of Mindy. Was she inside somewhere? Was she terrified? Where was she?
“Talk to me, Nora,” Reardon commanded, reaching out to halt her with a hand on her elbow. “I really do need some information here. I told the dispatcher at headquarters that I was taking an accident victim to the infirmary. I’ll be expected to fill out a report. You have to give me something to put in it. Did you see anything, hear anything? What were you doing at the center?”
Nora shook his hand free and began walking again. “I don’t know. I guess I thought there might be something there, some clue, anything …” Her voice faded as she remembered with a shudder that chunk of wood flying out of the darkness straight into her face. “Wasn’t expecting to be ambushed, that’s for sure.” She glanced sideways at Officer Reardon. “You know some people are saying I took her, don’t you? That I kidnapped Mindy? You must have heard.”
“I heard.” He returned her glance. “So, did you?”
“No.” They crossed the street to Reardon’s police car.
“I didn’t think so. Got any ideas who did?”
“None. Not a clue.” Nora waited while he unlocked the door and opened it. She slid into the passenger’s seat without argument. She would let him take her back to Nightingale Hall, and let him think she was going to bed. She could grab a raincoat while she was there, in case that thunder meant business. But the minute the taillights on his car had disappeared down the highway, she was out of there.
She talked about Mindy throughout the brief ride. How cute she was, how bright, how loving. “I just don’t see how,” she finished as Officer Reardon pulled up in front of the somber old house with the sagging front porch, “anyone could take such a sweet little girl away from her family like that. It’s bad enough that her mother’s in the hospital, but now this …”
Reardon got out of the car with her. “I’ve been here before,” he said, his eyes on the house. “A while back. There was some trouble. You’re not afraid to stay in a place everyone calls ‘Nightmare Hall?’”
“No.” But as she stood on the gravel driveway looking up at the dark brick structure, while flashes of silvery lightning lit up the woods behind the house from ti
me to time, Nora was painfully conscious, for the first time, of a reluctance to go inside. The porch light wasn’t on, and heavy draperies on the first floor windows hid the interior lights. The house looked completely deserted. The rooms upstairs would be dark and silent, the hall empty.
But wasn’t that what she liked about her off-campus dorm? The solitude?
It had been. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Things were different now. Someone at the day care center had sneaked up on her and tried to separate her left brain from her right brain. She didn’t have a clue about who would do such a thing. More important, she didn’t know where that person was now.
“Isn’t there a barn out back?” Reardon asked, pointing.
Nora nodded. “Yeah, storage shed, really. The old barn burned, I heard. Supposedly, someone died in the fire.”
“And who lives in that garage apartment?” He pointed to the two-story red garage that boasted a steep, narrow wooden staircase on one side, leading up to a door.
“The handyman, but he’s not here. He’s on vacation in Florida, which suits me fine. When he was here, he was forever painting something or hammering something.”
The wind picked up suddenly, stirring the thick, gnarled branches of the huge, old oak trees shielding the house. The breeze cooled her skin, but signaled approaching rain. She was about to tell Officer Jonah Reardon good night and hurry inside when she heard him say, “Whoa, what’s going on?”
Nora turned to see two police cars, their blue cartop lights revolving but their sirens silent, turning off the highway into Nightingale Hall’s driveway.
Her heart thudded to a standstill. Mindy … something had happened … something bad? No! “Maybe they’ve found her! And they’re coming to tell us.”
“Two squad cars? I don’t think so. Anyway, they could have given me that news over the radio. It’s something else.”
