by Sharon Sala
Daniel stood abruptly and walked to the windows overlooking downtown Savannah, making himself concentrate on the traffic and not the fear in the man’s voice, because it made his own far more vivid—and too real. For a while, he’d almost convinced himself that he and Mary had overreacted last night. But this put a whole new color on the incident. If Reese Arnaud was interested, Hope might really be in danger.
“Just tell me what you want and it’s yours,” Daniel said.
“I need to talk to Hope, but I don’t want to scare her. Do you think it would be all right if I came over after school? I want to bring a sketch artist with me. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s more than we’ve had in days.”
“Yes, sure. I’ll call Mary.”
“Good. I’ll be there around four, okay?”
“We’ll be waiting.”
“Don’t say anything to Hope about my coming by,” Reese added. “She left a jacket at my house the last time she spent the night. I’ll just bring it by and then go from there.”
“Yes, okay…I see what you mean.”
“This may be nothing,” Reese said. “You need to know that at the outset. But I’ve got two sets of grieving parents who want to know where their babies are, and if Hope can help, I can’t pass it up.”
“I didn’t sleep last night, either. I kept going into Hope’s room time and again, just to make sure she was safe in bed. I can’t imagine the horror of not knowing where she was or what had happened to her. Bring your sketch artist. Stay as long as you need.”
Howard Lee stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel to dry himself off. He’d just gotten home from his shift at the hospital and not for the first time, it occurred to him that working the midnight shift was not conducive to parenthood. He didn’t like leaving the girls alone after dark, but at the present time he had no choice. And, until they settled down into the adoption a little better, he could hardly send them off to school and trust them to come home.
He finished drying and then reached for his pajamas, anxious to get in bed. Even though the sun was up and the day was promising to be wonderful, he had to get his rest.
He walked out of the bathroom, then paused, staring down at the throw rug beside his bed. He thought of his girls and wondered what they were doing. His eyelids burned from lack of sleep, but his conscience tugged. A parent should spend quality time with the children, no matter what the cost.
With a heartfelt sigh, he kicked the throw rug aside and then unlocked the padlock on the cellar door. The hinges squeaked a bit as he raised it up, and he made a mental note to oil them. He heard a series of scuffling noises and then nothing.
“Girls…do you want Daddy to come down and play for a while?”
There was a long and pregnant moment of utter silence, then what sounded like a muffled sob. He frowned.
“Stop crying, damn it!” he yelled, and slammed the door shut with a bang, then locked it and kicked the throw rug in place.
He yanked back his covers and crawled into bed, too tired to deal with the situation. The sheets were clean and cool, just like his mother had always insisted they should be. It prided him to know that he’d kept the house in the same condition it had always been when his mother had been alive.
Despite the sunlight beaming through the curtains, he closed his eyes and slept.
Justine Marchand had turned seven two months ago, but she was small for her age. She had straight, dark hair, big brown eyes and a slight pout to her rosebud mouth. There were exactly four tiny brown freckles on the bridge of her nose and she liked Mickey Mouse and the PowerPuff girls. When she grew up, she wanted to be a nurse.
And somewhere between the morning she’d left for school and before she’d gone home, she’d been thrust into hell. She didn’t understand exactly what was happening, but she wanted to go home.
When the cellar door had opened, she’d grabbed Amy Anne and crawled under the bed. Even though she knew the man would eventually make her come out, it still seemed plausible to resist in every way she dared. She wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but she was stuck with him, just the same.
However, he hadn’t come down as she’d feared, and when he yelled at her and then slammed the door, she went weak with relief. She didn’t care how loud he yelled, as long as he stayed away. He smiled too much and was always touching her face and her hair.
As soon as it was quiet, she crawled out from under the bed, pulling Amy Anne with her, then smoothed the hair away from the other girl’s face.
“He’s gone now,” she said, and led Amy Anne to the little table in the middle of the room. “Want to color in the color books or watch TV?”
Amy Anne didn’t answer. Justine wasn’t even sure she could talk. She hadn’t said a word since she’d been here. She didn’t even know if the girl belonged to the man, or if she was lost, too.
“We’ll color,” she said softly, and sat the little girl in a chair. “That way we won’t make any noise and wake him up.”
She opened a coloring book for herself, then opened one for Amy Anne.
“Here,” she said. “You can have the blue crayon and I’ll pick red.”
She put the crayon in Amy Anne’s lifeless hands and waited for her to move. It didn’t happen.
“It’s okay,” she finally said, and patted Amy Anne on the head. “You can watch me, instead.”
She picked up the red crayon and then started to cry, softly, so that no one could hear.
“I want to go home, Amy Anne. I don’t like it here.”
Chapter 7
Mary had started out dusting the bookshelves in the living room, but now the dust cloth and furniture polish was sitting idle on a nearby table and she was cross-legged in the floor with a picture album in her lap. Nothing could have prepared her for what she’d found inside, not even the wildest of dreams.
The first pages were devoted to the first year of her and Daniel’s marriage. She remembered those times and the pictures being taken. The pictorial mementos moved from there to Hope’s birth, and then the first three months of her life. Most of them consisted of pictures of Daniel holding Hope, or Daniel’s parents holding Hope. The images were burned in her mind.
But then she’d turned the next page and faced a truth that was impossible to deny. Page after page, year after year, were pictures of Mary with Hope, and Mary with Daniel, physical proof that she’d been present during all these events. They were nonsensical pictures, the kind that were precious only to the people taking them, ranging in ordinary diversity from braiding Hope’s hair to building a sand castle at the beach. Pictures of Christmases past and the first Thanksgiving in their new house, her thirtieth birthday and Daniel giving her the keys to her new car. The more she looked, the more it seemed she remembered. But it made no sense. How could she remember something that hadn’t happened?
Then she sighed and rubbed the worry spot between her eyebrows. What on earth was she asking? This had to be more of her increasing insanity. More than once during the past twenty-four hours she’d wondered if she was actually locked up in some hospital somewhere and only living out this fantasy in her mind. It made more sense than anything else she could think of. Then she looked back at the pictures. It just all seemed so real.
Many times over the past six years she’d wished for the ability to turn back time—to relive that moment when Daniel had put Hope in the car and then started to back out of the driveway into the path of that high-speed pursuit. She’d relived that horror over and over every time she’d closed her eyes, but it had always been the same. The fight—Hope crying—Daniel leaving in anger—and her watching them driving away without trying to make him stop.
The flesh suddenly crawled on the back of her neck. It had always been the same.
Until yesterday.
Yesterday in the antique store she’d had the same dream, and it had not changed—until the point where Daniel started to back out of the drive. This time she’d thrown herself on the hood of the
car instead of watching him drive away. This time she had screamed for him to stop, then begged him not to leave—and for the first time since the nightmare had begun, he and Hope had lived.
She closed her eyes, remembering the ring that she’d found in that old scrap of lace—and the odd little man who’d looked at her with such sad, sad eyes. The ring had been so small and yet it had slid upon her finger as if it had been made to fit. She took a deep breath, making herself calm and trying to remember what had happened next.
Oh yes—the scent of dust was in the air and another, more subtle scent of faded roses. She’d started to feel faint and reached out to steady herself against a counter.
Mary’s heart started to pound. Even now she could feel the heart-stopping panic of knowing something had been set into motion that she could not stop. She vaguely remembered how her head had started to spin, as if everything she was looking at was turning backward.
Backward!
She gasped as a new thought occurred.
Backward?
No. Not that.
It wasn’t possible.
There was no such thing as going back in time.
But she couldn’t turn loose of the notion. What if that last dream she’d had of their fight had been real? What if she really had been given the opportunity to change their fates? What if she had saved their lives and changed the future?
She shoved the picture album back on the shelf and got to her feet, then went to the phone, picked up the receiver and dialed the operator.
“Operator, how may I help you?”
“What’s today’s date?”
“I’m sorry?” the operator said.
“Please,” Mary pleaded. “Just tell me. What’s today’s date?”
“September 26th.”
Mary started to shake. She’d walked into the antique store on October 2nd. She took a deep breath and then asked.
“What’s the year?”
“Ma’am, are you ill?”
No, but I may be crazy. “No, just please tell me. What year is this?”
“It’s September the 26th, 2002.”
Mary replaced the receiver without acknowledgment of the operator’s last answer. What was there to say? Oh, by the way, I think I’ve traveled backward in time and don’t want to be late for dinner?
Before she could follow the thought any further, the phone rang. She jerked back in reflex, half expecting to hear the operator’s voice telling her to get ready for a permanent trip to the funny farm.
“Hello?”
“Mary, darling, how are you?”
“Phyllis?”
Phyllis O’Rourke laughed. “Yes, it’s me. Surely it hasn’t been that long since we talked.”
Only six years…but who’s counting. “Sorry, I was sort of preoccupied.”
“I certainly know how that is,” Phyllis said. “As for the reason I’m calling, it will soon be Hope’s birthday. I wanted to know if you’d made any special plans, because if not, Mike and I would love to have all of you over for dinner.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Mary said. “I’ll check with Daniel and get back to you, okay?”
“Great! I wasn’t sure if you would be having a party for her or not, and certainly don’t want to intrude.”
“Grandparents never intrude,” Mary said.
“You’re a dear,” Phyllis said. “I’d love to chat longer but Mike is waiting for me. Let me know about the dinner later. Bye-bye.”
“Yes, goodbye,” Mary said, and hung up, amazed that the conversation with a woman who had once hated her guts seemed so comfortable and warm.
She started back to the photo albums when the phone suddenly rang again. This time she was a little more composed.
“Hello?”
“Hey, good-looking…it’s me.”
Relief washed over her in waves and sent her moving backward toward a chair.
“Oh…it’s you.”
She heard amusement in his voice.
“Who did you think it would be?”
“I just finished talking to your mom. She invited us to dinner for Hope’s birthday.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I’d get back to her later after I talked to you.”
“Whatever you want is fine with me,” Daniel said. “Are you busy?”
“Not really. I was looking at old photo albums when Phyllis called and was still standing by the phone when it rang. It startled me.”
He chuckled. “Hey, honey…I don’t have long before I have to be in court, but the reason I called is that Reese Arnaud telephoned. He wants to talk to Hope about the man who approached her at school yesterday.”
“Reese Arnaud?”
Daniel frowned. These blank spots in Mary’s memory were beginning to trouble him.
“Molly’s father? Hope’s best friend, Molly? He’s a detective with the Savannah P.D., remember?”
Mary’s stomach knotted. “The police. Oh God…yes…of course, I’d forgotten he was with the police. Oh Daniel, do they think—”
“They don’t think anything right now, honey. They’re just covering all the bases. With those two little girls still missing, they can’t afford to ignore anything, even if it’s a long shot, okay?”
“Yes, of course. What do I do?”
“Pick Hope up from school as usual, then go straight home. He’s coming over at four on the pretext of bringing back a jacket that she left at their house the last time she spent the night with Molly. He’s bringing a sketch artist, too, but let him handle all the explanations. Hope won’t think anything of Reese coming there, and he knows how to talk to her without frightening her.”
Mary’s voice was shaking. She knew it, but she couldn’t make it stop.
“Will you be here?”
“You couldn’t keep me away.”
Mary sighed. “This is awful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but not as awful as what the parents of those two missing children are going through.”
“Oh, Daniel…”
“Hang in there, honey. Hope’s safe and we’re going to make sure she stays that way.”
Howard Lee took the two bowls of macaroni and cheese from the microwave and put them on a tray, then added two plastic spoons and two snack-size fruit juices in disposable packs. He stared at the tray for a moment and then moved to the sideboard, took a couple of bananas from a bowl and added them to the tray.
“There now…a perfectly good lunch for growing girls.”
He picked up the tray and headed down the hall, then into his own bedroom. Nudging the door closed with the toe of his shoe, he set the tray down on the bed, then shoved aside a small area rug, revealing the metal door on the floor. He lifted it, letting it rest against the side of the bed as he turned for the tray and started down the stairs.
Ignoring the fact that he’d yelled at them earlier, his voice was full of overdone delight.
“Hello, hello, hello,” he said, as he began to descend. “I brought you some yummy lunch. Are my two little angels hungry?”
Amy Anne Fountain had once been a happy, smiling little girl, but there was little left of the child that she’d been. Even though her clothes were spotless and her long brown hair had been brushed and clipped away from her face with a bright red bow, the bruises on her arms and the cut on her lip were impossible to miss. She was sitting on the side of the bed, her stare blank, a spittle of drool barely visible at the edge of her lower lip.
Justine Marchand had been an impish, outgoing child who’d never met a stranger. Then she’d met Howard Lee Martin, and the name “stranger” had taken on a whole different meaning. She’d been putty in his hands from the very first and had never seen the danger coming. He’d used the “puppy on a leash” trick, waited until he’d seen her coming, then dropped the leash, knowing full well that the puppy would bolt. Justine had seen the puppy coming at her, seen the funny man running after the puppy as hard as he could go, and thought she was doing a good d
eed. Only four blocks from her home she’d gotten down on her knees and caught the puppy in her arms. She was smiling as she’d handed him to the big man, and felt no danger when he’d patted her on the back and thanked her for being so kind.
When he’d offered to let her hold the puppy’s leash as they walked toward her home, she’d been distracted by the unexpected treat and had done the unforgivable. She’d walked away with a stranger. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mommy and daddy. She’d quit crying for them at night now and even though Amy Anne didn’t talk to her, Justine slept curled around her as if she were a lifeline to sanity.
She heard the door open above them and then the man’s voice calling down. She stood abruptly, unwilling to be on the bed. He played games on the bed that she didn’t like. Her fingers curled around her friend’s wrist as she whispered in desperation.
“Get up, Amy Anne…you have to get up.”
But Amy Anne didn’t move, and Justine wasn’t strong enough to lift her. Helpless to do anything but take care of herself, she ran to the other side of the room.
Mary had started toward Hope’s school almost an hour before school was due to be dismissed. Part of it had been fear that she wouldn’t know where to go, but more importantly, she never wanted Hope to be anxious again about being picked up. Even though she hadn’t known exactly where to go, she’d driven straight to the school without missing a turn. She was starting to accept the fact that something extraordinary had happened to her life. She parked on the street and then leaned back against the seat, willing her pounding heart to ease.
As she waited, she glanced up in the rearview mirror and saw a tall, blond-haired man dressed in jogging clothes coming down the sidewalk. He was walking casually, once stopping to tie his shoe. When he straightened up, he glanced around as if looking to see if he’d been observed.
