Island of Lost Girls

by Jennifer McMahon

  Rhonda spent the next hour studying old drawings of the Hunley in Clem’s Civil War books, reading everything she could find about it, and decided to do a series of sketches—her own renditions of the submarine, a composite of all she had gleaned. The top drawing would show the outside of the Hunley, and the middle would be a cutaway view of the inside, depicting the soldiers working the cranks while the captain manned the controls at the front of the machine. The image at the bottom would be the same cutaway view, but without the men. Instead, Rhonda would carefully print the names and explanations for all the mechanical features of the sub: the water ballast tanks, sea cocks, steering rods, propeller, rudder, mercury gauge for measuring depth, even the candle that illuminated the controls, and warned when air was running out.

  She found the submarine pictures she would work from and was flipping through a book, looking for one that showed a close-up of a Confederate uniform, when a photograph that had been stuck between the pages fell out. Rhonda leaned down and picked it up from the floor, assuming it would be some silly snapshot of her father and his Civil War dress-up pals.

  It wasn’t. It was a wedding photo. The groom in a tux, looking young and tan, was her father. Beside him, the bride smiled out from cascade of white lace and clutched a heavy bouquet like a club. But it was not Rhonda’s mother looking out at her: it was Aggie.

  He wishes this would never end. He imagines going away with her, living like this forever, being this happy. He wishes there was a real Rabbit Island, a place they could go and not be bothered. Where she could go on being his Birdie and he could be her Peter Rabbit forever.

  But the rabbit understands the reality of the situation. He knows his days as a rabbit are numbered. But he doesn’t want her to forget him. Not ever. He doesn’t want her to be lonely. He gives her a gift: a fluffy stuffed rabbit. He puts a tag around its neck. FOR BIRDIE WITH LOVE FROM PETER, it says. He’s taking a chance giving her the gift, but she is a careful girl. She understands that everything that passes between them is a secret. The little girl squeezes the soft, white bunny to her chest, then turns and hugs Peter. If she could see beneath the mask, behind the mesh eyes, she’d know he was crying.

  JUNE 12, 13 & 14, 2006

  ONE WEEK AFTER the kidnapping, Ernie had not been found, and Pike’s Crossing was in an uproar. Lakeview Lodge, The Inn and Out Motel, and the two bed-and-breakfasts in town were booked solid with out-of-state media and volunteers. The little café down the street from Pat’s did a booming business despite their lack of lattes. The streets, fields, and woods had been searched by dogs, helicopters, Boy Scouts, a group of National Guard volunteers, and citizens. The state police brought in divers and boats, and dragged Nickel Lake. Candlelight vigils were held at the Methodist church. And though people were worried that no trace of Ernie had been found, they recalled Ella Starkee: ten days in a hole with a tin can, worms, and beetles. Anything was possible.

  Pat held another press conference, Trudy Florucci by her side, to say she’d enlisted the services of a woman who dowsed for lost children and pets with a forked willow branch. She introduced Shirley Bowes, who was old enough to be Pat’s mother, and who looked, to Rhonda’s surprise, like a farm wife. She did not wear a turban or long, flowing dress hanging with bells. The only jewelry Shirley wore was a plain gold wedding band. She had permed white hair and wore sensible, old-lady clothes. Shirley scuffed her shoes on the floor and smiled shyly at the cameras.

  “You might remember,” Pat went on, “last year Shirley found a toddler in an old dry well up in Swanton.”

  Rhonda remembered. The little boy had fallen into the deep hole and stayed there overnight, for nearly twenty-four hours. Nothing like Ella Starkee, who lost track of time down in her hole. She measured her days with crinkly cellophane butterscotch wrappers. She sang every song she knew. When she ran out of songs, she began talking to God.

  “And he talked back to me,” she told reporters later.

  “What did he say?” the reporters asked.

  Ella smiled bashfully. “He told elephant jokes.”

  “Elephant jokes?”

  “Like, how can you tell an elephant has been in your refrigerator? Look for footprints in the butter.”

  Rhonda focused back on Pat’s conference.

  “Ernie’s been gone too long and we’re at a dead end. We’ve got to seek out new leads wherever we can find them,” Pat said in her hearty voice. Pat the boss. Pat in her name tag that said STATION OWNER, to show who was in charge. Rhonda found an odd comfort in Pat’s enthusiasm.

  It was only in her moments off camera, when Rhonda caught Pat pacing nervously or muttering to herself, that she sensed Pat might be losing her grip on the situation—preparing to admit the possibility of defeat. Rhonda cringed at the idea that Pat still thought of her as a suspect. She also hated to think that this might be the true reason behind all the time Warren had been spending with her. And did he suspect her, too? Think she and Peter had conspired to steal the little girl?

  “One more thing,” Pat told the reporters. “Bonnie Starkee, the mother of little Ella, called Trudy this morning.”

  An excited murmur went through the room.

  “What did Mrs. Starkee say?” asked one of the reporters.

  “She said she’s praying for Ernie. She told Trudy she mustn’t lose hope. Now, there’s no time to waste. Let’s put Shirley to work!” Cameras clicked as Shirley stepped forward and asked, in a barely audible voice, to be given something that had belonged to Ernie. Trudy reached down into a wrinkled paper grocery bag at her feet and pulled out a stuffed bear with an embroidered heart on its chest. The dowser sat in the padded chair dragged from behind the register, clutching the pink teddy bear as cameras clicked and television stations shot footage for the evening news. At last, Shirley stood up, handed the bear back to Trudy, took out a map of the state, spread it on the counter, and dangled a clear quartz crystal on a thin silver chain over it. The pendulum hung still, not circling or swaying, a dead weight. When Shirley wasn’t able to get a reading on the Vermont map, she spread out a map of the whole country. Still nothing.

  Maybe Ernie was in outer space, Rhonda thought. Like the cow that jumped over the moon. Maybe that’s where the rabbit took her in his submarine. Maybe Rabbit Island was up there somewhere, its own kind of heaven. Rhonda looked up, away from the pendulum and map, and tried to get her eyes to look right through the ceiling and roof—to look somehow beyond. She sensed Warren watching her and turned toward him. He looked unspeakably sad, defeated. Rhonda reached out to him, then pulled her hand back, hesitating. But wasn’t it her own hesitation that got her into this mess in the first place? Her inaction was the very reason Ernie was gone, so lost even the dowser couldn’t find her. For better or worse, she reached out and took Warren’s hand. He squeezed her fingers tightly, encircling her hand with his own.

  “I’LL SAY ONE thing,” Cecil Lowry mumbled as the press conference was breaking up. Cecil, the ex–fire chief, was a happily cranky old man who challenged everyone he met to guess how old he was, and, when people politely guessed a good ten years lower than they believed he was, would crow, Eighty-four! Can you believe it? Ha! They could believe it. “All this has put Pike’s Crossing on the map. Don’t tell nobody I said so, but in some ways, this kidnapping is the best thing that ever happened to Pike’s Crossing. And you can’t tell me all business owners who are raking it in don’t feel just the same.”

  RHONDA’S HEAD WAS full of rabbits. She drew them on scraps of paper when she talked on the phone or puzzled over what little evidence they had. She scribbled out chains of rabbits, paws linked one through the other, and as she drew, she studied them for clues, thinking they might know the thing that all bunnies knew: the way to Rabbit Island. She stared down at her doodles like she half-expected the rabbits to dance off the page, doing the bunny hop all the way to Ernie Florucci. And maybe, if she was lucky enough, to Lizzy and Daniel too.

  Among the rabbits, she scribbled notes on th
e few clues they had: Rabbit Island, Laura Lee’s car, the name Birdie. None of it made any sense. But the doodling calmed her.

  False leads continued to pile up: a gold bug had been spotted at a motel in Lyndonville, someone’s bachelor uncle kept a rabbit suit in his closet, Ernie was seen buying a soda from a machine at a rest area in Massachusetts. Each time a new lead came in, a buzz of excitement swept through the Mini Mart, a jolt of hope. The police followed every one, but they were all dead ends. When word filtered back down to the Mini Mart, a hush fell over everyone. Defeated glances were exchanged. There was nothing to do but wait for the phone to ring, for the next tip to come in that would start the cycle over again.

  SHIRLEY BOWES HAD a friend, Marsha, a psychic. Marsha, a woman about Trudy’s age, who’d recently moved from New York City, was called in, and held the stuffed bear. She closed her eyes and said, “I’m getting a picture.” This woman had artfully sculpted hair, beautiful clothes, expensive perfume.

  “Oh, she’s alive,” Marsha said. To Rhonda, her Bronx accent sounded almost fake. “She’s in the woods. I see tall trees. Rocks. A cave. He’s got her in a cave. That’s where she sleeps at night.”

  Shirley tried dowsing again, and this time her pendulum circled over the state forest not far from where Ernie was taken. The area, Rhonda knew, Peter said he was hiking in that day.

  Pat called Crowley, and, although he did not believe in psychics or dowsers, he agreed to help organize a search party of cops, civilians, and park rangers to go through the forest the next day. A dozen TV news crews followed the search party, and all the local papers sent reporters. Pat called everyone she knew in town—which amounted to essentially everyone in Pike’s Crossing—to help comb the forest.

  The rangers and guides insisted there were no caves in the park. But then Marsha the psychic said, “It might not be an actual cave, technically. Maybe a group of rocks that could give shelter—something a little girl might call a cave.”

  Shirley Bowes walked through briars and along hiking trails holding a wooden Y-shaped stick, letting it pull her this way and that. The stick tilted down and vibrated a little when she was supposedly on the right track. It looked to Rhonda like the stick was leading the poor old lady with the sensible shoes in circles. And right at her heels was Pat, Trudy Florucci in tow. And the cameras all around them clicked and flashed.

  Trudy was looking a little the worse for wear. There were whispers that it was Trudy’s own fault that Ernie was gone. What kind of mother left her six-year-old daughter alone in the car like that? Rhonda knew that Katy’s mom was providing some kind of pills for Trudy. Something for her nerves, Katy had whispered. But it seemed that Trudy was taking more and more of them, and by the time they searched the park, she was all but staggering and drooling. At one point, Shirley was leading a small group up a rocky hill and Trudy lost her footing, twisting an ankle. She lay in the leaf litter, sobbing. Pat called for Warren to come and take her back to base camp, which consisted of a few tables set up with coffee, sandwiches, and maps next to the ranger station—and, of course, camera crews. Warren was having trouble guiding Trudy by himself, and called for Rhonda to come help.

  Trudy’s only protest was to narrow her eyes at Rhonda and say, “You!”

  “I’m here to help,” Rhonda said.

  “You want to help?” Trudy gave a bitter laugh. “You wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

  “Please, Miss Florucci, I…”

  “Mrs. Florucci,” Trudy corrected in a drug-slurred voice. “My husband, my husband, Sal, he lost his right arm in an accident just last year. He killed himself six months ago. He was a granite cutter, and his arm was crushed by a piece of rock.

  “For weeks after the accident Sal woke up in the night swearing he could still feel his arm: It feels tingly, like it’s asleep, he’d tell me. I’d turn on the light and he’d stare at the stump like he couldn’t believe his own eyes.”

  Rhonda nodded, didn’t know what to say. Trudy leaned into her, hobbling on one foot, Warren at her right side.

  “At night, when I sleep, sometimes I dream none of this has happened, and Ernie’s right there beside me. I wake up and lie still, sure I can feel Ernie tucked safely under my arm, spooned up against me. I can smell her, almost taste her.” Trudy looked to Rhonda, her eyes full of rage once more. “And then I turn on the light.”

  They were nearly back to base camp now, and television cameras were pointed at them.

  “Are you hurt, Trudy?” one of the reporters called.

  “Have they found anything yet?” another asked.

  Trudy hung her head, and Warren stepped protectively in front of her. “Give her some space, for God’s sake,” he snapped.

  “You can dream all you want,” Trudy whispered, her breath hot in Rhonda’s ear. “But at some point, someone’s gonna turn on the goddamn light.”

  THE HILLSIDES WERE searched all day and no sign of Ernie was found. Then, the next morning, a volunteer fireman discovered a pile of bones hidden in a cluster of rocks. The forensic team was called in and quickly identified the fragmented bones as animal: deer, most likely. The fireman had discovered the den of a coyote. The news cameras filmed a shaky Trudy with Pat clinging hard to her arm like she was keeping Trudy from floating away. The volunteers went home at the end of the day, everyone convinced that Ernie Florucci, wherever she may be, was not in the state forest.

  RHONDA AND WARREN went back to Pat’s to check if any new information had come in. The phones were being manned by a grouchy old Cecil, who had a bad hip and couldn’t join the search team at the state park.

  “Not a damn thing. Phone didn’t ring once. The most exciting part of my day was when that little Katy brought me these goddamn brownies.” He gestured spitefully at the tray of goodies. “I ate about half of them—which I’m not supposed to, with my sugar. Doc put me on pills, maybe I’ll just take an extra tonight.” He sighed, ruminating on his misfortune for a moment. “Oh, and she dropped this off for you.” He handed over a manila envelope with WARREN & RHONDA scrawled on the outside in pink marker.

  “Damn shame you didn’t find anything in the forest. Watching it on the news at noon, I felt almost as bad for Patty as for Trudy. She’s taking it real hard.”

  Warren nodded. “She’s doing all she can.”

  “You know, I was on the fire department back when Rebecca was killed,” Cecil said, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “I was one of the first on the scene. I’m the one who grabbed Patty and took her away. She didn’t need to see her sister all messed up like a bunch of dog food.”

  “Rebecca?” Rhonda asked. Nothing about this story was familiar to her.

  “My mom’s and Pat’s little sister,” Warren explained. Rhonda remembered the photograph in Pat’s office, the littlest girl on the end, her hair in ribbons.

  “Hit by a logging truck back in ’73. I’m no headshrinker, but know what I think?” Cecil asked. “I think Patty’s always blamed herself. I mean, she was the only one at home that day with Rebecca. She was supposed to be keeping an eye on her. But little girls can be as slippery as snakes—weren’t her fault and nobody ever said it were. Just the same, all these years later, here’s a chance to save another little girl. And she jumps on it. Throws herself into it like it’s her life’s calling. Right?”

  Warren nodded.

  Two lost girls, Rhonda was thinking.

  Cecil got up to leave. “She was holding one of Rebecca’s little shoes when I found her. A white sneaker stained with blood. Wouldn’t let it go.” He pulled on an old VFD baseball cap. “Damn shame,” he mumbled. They thanked Cecil and watched him go.

  “I can’t believe I never heard the story of Rebecca,” Rhonda said.

  “It was a long time ago,” Warren said. “And one of those things people don’t talk about, like cancer or something. I barely know the story myself and it was my own family.”

  Rhonda nodded, thinking of the secrets in her family.

  “So, what do
you think?” Warren asked. “Is it worth sticking around or should we go for beer?” He opened the envelope from Katy and shook it to let the paper fall out.

  “I vote for beer. It’s been a hell of a long day and it’s not like the phones have been ringing off the hook.”

  She glanced down at the paper on the table. It was a color photocopy of Ernie’s drawing of Rabbit Island. Attached to it was a sticky note: Worried the original might get confiscated, so I made a copy. Thought you might want one too. I still say it’s some kind of park with a stone garden or something. K.

  Warren turned the drawing to face him, and Rhonda was looking at it upside down, and only seeing it from this unfamiliar perspective did she recognize Rabbit Island for what it was.

  “The beer’s going to have to wait,” Rhonda said. “Come on, we’re going for a ride.”

  JUNE 12, 1993

  PETER HAD HIS scripts printed and everyone was ready to go. He decided they would start at the beginning: with Peter Pan arriving in the nursery and taking the children away. Little Jamie O’Shea was playing Michael, and his brother Malcolm played John. The O’Sheas were quiet, red-haired boys from the end of the street, who had to be coached constantly to say their lines louder.

  “What?” Peter yelled after one of them had spoken. “Speak up, John! Speak up, Michael! Or I’ll feed you to the crocodile!”

  But the problem was, they had no crocodile. Not yet. The lost boys, Indians, and pirates were all younger kids, summer kids whose folks owned cottages on the lake. They came back year after year, making their way to the woods to shyly ask Peter if they could try out for the play. Anyone who tried out got a part, even if it meant having to write in a new character.