by Karen Ellis
Lex and Joan both wait with Elsa. Around them, investigators slam doors; engines rev, cars race out of the lot. Standing in the sun, blinded by its intensity, Elsa doesn’t turn her eyes away. She’ll take whatever pain is coming, absorb it, devour it, let it consume her. Joan puts on her sunglasses and Lex lifts a hand to shade his face, both standing protectively close as she listens.
A deep male voice says, “This is Trooper Sullivan. Got something for you on that girl’s cell—the signal pings on Route Thirty-Two, just above New Paltz.”
“Heading north?”
“Heading nowhere, actually. We watched it a solid five minutes and it’s holding still. Thought it might be a rest stop but it isn’t. It’s a field.”
“You found it?” She closes her eyes, trying to divine a sliver of metal in a field of green—a phone. Nestled in the hand of a girl, Mel. Just sitting there, the way kids do, absently texting her friends. Detached from time.
“Not yet, but we’re still looking. Just wanted to keep you posted.”
Elsa doesn’t realize she’s trembling until she’s in the driver’s seat, starting the engine, and feels the weight of Lex’s hand on her arm. She shakes him off and drives, wondering how and when Nelson got to Mel. Flashing back to yesterday, walking past the tent, sensing that he was listening. What had they talked about? Ruby, the gun, Allie—returning to the hospital in Sleepy Hollow.
Tara’s slap resonates on Elsa’s own face; she knows exactly how Mel felt, why she bolted, and she wonders for the umpteenth time why she herself never ran when she could have. The poison of rage spreads and spreads until the road in front of her subsumes the past, and she’s helpless, because what they did to each other then can’t be undone, the seeds cannot be unplanted. The only way for Tara not to have slapped Mel would be if Mel had never been born. And the thought of that is worse than almost anything.
29
Hope opens her eyes—shivering, ravenous, thinking of Jackson.
Jackson is a boy from school. A boy Hope likes, and he knows it.
She’d been with him in her dream just now and shuts her eyes hard and tight, hoping to re-conjure him, but the mildew smell of here and now is too strong and he evaporates.
On the craggy wall behind where the freak was sitting on his towel before he went away, a scant trickle of water drips, drips, drips. Her dry-as-Hades mouth opens and, thirst beckoning, she wills a drop her way. Just one. But she isn’t magic and it doesn’t come and her animal thirst growls.
And then out of nowhere the other girl comes toward her, the new one, like a rickety tripod, on bound wrists and legs that have somehow come free. Her muddled voice fighting the tape over her mouth, struggling to say something. She looks so bad, so scared, so energized; how Hope felt when she arrived a million hours ago. When the first girl was still breathing. Before she knew that she, too, would die here in this cave. She feels her eyes pool and blinks them clear.
The new girl’s face is damp and dirty and she’s shaking her head like a dog out of a lake, drops flying. Telling Hope not to cry. That’s nice of her, Hope thinks; maybe if they’d met some other time and place, they could have been friends.
The girl hunches over Hope’s hands and with bloody stumps of cracked fingernails picks at the ropes. Hope understands; it’s how the new girl got her own ankles free. Hope lifts her hands as much as she can, a quarter inch, before the lariat tightens around her neck.
It will never work; it will never work.
She thinks of Jackson, tries to will herself back to the dream. Focuses on what she can remember of his face: roundish cheeks, coppery skin (they say his mother is half American Indian), a natural flare to his nostrils that says I don’t care but means I’ll be passionate about love when I find out what it is. He’s younger than her by a year. Taller than her by six inches, and she isn’t short. She took a bite of his pizza last week and he laughed.
Snap.
Hope widens her eyes and nods and nods. The rope has suddenly gone slack, and she unfurls like a chick out of its shell.
The girl lifts her own hands—her bound, shaking hands. Angles her head, pleading.
Hope shakes out her arms and rotates her neck and kicks her feet and gets to work unknotting the girl’s wrists.
30
Becky’s hand is trembling, holding a yellow rubber bracelet stamped LIVE STRONG with the ST scratched out and a W etched above it. Broken, roughly, as if bitten apart. Streaked with blood. “She was wearing this yesterday when she left for school.”
The young man who delivered it, thick blond hair and a trimmed beard, explains, “I found it at SVC, on campus.”
Elsa has heard of Southern Vermont College but knows little about it other than that it occupies the former estate of a nineteenth-century industrialist somewhere in or near Bennington.
“I work part-time at Everett Mansion and sometimes, before I get into my car after work, I go into the woods. Take a walk. Clear my mind. Today something yellow caught my eye. It was bunched up with some pine needles. I’ve been hearing about that girl on the news and when I saw this, I had a feeling it was hers, or could be hers. And then I noticed something—it isn’t wet, but it rained earlier today.”
Realizing the possible significance of the find—that Hope might have dropped it recently, after the rain; that she could be on the move again, either with or without her captor—Elsa turns to Becky and asks, “How well does Hope know the woods?”
“We used to take long walks there,” the mother answers, “so she knows it more or less.”
The grid of Elsa’s forehead tightens. Pulse races. Skin burns. This clever girl thinks for herself; she’s a survivor. She dropped clues on purpose—and recently. And Mel, shrewd Mel, would bring ideas of her own. Strength in numbers, Elsa thinks; it’s always best to have an ally.
People scatter into the woods, vast and green, and Elsa is moving to join them when she hears her name. She turns and finds Lex facing her, his arms crossed over his chest. His smile isn’t encouraging; he’s tilting his head. Next to him, Joan stands in perfectly poised professional neutrality. Elsa knows what they’re going to say before they say it—she can read it in their eyes—and she’s ready for them.
“Elsa,” Lex says, “we think you should sit this out.”
“No.”
“This is personal for you now,” Joan says softly, “your niece—”
“No way.”
“You can’t be clearheaded,” Joan argues. “Your judgment will be impaired. Sweetie, no one can operate on all cylinders when a loved one’s at risk.”
It’s the sweetie that gets her. One thing Elsa has never been is sweet. She says, “There is no fucking way I’m going to sit this out,” and turns toward the woods.
31
The staircase bends at the middle, the two parts joined by a small landing with a window looking out onto the backyard where your old swing set has grown rusty. Only Tara uses it now, occasionally. You have other concerns.
School has gotten harder. There’s a boy you like who might possibly like you back. One friend got her period for the first time. Another girl’s parents are splitting up. There is a lot for your friends to deal with without adding your own problems into the mix, and besides, what would you say?
Sitting on the lower half of the stairs, fresh from a bout with your mother, you try out excuses for the bruise that might appear on your cheekbone where she hit you with the back of her hand.
“I didn’t mean to hit your face,” she said. “You moved.”
To which you replied, idiotically, “I’m sorry.”
You still don’t know why you apologized to her, but in some odd way it feels right. This is a kind of problem you wouldn’t know how to begin to discuss with your friends. And so you don’t.
The front door opens and Roy walks in. His smile fades when he sees your face. Normally the first thing he asks is “Where’s your mother?” but not tonight. He puts down his bag, hangs his coat on the bottom curl o
f the banister, and sits beside you on your step midway up the first section of staircase.
He says, “Do you want to tell me what happened, Elsie?”
“Why does it matter?” Without acrimony. The truth at the core of your rhetorical question is apparent to both of you. It doesn’t matter why it happens. Anything can trigger it. That it happens, and happens, and happens is a fact of your life.
You shrug your shoulders.
Your father sighs.
You’ve grown too old for him to avoid the question of his culpability, and he says, “If we got a divorce, would you come with me?”
Your heart dances. “Are you? Getting a divorce?”
“It’s really just a hypothetical question.”
You look at him; you don’t quite understand that word.
“I’m just thinking aloud,” he clarifies, “wondering what would happen if.”
Oh. That means that nothing is changing here. Still, you want him to know: “Yes, I would.”
“The only reason I stay is to protect you and Tara.”
“But she doesn’t hit Tara.”
“And between you and me,” he says, “we’re going to make sure she never does. Right?”
“Right, Daddy.” You allow him to take your hand. His, so warm. Something doesn’t feel right, but you can’t put your finger on it. Finally, you ask, “How does it protect me, though?”
“As long as I’m here, you know you’ve always got an ally, a friend, nearby. You aren’t alone. My eyes are open. I know—we all know—that she takes her anger out on you, honey.”
You feel cold, even with his hand still holding yours. He squeezes, as if he senses you drifting and wants to stop you from floating away.
You ask, “Why me?”
“I think it’s because you’re special.” A small, loving smile that you drink in. “You’re feisty, you speak your mind, you argue back. And you know what?”
You look at him. It feels like watching a commercial on TV, half of you wanting to believe, the other half holding back.
“You’re strong. She can’t break you, no matter what.”
“My face hurts so much, though.”
His eyes squint, inspecting your cheek. “It’s not too bad. Listen, do you want to go out to dinner with me tonight? Just the two of us? We can talk about whatever you want to.”
You jump at the chance. But over dinner at the local diner, conversation falters; you end up finishing your grilled cheese sandwich mostly in silence, and both of you forgo dessert.
32
Bright daylight weakened by the density of trees, their summer-lush branches arcing high in a forest ceiling. Day becomes artificial evening, and, the farther in Elsa walks, evening becomes premature night punctuated by dreamlike flashes of sunshine. Outside sounds are absorbed by bird chatter, insect chirps, breeze-fluttered leaves, the searchers’ footsteps soft on a thick carpet of moss and pine needles. Elsa and her group walk, armed, intent, as if connected by an invisible rope of their breathing. As if language has been reduced to only three words, voices repeat, “Ruby!” “Hope!” “Mel!” in an echoing cacophony. Every now and then a voice from somewhere else in the woods intrudes sharply, an unseen searcher, and each time they stop to listen for a note of urgency. Greenberg’s voice, in particular, a howl.
A siren crescendos into the now-distant parking lot. An ambulance, at the ready. Dread burrows into Elsa. She takes a deep breath and forges ahead, leading her small group with the map, as if she can read it when her mind is spinning circles around the professionalism she struggles to yoke into place. Maybe Lex and Joan were right, maybe she should recuse herself, since Nelson’s crimes have gotten personal. Maybe. But she can’t stop. She just can’t, now more than ever.
When the beaten path feels limiting, she veers off the trail, and the members of her group scatter into the brush. She ignores the thorny branches slapping at her, tearing her sleeves, and scans every inch of the forest for the girls. Trying not to think about the possibility that Sammy Nelson could be out there too.
Not realizing at first that she’s separated from her search party, she reemerges onto the trail and finds herself with a different group, this one including Lex. The side of his neck has a bloody gash. They lock eyes a moment and continue on together.
Half a mile west of their starting point, Elsa’s and Lex’s phones vibrate simultaneously. Elsa pulls hers out of her pocket and sees that it’s a text from Ernie Bennett.
Found it, Everett’s Cave, northwest of the mansion.
Elsa responds: Anyone there?
Ruby.
Not Ruby alive, or Ruby dead. Just Ruby.
They have to clamber over jutting stones and then stoop into a narrow opening in order to enter the cave. Then a climb down takes them into darkness, weakly illuminated by Bennett’s flashlight. The dark void pulls around Elsa. The mossy damp. The resonant drip-drip-drip that grows louder as they proceed.
Bennett shifts his beam upward. “The CSI techs just got here.” The dripping is so close now, it gives off echoes.
On the second level, a nest of flowstones and dripping stalactites. Only a shred of natural light finds its way in. Bennett waves his beam back and forth over the cave to show them, but it’s hard to see much of anything until one of the two techs setting up their work area switches on a floodlight. Elsa’s stomach bucks when she sees it:
The stack of lumber Nelson loaded into the van at Greenberg’s
A filthy towel
A roll of duct tape with a jagged ripped end
A cigarette lighter, orange
An empty Styrofoam cup lying on its side near the towel
A pair of rusty scissors
An unopened bag of carabiner hooks
A coil of steel rope
A flashy new toolbox
A small black handgun that looks identical to the one Elsa saw in Peter Haverstock’s workshop.
The Invisible Man
A sticky-looking thread of something half dried, reddish, leads Elsa’s eye across the cave.
To Ruby.
A wax girl.
Elsa’s brain twists and twists; her heart plummets.
They are too late.
Days and hours and minutes too late.
Her mind pulls away from her body, like it used to when she was a girl, allowing her to observe the horror from a safe distance. Or a distance, at least. The last time this happened, her mother was dead in front of her. She squeezes her eyes shut and forces her parts back together.
Bennett crouches beside Ruby and says, quietly, as if he doesn’t want the lifeless girl to hear, “We think she’s been gone between four and twenty-four hours. She’s still in rigor mortis.”
Lex silently directs his flashlight to a haphazard pile of rope. A glint of something white brings a soiled feather earring into focus. “Didn’t Hope’s mother say she was wearing an earring like that when she left for school?”
Yes, Elsa thinks, yes, yes. Her eyes hunt for signs of Mel, anything to prove she’s also been here, hoping that she wasn’t, and in the darkness and panic she sees nothing. She says, “Maybe he doesn’t actually have Mel. Maybe—”
Lex’s hand on her shoulder is oppressive. She jerks away and heads toward the mouth of the cave. Recalling, suddenly, the thirst that clawed her throat after long hours in her closet. “If it were me in here since yesterday, I’d want water, first thing.”
Bennett’s voice trails her: “There are a couple of streams and a waterfall nearby. I used to bring my kids here when they were young.”
Shaking, Elsa climbs out of the cave, into the tunnel.
Lex and Bennett are right behind her, the flashlight’s beam opening the path forward.
33
Come on, people, let’s move it!”
Carrie leads the way, swinging her elbows like she’s the captain of a marching band. She’s tiny enough to get lost in the profusion of leaves but too bright to miss. Carrie is neon pink, and now, Hope sees for the fi
rst time, she carries an emerald-green baton. Behind her, sapphire Velma and Arnold wearing a big gold crown hold hands. This is new. Jesus comes last but he’s grown a quarter inch and filled his outlines with rainbow stripes. Hope blinks her eyes. They disappear. Blinks again, and they’re back, bigger and brighter than before.
Jesus turns to look directly at her, walking backward. “Don’t give up, Hope!”
“I won’t.” Hope gasps. “I won’t.” Breathing is harder now. Her lungs feel deflated. Her throat is so swollen it’s hard not to choke when she tries to swallow, which she can’t anyway because she’s out of saliva.
“Where are we going?” she asks the entire board of directors. She pays them to have answers, after all. It’s their job.
“Who are you talking to?” the new girl asks. She’s smaller than Hope, but stronger.
“Onward,” Velma and Arnold say together.
And so they do—move onward. She follows, hoping for the best.
Carrie turns and raises her baton. “The cupcake. Drop the cupcake now. It’s time.”
Hope rips the cupcake charm off one of her bracelets and drops it. Carrie nods in approval. So does the new girl, who adds, “That’s a good idea.”
They tramp through the woods.
Everything dims. Hope feels scarily faint.
Jackson.
Her mother.
Her father.
Her brothers.
She forces open her eyes and thrusts her feet forward as daylight seems to drain away. In the dusky forest the entire army of her hundred and twelve little people appear, glowing, perched on leaves like candles on Christmas branches. Tous ensemble (Ms. Laroux, ninth-grade French), they raise their batons and lead her forward with a chorus of petty inquisition:
What is a quark?
The smallest unit of matter, makes up protons.
What are molecules?
