Hidden Falls

by Newport, Olivia

  Pastor Matt stood behind the pulpit and asked the congregation to pray with him.

  “Why don’t they adjust the thermostat?” Emma fanned herself with her bulletin.

  “I’m sure it will feel cooler soon.” Sylvia hoped her whisper would remind Emma to lower her voice.

  The pastor began to read the New Testament passage he planned to preach on.

  Emma shirked off her sweater. Sylvia ignored the rustling and focused on the voice coming through the sound system. Around them, most of the congregation settled in. Feet shuffled in search of a comfortable position, and Bible pages turned. A few rows behind Sylvia, a toddler whimpered.

  “I have to go out for some air,” Emma whispered.

  “Give it some time,” Sylvia said.

  “What?”

  “Just wait a few minutes.”

  “I can’t hear you.” Emma picked up her purse. “I’ll take a walk.”

  Emma stepped past Sylvia’s knees and padded up the aisle. Sylvia pressed her lips together and made a rapid decision to follow her mother. Lately the confusion was unpredictable. Since the death of Sylvia’s father seven years ago, Emma lived alone and managed fairly well—but when Sylvia visited several times a week, she noticed more and more items out of place. Her mother seemed to pour a lot of coffee she never drank and strewed shoes around the house after a lifelong rule of shoes belonging in closets.

  Sylvia reached the foyer right behind her mother. “We can sit out here.”

  “I just needed some air. You didn’t have to come.”

  “I wanted to stay with you.” Sylvia pointed to a loudspeaker. “We can still hear the sermon out here.”

  “He’s preaching on trust again.” Emma sat in one of a pair of identical stuffed armless chairs with a round table between them.

  “It’s a series,” Sylvia said. “Two more weeks, I think.”

  “Well, I trust he will bring it to a trustworthy end.”

  Sylvia tilted her head toward Emma as she took the other chair. “I don’t think that’s the lesson he wants us to learn.”

  “Let an old lady have her fun.” Emma crossed her ankles.

  “Would the old lady like a glass of water?”

  “Don’t call me old. No, thank you. I don’t need water. I’m cooler already just being out here.”

  “Good.”

  “This business about Quinn is certainly mysterious,” Emma said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Even though Sylvia purposely didn’t discuss last night with her mother, there was no telling what Emma had heard. Any number of people might have phoned Emma with speculative information along with the sparse facts.

  “It’s not the first time somebody from this town has disappeared under mysterious circumstances,” Emma said.

  Sylvia angled her head to consider her mother, whose own face was poised on the precipice of recollection.

  “It’s a good story,” Emma said.

  “You’ll have to tell it to me sometime.” Sylvia glanced up at the loudspeaker in the ceiling and tried to tune in to Pastor Matt’s voice.

  “Now, I’m not sure I’ll get all the details right.” Emma tapped her fingers against the purse in her lap.

  “There’s no hurry. You can think about it and tell me another time. Do you feel cool enough to go back in?”

  “Let’s see,” Emma said, “actually there were two families.”

  “Mom,” Sylvia said, “have you cooled off?”

  Emma waved a hand. “Oh, trust God and pray. You know how the sermon is going to end.”

  Was it so much to ask that Sylvia have a chance to sit still and quiet in a place that represented God’s presence to her?

  “The two families didn’t have much in common, as I recall.” Emma pushed her lips to one side in thought. “Your grandmother used to tell the story. Actually, she didn’t tell it so much as she talked about it as if she knew something.”

  Sylvia was trapped. If she walked away now, her mother would have every reason to take offense.

  “And of course I haven’t heard the story in decades,” Emma said. “Not since I was a young woman. A girl, really.”

  “Mom, let’s go back in to church.”

  “Just give me a minute. It will come.”

  An usher came out of the sanctuary. Sylvia recognized the Sunday morning attendance sheet he carried between thumb and forefinger.

  “Hello, Henry.” Sylvia hoped the interruption would distract her mother.

  “I sure wasn’t expecting to fill in for Quinn on usher duty,” Henry said. “I figured this was one weekend he’d be in church for sure.”

  “Yes, well, we’re all a bit surprised.”

  “What a night it was for Lauren,” Henry said.

  “For Lauren?” Why should Henry Healy pick out Lauren, when Sylvia was the one the town would hold responsible for Quinn?

  “I’m surprised she even came to church after being at the sheriff’s office until the middle of the night.”

  Sylvia sat up straight.

  “Oh, hadn’t you heard?” When Henry raised his eyebrows, his whole face lifted. “I assumed someone would have called you.”

  “Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning.” Sylvia pushed her internal professional button for outward calm.

  “I’m trying,” Emma said, “but I can’t quite remember how the story begins.”

  Sylvia put a hand on her mother’s knee. “I’m sorry, Mom. I meant Henry. I think he has something to tell me.” She stood up and stepped several yards away from Emma. Henry followed.

  “My son called me first thing this morning.” Henry parked his pencil above one ear. “He works nights for the janitorial service and was cleaning at the sheriff’s department last night. He said Lauren was there until all hours after the car wreck.”

  “I think I’ve got it now,” Emma said. “There were two families and it seemed like they had nothing in common and probably didn’t even know each other.”

  “I’ll be right there, Mom.” Sylvia kept her eyes on Henry.

  Emma scratched her chin. “Now, what was it? Maybe they knew each other after all. I’m trying to remember what Mama used to say. She was quite a gossip, you know.”

  Sylvia did know. “I’m sure it will come to you. Just give me a minute to talk to Henry.”

  “Is she all right?” Henry asked.

  “Yes.” Sylvia licked her lips. “What wreck, Henry?”

  “Quinn’s, of course. Didn’t you hear they found his car?”

  Sylvia determined her face would give away nothing.

  “From what my son heard, Lauren was one of the people who found the car. That Sandquist girl was with her.”

  “Nicole?”

  “Yes, she’s the one.”

  Sylvia’s heart thudded. “And Quinn?”

  Henry shook his head. “No sign of him. They called in Cooper Elliott to take down the testimony.”

  Sylvia rapidly indexed the people she had noticed in the sanctuary. Cooper was not among them, but his attendance was erratic under normal circumstances. Why hadn’t anyone called her?

  Henry flapped the paper in his hand. “I’d better go count the kiddos in the children’s wing.”

  “Do me a favor, Henry?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t mention this to anyone after church. Give me a chance to find out what’s going on.”

  “You got it.”

  How many people had Henry already tried to impress with his advance information?

  10:47 a.m.

  Quinn was the one who got Nicole Sandquist started going to church in the months following her mother’s death. Ethan Jordan came later, after Nicole knew every closet, coatrack, and drinking fountain in the building. She gloated in those days and doled out her stash of insider knowledge in measured weekly rations to the boy next door who was also the smartest kid in the class. They sat in worship on either side of Quinn. He didn’t have to be a parent to know that if the two
of them sat side by side they would spend the hour whispering. As it was, they folded notes and labeled them “very important” as an appeal to Quinn to allow them to keep passing messages back and forth.

  Later, when they were teenagers, Nicole and Ethan sat together on their own, and often in the rear pews where most of the youth group seemed to congregate. On Sunday evenings the youth group met in their own space on the second floor of the educational wing. Ethan and Nicole rarely missed a meeting. But that was years ago, and while Nicole had a church in St. Louis that she called her own, in truth she was only there once every five or six weeks.

  Now Nicole was sitting in the pew where Quinn ought to have been, on the left side of the congregation and about a third of the way back. She had no idea if he still gravitated to that spot, but it had been the pew of choice when she started coming to church. If she breathed deeply, she could nearly smell his aftershave in the pew upholstery, and it didn’t require much imagination to sense Ethan sitting two spots over. Several times during the service, Nicole turned her head expecting to see them both and give herself over to the tug of those years. She would feel again the cushion that Quinn and Ethan, and all of Our Savior, had been for her during years of hard landings.

  But they weren’t there.

  Nicole didn’t know this pastor. The bulletin said his name was Matt Kendrick. Most likely he was doing a fine job of preaching, but Nicole was only hearing about every fourth sentence.

  She would find Quinn. What was the point of training as a journalist and climbing out of the garden club and into investigative reporting if she couldn’t put her skills to work when they mattered most? More than one case in St. Louis twisted on a peculiar fact Nicole uncovered and confirmed before feeding it to a detective with the authority to act on it. The fact that Cooper Elliott wasn’t a detective became clear to Nicole in the middle of the night. He had some training, and he followed protocol in the way he questioned, but he wasn’t going to smell a trail the way Nicole could.

  Nicole flipped over the bulletin and found an open square where she could make notes.

  Principal.

  Other teachers.

  Neighbors.

  Newspaper archives.

  Falls and lake.

  Sheriff’s report on accident.

  Lauren.

  She might have trouble getting the sheriff’s report and photos, but she had her own memory of the scene. Nicole drew a line under Lauren’s name. Sometimes people knew information without realizing it. The right questions could bring it to light.

  The pastor closed his sermon with a prayer, and the congregation stood to sing one last time. Nicole folded the bulletin and stuffed it in her purse. As soon as the final syllable of the benediction faded, she turned toward the tap on her shoulder.

  “It is you!”

  Nicole looked into the bright blue eyes of the woman who had been her Sunday school teacher for most of high school. Benita Booker looked just the way Nicole remembered her—perhaps because her captivating eyes had always been the feature Nicole noticed most. Benita opened her arms, and Nicole happily leaned into the embrace.

  “I was just sure that was you,” Benita said. “I almost let my husband persuade me otherwise.”

  “It’s me, all right. It’s good to see you.” Nicole meant what she said.

  “Did you come home for the banquet last night?”

  Nicole nodded. How many other people dear to her past had been in that confused crowd?

  “What could have become of Quinn?” Benita said. “It must have shocked you even more than the rest of us.”

  Nicole resolved not to say anything about the accident. If she was going to find Quinn, the last thing she wanted to do was fuel the rumor mill with incomplete information.

  “People are saying the most dreadful things.” Benita shook her head with a sigh.

  “Oh?”

  “There was a couple at my table I didn’t recognize, though I think they had to be at least ten years ahead of you in school. They went on and on about how Quinn and Sylvia never married and maybe it was because he already had a wife somewhere.”

  “I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.”

  “That’s exactly what I said. What kind of person wants to sully the reputation of someone like Quinn at his own banquet? I nearly picked up my plate to look for a seat at another table.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to idle gossip.” Nicole seethed with indignation that such an explanation would be the first to spring to anyone’s mind. The whole town would be in trouble if people resorted to thinking the worst. “What matters is finding Quinn and making sure he’s all right.”

  “Do you think the police will find him?”

  “I’m sure they intend to look.” Nicole didn’t add that she intended to search five times harder than anyone else. She wouldn’t stop until she was sure Quinn hadn’t come to harm—at least not more harm than slamming his car into a tree and perhaps wandering into the woods disoriented.

  Ethan would have an opinion about whether disorientation could be a symptom of whatever was wrong with Quinn’s brain. Nicole stopped herself. She might not have Ethan’s scientific mind, but she was well trained not to jump ahead of facts she could prove. She didn’t know that anything was wrong with Quinn’s brain. Finding Quinn was all that mattered right now.

  She spotted the mayor. “Excuse me, Mrs. Booker, but I want to catch Sylvia Alexander.”

  To Nicole’s relief, she realized Sylvia was aiming toward her. Emma lagged behind Sylvia, stopping to chat with a couple of people. Unlike Benita Booker, Emma looked a great deal older than what Nicole remembered. Her hair had whitened considerably, and while her movements didn’t look strained, exactly, they were slower.

  Sylvia gripped Nicole’s arm and pulled her toward a wall.

  “I only found out a few minutes ago,” Sylvia said, “that you and Lauren were at the sheriff’s office well into the night. I haven’t even talked to Lauren yet.”

  Nicole puffed her cheeks and blew out her exasperation as she mentally reviewed who had been present last night in a sparsely staffed sheriff’s department. Any of the officers sworn to uphold the law would know better than to spread rumors.

  “I was driving home,” Nicole said. “Lauren was walking, but she had a healthy head start, so I was surprised to find her there when I saw the car.”

  “How bad was it?”

  Fear flushed through Sylvia’s face, but Nicole saw no point in holding back truth. Sylvia was sure to be on the phone to the sheriff before lunch. “The car flipped, probably when it went around a bend too fast. The front end hit one of the old maples at the side of the road.”

  Sylvia shook her head. “Quinn doesn’t speed. He hardly goes the limit.”

  “We don’t know what happened, Sylvia, but we’re going to find out. I promise you that.”

  11:01 a.m.

  Sylvia prodded her mother to recall that she had known Nicole as a child and left them to chat. She scanned the sanctuary, but Lauren had slipped out of sight. A couple of musicians were picking up sheet music, but otherwise the congregation had dispersed to the foyer or the fellowship hall. Sylvia didn’t want to be drawn into conversation just then. She reached into her purse, woke up her phone, and found the nearly daily trail of text messages she exchanged with her niece. Sylvia wasn’t as speedy on the miniature keyboard as younger people she observed, and she detested abbreviations, but she was accustomed to sending text messages like a citizen of the twenty-first century.

  WHERE ARE YOU? she typed. CAN WE CHAT?

  Sylvia held her phone in her hand and ventured into the corridor that led to the staff offices, hoping Lauren had not already bolted from the building. “Come on,” she muttered. “Turn your phone on.”

  Just when she was about to concede that Lauren had switched off her phone before the worship service and had not yet reconnected to the world, Sylvia’s phone vibrated.

  IN MY OFFICE, was the reply
.

  ALONE?

  AT THE MOMENT.

  WAIT FOR ME.

  Sylvia paced in a businesslike manner she hoped would communicate she didn’t intend to stop for chitchat—a strategy that successfully carried her past two ushers bearing offering plates to the office to count and Raisa Gallagher cradling a baby while chasing a squealing toddler. If Sylvia offended anyone by not being sociable, she would make amends later. At Lauren’s office door, Sylvia saw through the slim window that her niece was inside.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Sylvia demanded as she closed the door behind her. “Why does Henry Healy know where you spent the night before your own aunt?”

  Lauren sank into her desk chair. “It was late. You were exhausted. If you were asleep, I wanted you to stay asleep.”

  “I’m the mayor.”

  “Officer Elliott pointed out that a car accident is a legal matter, not a civic matter.”

  Sylvia swallowed the anxiety gathered in her throat. Cooper was right. Technically. But Cooper had to know how she would feel about learning her niece had discovered Quinn’s car under precarious circumstances—and Quinn nowhere in sight. She composed herself and sat in one of four chairs at a round table.

  “Tell me what happened,” Sylvia said. “I want every detail.”

  Her brow furrowed as Lauren recounted leaving the banquet hall, opting to stroll an indirect route home, coming upon Quinn’s car, looking up to see Nicole scrambling around the car, and spending half the night telling the same details to Cooper Elliott. Dizziness took hold behind Sylvia’s eyes as she tried to make sense of it all.

  “Quinn had some kind of emergency.” Lauren rubbed each temple with two fingers. “What was so important that he didn’t think he could wait one more day—or even a couple of hours? And leaving his car makes no sense. He should have called 911 or the sheriff’s office.”

  Sylvia sighed. “He probably didn’t have his cell phone. He’s always going off without it.”