Her hands felt suddenly sweaty and her heart fluttered a little. It had never been like this with Sammy. They’d never had to wonder about whether they belonged together. They just did. But now she was wondering if she could belong with someone else. With Clay. She rubbed her hands down her skirt and looked around until she spotted Samantha rubbing Chaucer’s head. Lillie and Mary were right beside her. Graham looked to be telling them a story.
It was so like Graham to stay on the fringes of the activity. He wasn’t like Fern. He liked people, but he also stood just a little apart. Such a funny man. Never married, but he had played matchmaker with Kate and Jay. Now he was doing the same for Tori. It had worked for Kate.
Jay was putting new tin on the roof. Daddy watched from the ground, calling up instructions from time to time. Tori was relieved Daddy wasn’t crawling around up there. Her mother had to keep the store open, but she’d charged Tori with making sure Daddy and Kate didn’t overdo.
Tori smiled. She had plenty to do. Keep an eye on Samantha. Keep Daddy and Kate from working too hard. Find a way to tell Clay she wanted to take back her words telling him to go away. Wave the flies away from the pies and cakes she was setting out on the wagon.
By the middle of the afternoon, Samantha ran out of steam. Tori settled her down for a nap on a quilt under a tree. Mary and Lillie sat down beside her, making clover necklaces. The men had the roof fixed and glass back in the windows. Some people headed home to attend to their own chores. It wouldn’t be long until Clay would have to gather up his family and go home to milk. Tori still hadn’t found an opportunity to talk to him.
The women were inside now scrubbing every surface and painting. The men painted on the outside. The siding had never been painted, and the white planks looked almost out of place. A few people wondered aloud if they might be getting the place too fancy for Fern. Nobody could be sure, since Fern hadn’t made an appearance. So they kept painting.
Every few minutes, Tori peered out the window at Samantha, asleep in the shade. She smiled when Mary stretched out beside her and went to sleep too.
She was up on a chair painting the narrow planks of the kitchen ceiling when Lillie burst through the door. “Mrs. Harper! She’s gone, Mrs. Harper!”
Tori dropped her brush, spattering paint on the just scrubbed floor, and jumped down to run outside. Mary was still there on the quilt, sound asleep, but Samantha was gone.
37
Samantha!”
The panic in Victoria’s voice shot through Clay. He looked up from packing his tools back in the truck. At the edge of the clearing, Victoria screamed her little girl’s name again. Beside her, Lillie was wringing her hands and weeping. On a quilt in the shade, Mary rubbed her eyes and wailed too.
Clay ran toward them, not sure what tragedy had struck. He just knew that no matter what Victoria had told him at the pond, he couldn’t stay away from her now. Her father and sisters beat him to her. He was left to comfort his little sisters. That needed doing too, but he wanted to put his arms around Victoria and calm her panic by promising to fix whatever was wrong.
“I was supposed to watch Samantha, but she was asleep.” Lillie could hardly choke out the words. “I had to go to the outhouse. I went fast, but when I got back, she was gone.”
He pulled her close to his chest. “Shh, Lillie. We’ll find her.” He looked over at Victoria, who frantically searched the shadows under the trees with her eyes.
“But I already looked everywhere,” Lillie said. “I didn’t want to scare Mrs. Harper.”
“How long did you look?” Clay asked.
“I don’t know.” Lillie sounded pitiful. “I ran everywhere.”
The people clustered around them had grown quiet to listen. Even Victoria stopped screaming Samantha’s name.
“She can’t have gone far,” Kate said.
“She can move faster than you think,” Lorena spoke up.
“She must have gone into the woods,” someone said.
All the color drained out of Victoria’s face as she stared behind her toward the trees that covered acres and acres around the little house. Clay handed Lillie off to his mother and stepped closer to Victoria. He wanted to push his way through her family to put his arms around her, but he had no right to do that.
“Did somebody look in the rain barrels?” somebody else said.
Victoria looked faint.
“She’s not in a rain barrel.” Clay spoke the words firmly, the way he sometimes talked to little Willie to get his attention. He kept his eyes on Victoria. “Everybody calm down. We’ll find her.”
“Clay’s right,” Graham moved up beside him. “Don’t matter how fast she can move, she’s still just a little bit of a girl.”
“You think Chaucer could track her?” Victoria looked at Graham with hope. “The quilt would have her scent.”
“I’m sorry, Victoria. He ain’t a bad dog, but he’s no Poe.” Graham shook his head sadly. “He don’t do tracking, but don’t you worry. We’ll spread out and have this whole area covered in no time and find her for you.”
Kate spoke up. “Let’s be quiet to see if we can hear her. If she realizes she’s lost, she might be crying.”
Everybody went silent. Clay held his breath and shut his eyes, listening with every bit of his senses. A blue jay squawked nearby, while in the distance crows cawed. Way back on the main road a car went by. But he couldn’t hear anybody crying except for Lillie and Mary, who were snuffling back their tears as quietly as they could.
Then the silence seemed to beg a prayer. He’d felt those times when he was alone out in the field, seeing the dirt turn over under his plow or when the sun pushed red up into the sky as he headed out to the barn. At times like that, a prayer would rise up in his heart. He never had a bit of trouble talking that prayer out loud then with the feeling the Lord was right beside him seeing the same things he was seeing. But he’d never prayed aloud in front of people. He wasn’t a preacher. Or even Aunt Hattie, who everybody knew could pray down the Spirit. But he was in her yard and somebody needed to pray.
So he looked up at the sky the way he’d seen Aunt Hattie do and, without thinking about whether they were the best words or not, just opened his mouth and said what was on his heart. “Dear Lord, keep little Samantha safe and help us find her fast.”
He paused before he said amen, and Lorena spoke up. “Until we find her, please send angels to watch over her.”
Mr. Merritt finished off the prayer. “We beg of you, O Lord. Amen.”
Amens echoed all around them. Then Graham and Mr. Merritt started organizing the searchers. Victoria stood in the middle of them, looking as lost as her little girl. Clay moved up beside her. “The Lord will answer Lorena’s prayer and send angels to watch over Samantha until we find her. You have to believe.”
“I prayed for Sammy. I believed then.”
She sounded so sad Clay thought his heart might break. “This is different. Samantha’s not in a war.”
“Bad things happen everywhere.”
Clay put his hands on her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “They do. But not this time. This time she’s going to come running back to you and be very sorry she wandered away and you’re going to hug her until she tries to squirm out of your arms. But you’ll hug her one more time anyway.”
She almost smiled. Then she looked at the woods behind her. “I’ve got to go look for her.”
“No. You have to wait here so that whoever finds her can bring her straight to you.”
“I can’t just stand here and do nothing while my baby’s lost in the woods.”
“You won’t be doing nothing. You’ll call to her every few minutes. They say people who get lost walk in circles, so she might wander back close enough to hear you.” He leaned down and brushed his lips across her forehead the way he might kiss away a hurt for Mary or Lillie. For just a second, she leaned against him. He wanted to put his arms around her, but it wasn’t the right time. Instead he said, “And be
lieve. Pray and believe.” He looked around at Lorena hovering behind him. “Lorena will help you. She can keep praying down those angels.”
“She summoned angels once,” Victoria whispered the words.
He forced himself to lift his hands away from her shoulders and let Lorena take his place.
“Clay’s right,” Lorena said. “We’ll pray hard and believe with every bit of us, the way Aunt Hattie always did.”
When Clay turned away from Victoria, Graham was waiting for him.
“We split up in teams. The two of us are to look over that way.” Graham pointed to the west. “No time to waste. The sun will be going down soon.” He kept his voice low so Victoria wouldn’t hear him. “It won’t be easy to find the girl once dark falls.”
Graham’s dog barked a couple of times as it followed them into the trees.
“Do you know the woods around here well?” Clay asked.
“Not like Lindell Woods, but these trees hook up to them and I’ve hunted raccoons through here back when I had Poe. Those coons can take a man and his dog on a chase. Now, Fern, she probably knows these trees. She’s traipsed through every woods in the county, I’m thinking, at one time or another.”
“We need her helping hunt then.”
Graham glanced around. “She’s liable to show up. Might even have the girl with her. Or not. You never can tell about Fern.”
They split apart to cover more ground. Every few minutes, Graham called Samantha’s name and his dog barked. If Samantha was anywhere close, she had to hear that. Clay didn’t call to her. Instead he stopped occasionally to listen. And every time he prayed too. Silently now so he could keep listening for crying or some rustle in the brush. Any noise that might mean Samantha was close by.
The last time he stopped, Graham and his dog sounded farther away, and Clay wondered if he should edge back toward them. But it seemed better to cover more ground. Light was fading under the trees. Briefly, he thought of his cows at home, but he couldn’t worry about that now. Not until he heard the signal that the child was found. Somebody was to fire a shot in the air if that happened.
Not if. When. He told Victoria to believe. He had to believe too.
“Over here.” The words were a whisper. A whisper he’d heard before. He stopped and listened. Nothing. Then Graham’s dog barked. They’d gotten even farther apart, but the whispered words had come from the other direction. If there had actually been any whispered words. He shook his head. He was imagining things just like he did that day in Lindell Woods when he thought somebody told him to go back. Sometimes a man could want something so much his mind played tricks on him.
He moved on through the trees, but more warily now, putting his feet down slowly and listening each step. Just in case.
“Over here.” The voice was louder this time. It sounded the same as that day in Lindell Woods, but this was definitely not his imagination. He moved toward the sound, not bothering to be quiet now, but moving as fast as the trees and brush allowed. If the Lord was beckoning him to the child, he was ready to listen.
But it wasn’t the Lord. Without warning, Fern Lindell stepped out from behind a tree in front of him. Her purple print blouse contrasted oddly with the men’s overalls she wore.
“’Bout time.” A scowl stiffened her face. “The little girl is scared.”
He frowned back at her. “If you found her, why didn’t you bring her back?”
“Didn’t want to scare her more. Kids think I’m the boogeyman. The little girl’s mama did. I gave her the terrors.”
“She’s not afraid of you now.”
“Maybe not. But she’s afraid of plenty of things.”
“What do you mean?” Clay asked.
Instead of answering, the woman narrowed her eyes on him. “Thought you wanted to find the girl.”
“I do.” The woman was strange, but she was right. “Where is she?”
The woman pointed. “You’ll hear her. If you listen.” She made a disgusted sound. “Sometimes you don’t listen.”
He did hear whimpers then. Pitiful, sorrowful whimpers. “Is she hurt?” he asked the woman as he pushed past her toward Samantha.
“Not bad. Tripped on some briars.” She followed him. “She was wailing for a while, but I started singing to her till I heard you coming.”
“You sing?” Clay couldn’t hide his surprise at the idea of the woman behind him singing.
“Like a bird.”
With her gravelly voice, he couldn’t imagine her singing like any kind of bird except perhaps a crow, but it didn’t matter how she sang. What mattered was getting Samantha back to her mother as fast as he could.
The little girl cried louder and pointed at the scratches on her legs when she saw Clay. “Hurt.” Then she lifted her hands toward Clay.
“It’s okay, baby. We’ll fix those scratches.” Clay scooped her up and held her close. With his heart extra full, he looked up toward the treetops. “Thank you, Lord.”
She cuddled against him with her head on his shoulder. Her sobs turned to sniffles. “I want Mommy.”
“And she wants you.” He wiped her face off with his shirttail.
“Better go.” Fern stepped out of the trees behind them. “Dark comes fast in the trees.”
Samantha peeked over at Fern and then hid her face against Clay’s shirt. At least she didn’t cry again. He headed back the way he’d come, but Fern stopped him.
“Not that way. Quicker this way.”
“But what about Graham?”
“He won’t get lost.” Fern turned and started back through the trees. “Baby wants her mama.”
Clay followed her. With the shadows deepening, Clay wasn’t sure he could retrace his steps without getting lost. Graham might be the same. “Maybe I should holler at him.”
“Worry, worry.” She stopped and whistled like a hawk alerting the world it was on the hunt. “There. Now we’ll see who gets there first.”
It took Clay a minute to realize the odd sound rumbling out of her was a laugh. She took off so fast Clay almost tripped over some prickly vines in the rush to keep up.
Samantha actually giggled as she bounced against his shoulder. Kids could go from tears to happy in a minute’s time. It wasn’t until people piled on more years that they started hanging on to things, even things that hurt.
When they got close to the edge of the woods, Clay asked the woman, “That was you in the woods the day I went to the pond, wasn’t it?”
Fern looked over her shoulder at him without slowing down. “You wouldn’t listen. Girl was crying like the baby there.” She nodded toward Samantha.
“What makes you think I could have made her stop?”
“Couldn’t if you didn’t try.”
“I’ll try now.”
She stopped walking so suddenly Clay almost ran into her. She pointed ahead. “She’s right over there. Waiting.”
“For Samantha.”
Her lips curled up a little. “And you.” She moved off the faint path to let him pass.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“Not waiting for me.”
“The house is,” Clay said.
“They put a bed in it?”
“I think so.”
“Then I might sleep there.”
“Everybody worked hard on it.”
“That girl, the one who’s not afraid of me, she did it.” Her face softened for a moment, but then her frown came back. “You shouldn’t have cut all the bushes out of the yard.”
Clay almost laughed. “They’ll grow back.”
“Samantha,” Victoria called. She sounded like she was losing hope.
Samantha’s head jerked up off Clay’s shoulder. “Mommy!”
Fern gave Clay’s shoulder a shove. “Baby wants her mama.”
With tears streaming down her cheeks, Victoria ran to meet them when they came out of the trees. She did just what Clay told her she would and grabbed Samantha away from him to hug her close. What he hadn’
t told her, what he wasn’t expecting, was her stepping closer to him, needing his arms around them too. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did.
It was like Fern was whispering in his head. “Hold her.” This time he listened.
38
Please, Tori. You have to come.” Lorena caught a corner of the sheet Tori flipped across the bed and tucked it under the mattress. The sheets carried the fresh smell of May sunshine.
Tori did the same on her side. “Why? You don’t need me to go walking with Fern.”
A week had passed since Samantha got lost, and Tori had absolutely no desire to be in the woods. With Fern or anybody else. Even now, thinking about those long terrible minutes that seemed like hours before Clay came out of the trees with Samantha made Tori’s throat so tight she could barely swallow.
Clay. He’d been so strong that day. Lending her his strength. Praying for them all. Finding Samantha. He said Fern found her, that Fern called to him in the woods to lead him to Samantha. But Clay carried her out. Clay brought her daughter back to her.
Tori held the pillowcase against her face to breathe in the outdoors. Clay smelled of the outdoors. Of sweat and soap too. A thrill went through her at the memory of his arms around her. A guilty little thrill. She kept her eyes away from Sammy’s picture on top of the bureau. Instead she handed the pillowcase to Lorena and watched her scoot it over the pillow.
Try as she might, Tori couldn’t stop thinking about Clay. After services Sunday, he asked to come see her. He had to plow all week and wouldn’t be able to get off the farm until Saturday unless it rained. It hadn’t rained, but now it was Saturday afternoon. She was home from the store, and Samantha was at Mrs. Harper’s. That made Tori’s throat feel tight again.
Chores went faster without Samantha underfoot, but Tori missed her sitting on the pillows to turn making the beds into a game. Tori had wanted to say no when Mrs. Harper came by the store to see if Samantha could go home with her. Both her mother and Mrs. Harper settled their eyes on her, waiting for her answer. Her mother’s eyes were troubled because of how Tori hadn’t let Samantha out of her sight since she wandered off in the woods, and Mrs. Harper’s hopeful because she loved Samantha so much. So she’d said yes.
Love Comes Home Page 29
