Crossfire Creek

by Melissa F. Miller

  “About time.”

  She took a step back from the door and arranged her expression into one of friendly confusion while she waited for Terry Marsden to reach the door. She rehearsed her opening silently, knowing her best chance of getting the neighbor to trust her would be within the first minutes of their conversation.

  As the doorknob turned, she pasted on a bright smile.

  “Hi, there!” she chirped as the door swung open.

  Her cheerful greeting died on her lips.

  A leather-faced woman squinted at her, hefting a serious-looking hunting rifle. The barrel was lined up with Aroostine’s breastbone.

  Aroostine closed her eyes. Joe? Grandfather? A little help?

  The spirit world did not respond. Apparently, she was on her own. She slowly re-opened her eyes to check whether her situation had improved. It hadn’t.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m looking for Marlene and Joy-Lynn Glasser.”

  “They’re gone,” the woman said in a flat tone.

  “Gone, like for the day?” she feigned confusion.

  “No.” Her eyes narrowed. “You with the police?”

  She tilted her head to the side. “Do I look like a police officer?”

  The rifle jabbed toward her. “That’s not an answer.”

  “Fair enough. I’m not a police officer. I’m a friend of Marlene’s, and I’m worried about her. Maybe lower your weapon and we can talk?”

  The woman considered her for a long moment during which Aroostine prayed she had steady, dry hands. At this distance, if her finger slipped on the trigger, there was little doubt that Aroostine would end up splattered all over the depressing backyard.

  “You from the Qualla?”

  Aroostine kept her eyes locked on the weapon as she answered. “No. I’m not Cherokee.”

  “But you’re an Indian.”

  It didn’t sound like a question, and if it was one, she wasn’t sure whether yes was the answer this gun-toting woman wanted to hear.

  “My name’s Rue Jackman. I’m from Iowa. Put the gun down, and I’ll be happy to show you my driver’s license.”

  The woman pointed the gun to the floor. After a few seconds, she rested the weapon against the wall and held out her hand palm up. “ID.”

  Aroostine let out her breath. As she reached for the wallet, she realized for the first time that her hands were shaking. Her entire world had narrowed down to the image of the barrel of the gun pointing at her chest for several long moments. It was as if her other senses were only now coming back online.

  She passed the fake ID to the woman, who bent her head to examine it closely. Aroostine used the opportunity to examine her. She was tall, almost as tall as Aroostine, and angular. Her prominent cheekbones and sharp elbows combined with her tan skin made Aroostine think of a pioneer woman, hardscrabble, tough, and unsentimental. She wore her gray hair pulled back and secured in a knot at the base of her neck.

  She handed back the driver’s license and said unsmilingly, “Sorry if I scared you, Miss Jackman. After the murder and all, I can’t be too careful … especially after the paper printed Marlene’s address.”

  “Please, call me Rue. May I call you Terry?”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “How did you … Marlene talked about me?”

  “In passing,” Aroostine lied.

  “Huh. Yeah, sure call me Terry.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions and take a quick look around Marlene’s place, Terry? I’m desperate to find out where Marlene and Joy-Lynn are. It won’t take long. I promise.”

  Terry took a beat to consider.

  “I suppose there’s no harm. And you did come all the way from Iowa. Come on in.”

  She stepped aside, and Aroostine walked inside. Terry closed and locked the door, grabbed her gun from where it leaned against the wall, and clomped past Aroostine toward the front of the house.

  Aroostine trailed the woman along the hallway.

  “Go ahead and look around. I was making my breakfast. I suppose I could just use the big kitchen now, seeing as how Marlene and the girl are gone. But I like my kitchenette.”

  She didn’t respond. The woman was clearly talking more to herself than to Aroostine. She rambled on, “Let me turn off the oven and put the food away. I won’t be long.”

  She paused at the foot of the stairs and spoke over her shoulder. “The bedrooms are behind the sitting room. Marlene slept in the back bedroom. The girl used the middle room.”

  As Terry ascended the stairs with slow, deliberate footfalls, Aroostine walked through the small living room, scanning the books and magazines. But she was more interested in Marlene and Joy-Lynn’s private spaces. She suspected she’d learn more there than she would in an area where everything was on public display.

  So she moved swiftly through the living area and opened the first of the bedroom doors. Joy-Lynn’s room. A heart-piercing mashup of little girl and preteen. The stuffed dolphin arranged just so on the pink and purple polka-dotted pillowcase and the shimmery rainbow unicorn bedspread clashed mightily with the Thomas Moran prints of canyon scenes tacked to the wall above the twin bed.

  She recognized the Morans from her frequent visits to the Smithsonian American Art Museum during the time she’d worked and lived in Washington, DC, and she paused to wonder what kind of eleven-year-old girl’s bedroom wall displayed art from the Hudson River School instead of a poster of a Korean-pop boy band.

  She pivoted in place, taking in the small, surprisingly tidy space. It was crammed with mementos. Ticket stubs peeked out of the corners of a bulletin board, a program for an art exhibit in Charlotte was displayed in a frame on a small white desk, and a child’s diary, locked shut with a golden clasp, sat on the desk as well. There were no photographs, Aroostine realized. The room was oddly devoid of pictures of Joy-Lynn with her mother or in the middle of a gaggle of girls who were making silly faces and sticking out their tongues.

  But then, she reconsidered, maybe it wasn’t odd at all. What meaning could photographs of people she loved hold for a girl who was unable to recognize faces? Showing them off would be the equivalent of displaying grocery lists or receipts from a dry cleaner. Impersonal, emotionless, bland—pointless.

  Aroostine struggled to imagine a life without the spark of joy that came from opening her front door and seeing her mother and father, their kind faces lit with happiness. Or the burst of tenderness she felt when she opened an email from Sasha or Leo to find the latest batch of pictures of their preschool-aged twins, caught in action throwing back their heads in wild laughter or grinning mischievously or studying a caterpillar with intense concentration. Or even the wave of exquisite pain and longing that washed over her when she closed her eyes and pictured Joe. His warm blue eyes crinkling at the corners and a small smile tugging at his lips. It chilled her to think of losing those connections—no, not losing, never knowing. She crossed her arms over her chest, cradling her elbows in her opposite hands and hugged herself close to ward off the loneliness that threatened to engulf her at the thought.

  She had to get out of this room before she melted into a maudlin puddle of emotion.

  As she turned toward the door, her eyes landed on the diary. A ripple of guilt passed through her. She shook it off. She had to know whether Joy-Lynn had written anything about plans to take off or the events that precipitated their disappearance. It wasn’t prying or voyeuristic. It was a basic tracking principle: She needed to think like her quarry.

  Still, she felt mildly queasy as she slipped a bobby pin from her hair, straightened it, and stuck it in the cheap lock. The lock yielded without protest. She smoothed her hand over the glittery cover and opened the book where Joy-Lynn Glasser had kept her innermost secrets and private thoughts.

  This book belongs to Joy-Lynn Anna Glasser. The name was scrawled with a flourish across the front flyleaf.

  Aroostine turned to the first lined page and look down at … nothing. An empty expanse of paper. She fl
ipped to the next page. Also blank. She paged through the small book, not quite believing what she was seeing. Page after virgin page covered in lines. Not a word on any of them.

  Despite her disappointment, she managed a wry chuckle. Wherever Joy-Lynn memorialized her dreams and fears and questions, it wasn’t in this vinyl-covered diary that had been so visibly displayed on her desk.

  Of course it wasn’t. Aroostine didn’t know Joy-Lynn, but she did remember being eleven. If she’d left a diary sitting out, announcing its existence to anyone who set foot in her bedroom, it would’ve been a decoy. A test to see if her privacy mattered to her mother. And any journal of secret heartbreaks or triumphs or worries would’ve been squirreled away—tucked into the space between her bed and the wall or buried under a pile of out-of-season clothes on the shelf in her closet. Somewhere safe.

  You’re eleven. This is your bedroom. Where do you hide things?

  She considered the space with fresh eyes. She crouched and lifted the dust ruffle to peer under the bed. Nothing. Nothing in the narrow closet or jammed behind the desk. She picked up the dolphin, turned the stuffed animal over, and examined it for hidden pockets or open seams. It was just a plush dolphin. She placed it back on the bed and pursed her lips.

  Maybe Joy-Lynn didn’t have any secrets. Or maybe she’d taken them with her wherever she’d gone.

  Aroostine crossed the room, prepared to concede defeat. She stopped inside the threshold and turned in a slow half-circle to survey the room one more time.

  She frowned at the bed. She’d left the dolphin out of place. The stuffed animal had been propped up on the pillow, standing erect as if it were jumping out of the water, not lying on its side.

  The exact position of a stuffed dolphin didn’t matter, she knew. Yet, she felt compelled to fix it, to minimize the effect of her intrusion on this girl’s space.

  She moved the dolphin aside. As she picked up Joy-Lynn’s pillow to fluff it into shape, it crinkled.

  She smiled. In her experience, pillows didn’t crinkle. Paper crinkled. She eased her hand inside the pillowcase and removed a small stack of papers.

  She sat on Joy-Lynn’s narrow bed and flipped through them. The pages had a perforated left edge. They’d been removed from a sketchbook. Or possibly multiple sketchbooks, she corrected herself, as she ran her hands over the papers. The sheets were a mix of different thicknesses and paper finishes. But what tied them together was their subject matter. Line drawings, charcoal sketches, vivid paintings, and smudged pastel images all rendered a pair of men’s hiking boots.

  “Rue?”

  Terry’s voice floated down the hallway and shook Aroostine from her musing about the meaning of the boots.

  “I’m in here. In Joy-Lynn’s room,” she called back. She shuffled the sheets of paper into a neat stack and slipped them inside her backpack.

  She met Terry outside the bedroom door.

  “Did you find anything helpful?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m going to poke my head in Marlene’s room. Then can I take you somewhere and buy you a cup of coffee and ask you a few questions?”

  “I’ll answer your questions right here in the living room. You don’t have to buy me anything.”

  “Okay, great. I’ll be right out.”

  She closed the door to Joy-Lynn’s bedroom and walked the few steps to Marlene’s while Terry headed to the front of the house.

  Marlene’s room was sparse and clean, and, like her daughter’s, it lacked a single photograph on display. Maybe prosopagnosia wasn’t to blame; maybe this was the world digital natives embraced. All their pictures existed as pixels on their smartphones and tablets. She’d have to ask Terry or Ellis how old Marlene was.

  She scanned the room, looking for any obvious signs that the pair had been planning to skip town but saw none. What she did note was evidence that Marlene likely had some seriously disordered sleep patterns: a silk sleep mask; a half-empty bottle of lavender pillow spray; a white noise machine; a weighted blanket; and blackout blinds.

  After a quick glance into the hall to confirm Terry wasn’t coming, she lowered herself to the bed, rested her head on the pillow, and let her eyes land where they naturally fell on the opposite wall. She found herself staring at a generic print of a California beach and a white-capped wave.

  She pushed herself up on her elbows and hopped to her feet. Marlene’s taste in landscapes may not have been as sophisticated as her daughter’s, but it was illuminating all the same.

  She joined Terry in the living room. The neighbor was sitting on the lumpy sofa, so she took the armchair.

  “Did Joy-Lynn’s father ever come around?” she asked.

  “I got the impression Marlene wasn’t sure who he was.”

  That squared with what Ellis had said. “Did she have any family in the area?”

  Terry shrugged. “I assume her people are local … from the looks of her, you know. But she never mentioned parents or siblings or anything. My sense was they cut her off after the girl was born, but I could be wrong. Marlene and I aren’t exactly tight.”

  “You don’t get along?”

  Terry dumped a packet of sugar into her coffee and stirred for a moment. “Not that so much as … she’s hot and cold. Some days, she’ll be friendly as all get out. Chatting up a storm while we hang our laundry up out back. Sending the kid upstairs to give me a loaf of bread she just baked. Real neighborly. And sometimes, I’ll see her on the street and she’ll walk right by like she doesn’t know me from Eve. Her nose up in the air. Like I said, hot and cold.”

  Aroostine tilted her head to the side. “That’s odd.”

  “The girl’s the same way. Snooty. And it’s not just me. That’s one reason Marlene can’t keep a job. She can be … unfriendly … to the customers.”

  “Hmm.”

  A question itched at the edges of Aroostine’s brain. Before she could scratch at it, Terry continued, “Not just the customers. Everybody. She got herself fired from the Discount Depot because the manager said she gave him a blank look every time he told her to do something. Like, she’d take a minute to decide whether to even answer him. Insubordinate, he called it.”

  “Marlene told you this?”

  “No, Shane did. He felt bad about having to let her go but he said she had no people skills. And I felt sorry for her, too. I even found her a new job.”

  Aroostine perked up. “You did?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Fat lot of good it did. She got fired from that one, too. She’s a sneaky one.”

  “Sneaky? How?”

  Terry grimaced. “I don’t want to talk bad about your friend.”

  Aroostine knew that’s exactly what she wanted to do. She was looking for permission.

  “Please, don’t give it a thought. I’m worried about Joy-Lynn. I want to try to find them, and the more I know about Marlene’s life here, the better. I won’t be offended by anything you say. Honest.”

  “I got her a job working for the cleaning company where I work off and on. The owner had to fire her because she kept bringing the girl to work after Hanna told her to stop it. She’d take her out to the lightning buggers’ places.”

  “Lightning … bugs?” She must’ve misheard the woman.

  “Buggers,” Terry corrected. “People who come into the area every year to see the firefly display. We have some kind of fireflies here that blink in unison. It’s a big deal, for some reason.”

  “Synchronous fireflies?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” Terry nodded. “It happens at the very end of spring, early summer. There are folks who have cabins or mountain chalets or whatever rich people have, and they only use them during the light show. They sit empty the rest of the year. But I guess when you have that much money, you can pay someone to clean the place and get it ready for you, then clean it again and close it up after you leave. Hanna’s cleaning company has most of those contracts.”

  “Where are these cabins? Are they in a resort community?”

 
“No. They’re all spread out. Most of them bump up against protected land. Either the national forest or the national park. Why?”

  Aroostine lifted a shoulder in response. Because, she thought, whatever else Marlene Glasser might be—bad with money, terrible in interpersonal situations, unlucky in love—she was smart as heck. She changed the subject to avoid the question.

  “Does Joy-Lynn have many friends in the neighborhood?”

  Terry’s lips thinned. Finally, she said, “She might if she went to Mountainview Middle. But Joy-Lynn’s too good for Mountainview, I guess. She goes to the Indian … I mean, Native school, so the neighborhood kids don’t know her all that well. Plus she’s an odd duck, you know? Kind of spacy and vacant-looking. The other kids sort of ignored her …”

  The way Terry trailed off left no doubt that there was an until buried in her silence.

  “Until?” Aroostine prompted.

  She flicked her eyes toward the stairs. “I should go. I gotta get ready for work.”

  “Until?” she repeated, edging her voice with steel.

  Terry huffed out a breath, “Until the crew of neighborhood kids found out Carson Reynolds had a thing for her. Good-looking kid, well-off parents, the whole package. He’s an eighth grader, and they’re already talking about him as a basketball prospect for Duke or Wake Forest. I don’t know how the crush or whatever it is came to light, but you know how girls can be.” She grimaced.

  A memory of old pain passed over Terry’s face like a shadow. The ghost of Aroostine’s long-ago treatment at the hands of her middle school tormenters crept up her spine.

  “It’s been awhile. What exactly are we talking about?”

  “Mind you, Carson didn’t start any of this. This was the girls.”

  “Sure.”

  “They started taunting him about being a … Pretendian.”

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s like a wannabe. A pretend Indian—a Pretendian, get it? It’s what’s folks around here call whites who, you know, go native.”

  “Lovely.”

  Unbidden, a memory slammed up from some deep place within and smacked her in the chest.