by Laura McHugh
“What’s it like for you?” Retta’s smile faded. “Out there? I’ve thought of you so many times, prayed for you. I felt awful that you had to leave all on your own.”
She made it sound like I’d been exiled to outer space. “I wasn’t really alone,” I said. “I had people helping me. I have a job now, a house. I’m doing fine.”
“But you’re not married yet?” She gestured to my ringless hand. “Are you…dating someone?”
“No. I’m busy with work, and…other things.”
“Do you go roller-skating?”
“What?”
Retta looked down at her lap, embarrassed by my reaction. “You always talked about how you missed it. How your friends were probably skating without you on Friday nights while you were stuck at home.”
“Oh, yeah. I think I’m too old now. It’d be weird, someone my age going to a skating rink alone.”
“Of course,” she said. “Sorry, that was dumb. I guess I just imagined you doing all the things you couldn’t do here—getting your ears pierced, going to the movies.”
“It’s not dumb,” I said. “Things are just different than I thought they’d be, I guess.”
She nodded, smoothing her skirt over her lap. “I thought of you,” she said. “When I heard about Noah and Sylvie. I know you cared for him. I worried it might be hard for you.”
“No. I mean…I didn’t expect that Sylvie would be getting married so soon. And I didn’t expect it to be him. But Noah and I were never going to end up together. Before I left, my mother was trying to marry me off to Doug Hartzell. We got in a huge fight over it.”
“I need to tell you something,” Retta blurted.
“What?”
“It was my fault, I think, that your mother was keeping such a close eye on you, right before you went missing. That she was in such a rush for you to marry Doug. I told her you were planning to leave. I prayed on it, and I truly believed it was the right thing to do. But then, everything that happened, after…I felt like it was my fault in a way, like one thing led to another. That maybe none of it would have gone like it did if I hadn’t said anything.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. It had never occurred to me that Retta would have told my parents anything. It probably hadn’t made a difference, because my mother was upset about my attitude anyway, but it might have helped explain why they assumed I’d run away, why they hadn’t called the police when I disappeared. Retta looked ready to cry, her face all crinkled up.
“Forget it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“It was selfish of me,” she said. “I didn’t want you to leave. We always talked about the things we’d do together. I wanted you to stay here with me, but nothing worked out the way I thought it would. You left just the same.”
“I didn’t want to leave you, Retta, but you were happy here—you were getting married, and that was all you ever wanted. I didn’t want any of that. The only way out of it was to leave. And then after what happened, I couldn’t stay.”
“I know,” Retta said. “And I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.” I reached out to squeeze her hand. “It was a long time ago. I’m glad to see you, I really am. I’ve missed you.”
A wan smile crossed her face. “I’ve missed you, too. You have no idea. I have Philip, and my family, and the women’s group…but no one took your place. There’s no one I can talk to the way we used to.”
“I thought about writing to you,” I said. “But I didn’t know if you’d want to hear from me. When I was home, after they found me…you never called or came by.”
“I wanted to,” she said. “But my parents wouldn’t let me. I helped my mother make meals to take to your family. I prayed so hard. I couldn’t imagine what you’d been through. And I actually did write you a letter,” she said. “Telling you all the things I didn’t get to say. I buried it, so my mother wouldn’t see. Old habits.”
“What did you think had happened?” I said. “What did they tell you?”
“I didn’t know you’d been gone until you were back. Your family wasn’t at church because Sylvie’d been so sick and I figured you were sick, too, or helping take care of her. There was no talk until after, and then people said you’d run away and gotten yourself into trouble.”
“So no one believed my side of the story?”
She shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t even hear it. They don’t trust the news. They make up their own minds. It doesn’t matter what they think.”
“What about you?”
“You remember when I told you about what had happened to me? About Leon? You never asked if I was making it up. You didn’t ask me a bunch of questions to see if all the pieces fit together, if they made sense. You just believed me. You were my best friend. And I know you’re not a liar.”
I exhaled with relief. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d still wanted—needed—Retta to believe me. “Do you ever wonder, since they never figured out who did it, if he’s still out there? That was another reason I wanted to leave. I worried that he’d come back, or that he was here, right in front of us. Have you noticed anything strange around Wisteria since I’ve been gone? Anything out of the ordinary? Anyone acting differently?”
Retta looked down at her chapped hands, and I imagined the work they endured each day. Scrubbing diapers, washing dishes, cleaning up every crumb and smear and fingerprint left behind by three small children. An oppressive silence swelled to fill the room. There were none of the sounds I’d grown used to from living in town, no traffic, no neighbors. Not a whisper of breath from her sleeping sons.
“Retta?”
She got up and went to the door, peeking through the curtain as if to make certain no one was outside. It was getting dark.
“Philip will be home soon,” she said.
“Do you want me to go? Would he not want me to be here?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not that. He just…doesn’t like gossip. He finds it unbecoming of a lady.” She sat back down. “This might not be anything. There was a new girl at church, younger than us…I didn’t know her very well, except she helped out with the preschoolers quite a bit. My nieces just adored her. But she tried to run away, for real. Took her parents’ car. Didn’t make it out of the county, though—she didn’t have a license, never learned how to drive. Wound up in a ditch. I heard Pastor Rick helped her parents send her on a mission trip somewhere, to get her straightened out.”
“And you think that might be connected somehow?”
“Well, not that part, but there was something else. A rumor. That she was pregnant. Supposedly somebody who worked at the clinic was there when she was brought in after the accident, and they overheard the nurse. I don’t know if that was true, or just talk. But I wondered, if she really was pregnant, who had done that to her, and if it might have been the same man. The one who took you.”
“Oh.” It was a stretch. Even if the rumor was true and the girl was pregnant, it didn’t necessarily indicate a crime. It was impossible to know without digging deeper, but Farrow had said any piece of information could be important, that leads might come from unexpected places. “What’s her name?”
“Eva Winters. A tiny little thing with dark hair and freckles. She really took to missionary work. She’s not back yet.” She looked up at me. “Do you think you’ll ever come back? Not just for a visit, but for good?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t stay in touch. We can write letters, talk on the phone. We don’t have to let five more years go by.”
“If you change your mind,” she said, “it’s never too late to come home.”
Retta promised, when I left, that I’d see her and Philip and the boys at Sylvie’s wedding. It had grown dark outside, darker than it ever got in St. Agnes, with its p
orch lights and streetlights and the hazy glow of the city. I hurried to the car and tried to text Farrow to tell him about the other girl, Eva Winters, but the message wouldn’t go through, so I tried calling instead. The phone rang and rang as I crossed the low-water bridge and made my way out of the holler, my headlights reflecting the glowing eyes of hidden creatures at the edge of the woods. It didn’t seem like Farrow not to answer right away. I left him a voicemail, wondering what he was doing, what kept him away from the phone.
CHAPTER 18
SARABETH, THEN
AGE 17
I sucked in a panicked breath and choked, the fear of suffocation overwhelming as I woke to absolute darkness, a cloth covering my face and sticking to my crusted mouth. I coughed and struggled but could barely move. The last thing I remembered was the sun spilling down through the corn, the man in the mask holding me against his chest, covering my mouth as I screamed. My heart clutched into a fist, squeezing tighter and tighter until I thought it would burst, but minutes passed and it continued to beat, just as air moved in and out of my lungs, stale and humid and sustaining. Once I convinced myself that I could breathe, that I would not die in that moment or the next, my mind scurried to other fears, racing into the darkest corners. I didn’t know where I was or what was going to happen to me. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been there, whether it was night or day. Beyond the blindfold, I imagined the darkness pressing down on me, layer upon layer, a windowless room buried underground beneath a black, moonless sky, miles of emptiness void of electric light.
Amid the panic, one small mercy rose to the surface, and I clung to it. Wherever I was, for the moment at least, I was alone. I didn’t sense anyone else in the room. If I was going to try to get out, I needed to do it before the man returned. My back pressed against a stone or concrete wall, my arms spread to either side crucifixion style, wrists bound to an unmoving object, maybe a pipe, fingers half numb. I twisted my neck from side to side, the muscles kinked and aching. I tried to rub my face against my arm to loosen the blindfold, but it was tight, entangled in my hair, and there was some sort of loose sack over that, which seemed to be fastened at the neck. My dress had ridden up and I could feel a rough blanket or canvas tarp beneath my bare thighs. The space around me felt small and enclosed and slightly damp. A cellar maybe, or a crawl space. I stretched my legs out as far as I could without wrenching my arms out of their sockets, my bare feet encountering nothing but the blanket and the floor. My ankles were shackled together, with some sort of bar between them.
I tested my voice, and it was hoarse. I had the feeling that screaming wouldn’t help anyway. I scooted my bottom back against the wall to relieve the strain in my neck and shoulders and folded my legs beneath my dress as best I could. I was alive. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill me, but I was alive for now, for some reason, and that reason couldn’t be good.
I tried to remember him. Everything had happened so quickly that some details were blurred. He wore a hat and mask, but I couldn’t recall his clothing. He hadn’t spoken, or shown his face, or reached for the cash box. He was strong, had caught me easily and held me tight as I fought.
All I could do was wait in the dark, in the thick silence. My instinct was to pray, though I hadn’t prayed in earnest, with the hope that it would do any good, in years. None of my prayers had ever been answered the way that I wanted. My mother tried to explain the difference between wishing and praying, and Pastor Rick preached about God’s divine wisdom exceeding our human understanding, but I figured if God was going to do what He wanted regardless, there was no point in trying to sway Him.
I’d joined the church prayer circle in praying for the Hannemeyers’ little boy when he got sick, and he’d gotten worse and died. The Hannemeyers had accepted God’s will that Josiah not live to see his second birthday, comforted by faith that they would see him again in Heaven. I couldn’t believe that in a Heaven already teeming with little boys, God needed this particular one, Josiah Hannemeyer of Wisteria, Arkansas, who had only recently learned to walk. Still, there were flickers of uncertainty, that maybe I hadn’t prayed hard enough, that I wasn’t doing it right, that I was failing some test God had placed before me. If prayer did work, I had to believe that my mother prayed more than enough to make up for my lapses. She’d been praying overtime lately, trying to get me back on what she felt was the right path, and she would surely be praying when she discovered that I was missing. I hoped, though, that my parents wouldn’t rely on God’s will to bring me home, that they would also call the sheriff.
I rested my head against the wall and thought of Sylvie, who had been so sick that she hadn’t said goodbye when I left the house. Maybe her illness did serve a divine purpose, just as Mama had said. Maybe God had spared her by keeping her from going with me. And if God had protected Sylvie, I had to consider that he was punishing me, for my sharp tongue or my lack of faith or any number of sins and shortcomings, or perhaps at the behest of my mother’s fervent prayers.
CHAPTER 19
SARAH, NOW
The morning after my visit with Retta, I woke at dawn to feed the chickens with Sylvie and then excused myself to take a walk while she and Mama did their Bible study. Mama raised an eyebrow but didn’t say a word. It seemed like she’d said all she wanted to say to me the night I arrived, and now she was biting her tongue and silently counting the hours until I was gone.
I walked up the hill through the dew-covered grass toward the Darlings’ farm. The house came into view, and then the big red barn, and out front a lone figure kneeling to examine a tractor tire. I wasn’t sure that I intended to go closer until I did.
A coonhound emerged from the shade of the barn and began to bark, his snout pitching upward. The man looked up, and after a pause, his arm rose in an uncertain wave. He adjusted his baseball cap and walked toward me. The dog reached me first, and I bent down, palm outstretched for him to sniff. He licked my hand, tail wagging.
“That you, Sarabeth?”
“Hi, Tom.” He looked almost rugged, which I never would have imagined, his gangly frame filled out, his face deeply tanned from working outdoors, his jaw bearing a hint of stubble. “Good to see you.”
He smiled, the same warm smile that had always broken out when Eli and I came over. “You look different,” he said. “Good, I mean. Your hair…”
My hand instinctively went to my shoulder, where I sometimes felt the weight of my missing hair, like a phantom limb. “I feel lighter without it.”
He nodded. “Yeah. It suits you.”
“Looks like you kept growing after I left.”
He laughed. “That’s fair. Guess I did. Takes a bit of muscle to keep this place going.”
“You’re…farming now?”
He pulled up his shirtsleeve to reveal the telltale line where his skin turned from dark to light. “Got a real farmer’s tan and everything.”
“You’re fully committed.”
“Yeah, well. What else was I gonna do. So…you’re back for the wedding.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I bet Sylvie’s real happy you could make it.”
“I think so,” I said. “Not so sure about everybody else.”
“Ah.” He didn’t look surprised. “You got time to stay and visit a minute? I could get you some coffee. Or a Coke, like old times.”
“Coffee would be great, thanks. And I’d love to say hi to your grandparents, if they’re home?”
“They’re not, unfortunately,” he said. “Gramma got a new hip and had some complications from surgery, so she’s recovering at a nursing home. She doesn’t like me to call it a home, though, because she doesn’t plan to stay long. But Grampa’s with her, so at least she’s not alone. They’ll be real sorry they missed you.”
We walked to the house and went in through the kitchen door, like I used to when I baked for Mrs. Darling. Tom made coffee with the old percol
ator and we sat together at the kitchen table, the dog at our feet.
“They worried about you,” Tom said. “We all did. Wondered how you were doing. But your parents acted like you fell off the face of the earth. We didn’t have any way to reach you. Gramma kept hoping you’d write or call.”
“Yeah. It took me a long time before I could even write to my family. I just wanted to leave everything behind, you know? Start fresh.”
“I get it,” he said. “And I don’t blame you. I can’t imagine what you went through. I hope things are better now? That you’re doing all right? I don’t want to pry. I’m sure you’re already sick of people asking you questions.”
“No, it’s fine. There’s not much to tell. The biggest change is probably just all the little things. I can wear pants now. Watch TV. Drive.”
“I remember us driving around in the Gator,” he said. “Pretending we were out cruising like the cool kids.”
“That was fun,” I said. “Some of the best times I had here were with you.”
“It’s hard, I bet, to be back.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It is. But it’s not all bad. I get to see my family. Retta. You. What have you been up to?”
He gestured toward the window, the fields beyond. “Just…this. The farm. I don’t get out much, and there’s nothing to do anyway. Everybody our age is married or in jail or working, trying to get by. I’m this close to turning into one of those creepy old guys who buys beer for high school kids so they’ll hang out with him.”
“I doubt that,” I said. “What about Jack? Is he still around?”
“Jack? He went away to college, came back with a pregnant girlfriend, now he’s assistant manager at Price Chopper. Everett went to school with him but got in some trouble and dropped out partway through. Works at his dad’s car wash in town.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know. All I heard was he got arrested.”
