She smiled. “You’re in love with him,” she said. “Win.”
Oh God. We’d been way too careless tonight. Yet hearing those words warmed me and I couldn’t help my smile. I knew I could trust Jocelyn. “You could tell?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. Not just tonight, either,” she said, as if reading my mind.
I gave her a puzzled look. “How could you know?”
“You never take your eyes off him,” she said.
“Yes, I do too!” I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. There was no way she could know how I felt about Win. I hadn’t even realized my own feelings until the night before when I told him about Mattie.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s mutual. He never takes his eyes off you either.”
How could I have missed that? For a moment, I basked in that thought, but then my throat tightened. “Jocelyn,” I said quietly. “It’s not good.”
She was shaking her head before the words were out of my mouth. “I know,” she said. “And listen, Ellie. If I noticed, you can bet Greg has, too. He’s got his eye on you two. You need to be careful.”
“Rosemary was there tonight,” I said.
Jocelyn frowned. “Where?”
“At that club.”
“You’re kidding. Are you sure it was her?”
“Yes. And she saw Win and me leave together.”
A female voice suddenly ricocheted off the walls and metal bars, making us both jump. “What y’all whisperin’ about in there?”
Jocelyn and I looked at each other, then started giggling. “Nothing!” I hollered back. We waited a moment for her to speak again, but the woman was apparently done with us.
“Do you know where we are?” I whispered. “I mean, what town?”
“I have no idea. Carlisle, probably.”
“The van is still back at that crazy juke joint. Greg is going to be furious,” I said. “Do you think they’ll make us pay bail to get out of here?”
“I hope not. I have no money and SCOPE sure has no money.”
We were quiet for a while, sitting there. I was sure we were both dreading the moment we had to use that toilet. Finally I drew in a long, tired breath. “Wanna sing?” I asked.
“Why not?” she said.
I started singing “I’ll Fly Away” and pretty soon the woman with the booming voice joined in with us, and then another, and another. Finally, a woman way in the distance hollered for us to shut up. But we didn’t. We sat up singing our freedom songs for most of the night.
Chapter 37
KAYLA
2010
“What’s on that tree, Mama?” Rainie asks as I back the car out of our garage.
I look over at the small redbud tree in our front yard. It looks strange. It’s a distance from us and appears as though it’s suddenly hung with Spanish moss. I press the brake and squint. It’s not Spanish moss at all. It’s squirrels. Dead squirrels. Maybe twenty of them. Maybe more. From where I sit, it looks as though they’ve fallen from the sky.
I feel sick to my stomach, and I press the gas before Rainie has the chance to figure it out for herself. “I think it’s a kind of moss,” I say, my voice sounding like it belongs to someone else. “I’ll ask someone to take it down. Okay?”
“Okay,” she says from behind me. From the sound of her voice, I know she is unbothered. Ready to move on to the next topic. But I’m frankly terrified. What the hell is going on?
When I get to her school, I go inside to explain to her teacher and principal that I’m worried about Rainie’s safety. They look alarmed as I tell them about the kidnapping. The squirrels in the tree. I ask them to please, please keep a careful eye on my daughter. Her teacher says she won’t let Rainie out of her sight.
Then, on the drive home, I call Samantha Johns and my father.
An hour later, Samantha, Daddy, and I are in my front yard, looking up at the desecrated redbud tree. The sight is both nauseating and frightening. I welcome my father’s protective hand on my back.
“Looks like they used a pellet gun,” Daddy says.
“Right,” says Sam. “They killed the squirrels someplace else, then came over here during the night and just tossed them in your tree.”
“Why is someone doing this to me?” I ask, as if she might have the answer.
She looks at me with steady dark eyes behind her glasses. “Let’s go inside,” she says. “I want you to take a look at some pictures.”
Inside, I make coffee for the three of us. It’s my fourth cup since I took Rainie to school and my nerves are a wreck. We sit in the kitchen, Daddy and me on one side of the quartzite-topped island, Sam on the other. She produces a loose-leaf notebook filled with mug shots of women. She’s made a little cutout of mirrored sunglasses that she holds over the face of each woman as I study the photographs, but we don’t get very far. I just don’t remember the woman’s face from when I saw her in my office. I can remember the things that stood out about her: the bright red hair, the sloppy acrylics, the glasses—all the things that were temporary. The features of her face are lost to me.
“There is one thing,” I say, “though I don’t think it’s going to be much help.”
“What’s that, hon?” Daddy asks.
“She had a mark on the inside of her right arm. I caught just a flash of it and at first I thought it might be a scar. Like, maybe she’d tried to slit her wrist at some point. But it was too short … or the wrong shape. Not like a clean slice.” I draw my finger horizontally across my wrist to demonstrate.
“A burn?” Sam suggests.
“Possibly. Or maybe a birthmark. I only got a quick look at it.”
She jots something down on her notepad. “How is Rainie doing?” she asks as she writes.
“She’s a tough little cookie,” my father says with a smile.
“He’s right,” I say. “She’s so resilient. I couldn’t sleep the night after she was taken, and I kept checking on her, but she was sleeping soundly every time. I’m terrified, though, like I shouldn’t let her out of my sight.”
Sam nods as though she understands. She pulls a sheet of paper from the back of the notebook. “You need to see this,” she says, setting the paper in front of me on the island. “These are calls that your husband made to us while he was working on the house.”
I frown. “He called the police?”
“I assume he didn’t tell you?”
“Well, no. I don’t remember him saying anything.” Damn it, Jackson, I think. Why did you keep so much from me? “What did he call about?”
Sam turns the paper so she can read from it. “Stolen power tools from the work site. Stolen tile. Stolen hardwood flooring. Stolen paint.” She looks up at me. “These are all on different dates,” she says.
“That’s crazy,” I say. “He never told me things were taken.” I look at my father. “Did he say anything to you?”
“Not a word.”
“There’s more,” Sam says.
“Why didn’t they lock everything up?” I ask.