At that point she’d been with them long enough that sometimes she had slipped and called Rachel Mom. Eliza thought she might have even done so that day in the church, when Rachel’s body had landed against hers, keeping her still against the hard, wooden pew.
She never slipped and called Josiah Dad.
It was funny that she could remember exactly how they’d watched her that night yet not what they’d said. She hadn’t realized at the time, but they’d probably been terrified she was going to run off to Hicks’s place, that somehow hearing the blasphemy alone would unravel years of indoctrination.
She’d been ten, though. And all she’d wanted was her stuffed bear and to not see the scary witch lady every time she’d closed her eyes.
Now, Eliza sat in the same pew she’d been in all those years ago, heard those echoes, and breathed in the tangled scent of gunpowder and copper blood.
There was someone watching her from the doorway.
Eliza clutched the envelope in her hands until it crumpled beneath the unyielding pressure, but the weight of those eyes didn’t send her fleeing. If God was dead, did she really have anything to fear?
She didn’t remember Cora. There were flashes. White-blonde hair, like Eliza’s. A melodic voice that sang hymns as lullabies. Thin but warm arms. Laughter. Eliza thought there might have been a lot of that, despite the fact that she knew times had been hard for Cora in those years right after Eliza’s birth.
Josiah and Rachel spoke of Cora often, as if they’d read a book on foster parenting and were following the advice with excruciating care. But when they spoke of her, they didn’t talk about the laughter. They spoke about how she’d been such a good martyr for their cause.
After all, in the midst of a war, it wasn’t the people who mattered but the beliefs.
God is dead, the woman had said and then sunk to her knees in front of a cross to kill herself in a house of God. What did that say about any of them?
Were they bound to come back? Even with shattered faith, something in the woman had sought out a place of worship. Was that their inevitable fate? To always return?
Eliza had later learned the woman wasn’t actually old. She’d just turned fifty the week before and had left the Church when she’d been eighteen.
In the woman’s house, the police had found a clipped article laid out on an otherwise completely bare table.
It had been of Josiah, at some gathering at the state capitol, a coming together of lawmakers and religious leaders. He’d been smiling that smile of his, his arm around a state senator.
God is dead, the woman had said before killing herself beneath the eyes of God.
Eliza thought that if her own side of the war had martyrs, that woman might be one of them.
She laid the envelope on the pew and then stood and walked out of the church.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
LUCY THORNE
Saturday, 8:45 p.m.
“You found them.”
It was the first thing that Peggy Anderson said to Lucy and Zoey when she saw them waiting outside her trailer. Her tiny terrier yipped at their heels while Peggy unlocked the door and led the way inside.
“‘Them’?” Lucy asked, her eyes adjusting to the dim interior. It was late, far later than they should be interviewing anyone. By the time they’d driven out of the forest, past Hicks’s truck that was still parked on the side of the road, it had been long past dusk. Getting all the way to the trailer park where Peggy lived put them comfortably into the evening hours.
Peggy shot her a look at the question, but then simply gestured toward two of the overstuffed floral chairs.
“Sit,” she directed as she settled herself into the leather recliner across from them. She slipped a pair of bright neon-green reading glasses on, before almost immediately pushing them up on her head so she could level a hard stare at Lucy. “Talk.”
When Lucy began with introductions, Peggy interrupted. “I know who you are.”
As everyone did.
“Right.” Lucy shifted to the edge of the seat so she wasn’t being eaten alive by fabric and stuffing. “What did you mean by ‘You found them’?”
“What it means is, I’m going to get myself in trouble one of these days,” Peggy muttered, and leaned down to scoop the yapping terrier into her lap. He circled, lay down, and then watched them with dark, beady eyes. “You found more victims.”
There wasn’t an ounce of surprise in Peggy’s voice as she said it, a statement not a question. So maybe Lucy didn’t need to look too far for her second player. Peggy could fit the bill. “How do you know there were more?”
“Because I’ve got eyes, don’t I?” Peggy asked, and then slipped her glasses back on as she rummaged in the basket next to her chair. After a few seconds, she pulled out a slim pale blue folder and tossed it onto the table in front of Lucy. “I’m guessing one of them was Alessandra Shaw.”
Beside her, Zoey started and tried to cover it with a cough that neither Lucy—nor Peggy it seemed—bought.
The name, that name. Alessandra Shaw. It settled in Lucy’s consciousness like an answer that she hadn’t known she’d desperately been seeking. She rubbed at her sternum, the physical weight of the certainty sitting against her chest.
Had that been the girl in the riverbank? Fingers clawing against the red-tinted mud. Pretty, long black hair that hadn’t been touched by time or greedy insects. Was that Alessandra?
Lucy hesitated for a heartbeat longer than she would ever admit to and then reached for the file.
Across the top of the page in scribbled writing was a disappearance date from about a year ago.
“She went missing?”
Peggy nodded, both her and the dog’s eyes locked on Lucy’s face. “Sweet girl. Church.”
It was becoming such a common descriptor that it no longer stood out to Lucy. That seemed to be a category unto itself around here, and Peggy said it the same way Hicks did. Derisively, but with a hint of reverence, as well. Hate and love being two sides of one coin. Lucy wondered if Peggy had been raised in the Church. Certainly, she’d left it if she had.
“Friends with Eliza Cook,” Peggy said evenly.
Lucy didn’t flinch, but she looked up. Friends with Eliza Cook meant friends with Molly Thomas. Probably.
Alessandra Shaw, her brain supplied, an overeager pupil trying to please, knowing something she didn’t. “Go on.”
Peggy’s brows twitched up, but she let the topic of Eliza drop. “Parents walked into their kitchen one morning and found a note.”
A note. Like Molly’s? “Let me guess. It said she was running away.”
“Got it in one.” Peggy touched her nose, before letting her hand drop back down to rest on the terrier’s head. “She’d been going with some boy the parents hadn’t approved of. Said she was moving away with him.”
It was achingly familiar to Molly’s story, but it was achingly familiar to thousands of teenage girls’ stories. It’s why it was so effective.
Lucy tapped the handwritten message across the top of the page. “You say ‘date of disappearance’ here.”
The question about how she knew anything about this was implicit, and Peggy was sharp enough not to need further explanation. “Did Zoey here tell you who I was?”