Lost a few girls, Kris thought. As if they were items that had been misplaced. She braced herself for what was to come, suspecting that the tale was about to get much worse.
Hitch held up one finger. “Ruby Millan. Eight years old. Climbed out of her bedroom window in the middle of the night.”
A second finger joined the first. “Sarah Bell. Nine. Walked away from her elementary school at recess.”
A third finger. “Megan Adamson. Just shy of her tenth birthday. Her mother took her shopping for a present downtown. Mama looked away for one second, and little Megan was gone.”
Another finger went up. Four. “Poppy Azuara. This was just …” He closed his eyes as he counted in his head. “Four years ago this August. Poppy was with her parents over in Jefferson Park when she wandered off. Pacington is not a big place, as you know. You can walk it end to end in half an hour. An hour after she went missing, the entire town was out looking for her, although those of us old enough to remember the others knew where to look.”
Hitch paused. If it was for dramatic effect, he was being unnecessarily cruel.
Kris opened her mouth to ask Where?, but before the word could escape her lips, Hitch answered: “The lake. That’s where we always ended up looking, the other times. So with Poppy, a group of us just decided to go there first.”
“Did you find her?” Kris’s throat was suddenly dry. She tried to swallow and felt her throat constrict tighter.
Hitch slowly shook his head.
“And the others?”
“Oh yes, they were found. Poor things.”
“Were they—”
Suddenly Hitch’s attention shifted to something behind Kris. His body stiffened, his lips clamping shut in a tight, forced smile.
Kris heard the sound of light footsteps hurrying behind her. Something tugged on the back of her shirt.
Sadie stared up at her. In the girl’s hand was a thin paperback, its spine tattered, the title barely legible.
Just like Hitch had done, Kris willed herself to smile. “You find something?”
Sadie nodded. She held the book closer for Kris to see.
It was not a novel at all but a leather-bound journal filled with blank pages of rough parchment. Stamped into the corner of the cover was a single flower blooming at the end of a twisting vine.
Sadie clutched it tightly in her hands, waiting patiently.
“Yeah, of course,” Kris said. Her words were barely a whisper. She cleared her throat and repeated, “Of course. You can get it.”
When Kris looked up, she found that Hitch had already returned to the front counter. It was as if he had never left, as if he had not been standing with her only a moment before. He rapped his fingers on the credenza’s dense surface and smiled warmly. “Will that be it? Just the two?”
It took Kris a few seconds to understand what Hitch was referring to. She had completely forgotten about the book clutched in her hand. “No, just the journal,” she said, and quickly returned the book to where she had found it.
Hitch happily punched the keys of a massive antique register as he rang up the journal. “Eight dollars even,” he announced, his smile widening to reveal large, smoke-stained teeth.
Nodding, she reached into her purse. Her hands were shaking, both from the awful tale Hitch had told and the unexpected surprise of seeing the item Sadie had chosen—a journal, its pages ready to be filled with drawings and stories and anything else her young mind could dream up. Kris’s trembling fingers found her wallet but refused to grip it. She balled her hands into fists and let out a slow, quiet breath. She opened her hands again. They were steady.
She paid with cash, dropped the wallet back into her purse, and handed the journal to Sadie. The little girl clutched it to her chest as if it were her most prized possession. When Kris turned back, Hitch was leaning over on one elbow, his face surprisingly close.
“I’m sorry if I upset you,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t have said anything, but you did ask, so …”
“No, it’s okay. I wanted to know.” She began to ask something else, although even she was not sure what it was. She wanted to know more. She wanted to hear the rest of the story, to find out what exactly had happened to Ruby and Sarah and Megan, but a larger part needed to leave, to flee this strange little store that wasn’t quite a store, this house that wasn’t quite a house.
She turned to follow Sadie, who was already halfway to the front door.
Behind them, Hitch picked up a paperback from the stack at his side and opened its cover. “Stay away from Amy Witherspoon,” he said without looking up. “She’ll only upset you.” He quickly scribbled a price in the top right corner of the title page, set the book on the opposite stack, and reached for another.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
OUTSIDE, THE WIND had picked up. It whipped past the buildings along Center Street, twisting around light poles and howling over the tops of parked cars. It spun like a cyclone around a man in a green-and-yellow John Deere cap, forcing him to quickly clap both hands on top of his head to keep the wind from snatching his hat.
The air was warm and humid with an unmistakable wetness that dampened the skin. Kris wiped at beads of sweat that had suddenly sprung on her brow and beneath her eyes. She lowered her head against the onslaught, her hair lifting off her shoulders and flapping behind her like a short reddish-brown cape.
She no longer wanted to be there. She wished they were back at the lake house, the doors locked, the windows latched, sitting together on the couch as they listened to the walls creak like the hull of a ship as the furious wind beat against them.
Are you sure? It was the voice from the darkness, purring like a cat. Are you sure the lake house is where you want to be?
Where else is there? she asked the voice.
Home.
This is home.
The voice retreated into the shadows, but she had a feeling it was not fully satisfied with that answer.
She clutched Sadie’s hand tightly as they made their way down the sidewalk, back in the direction of the Auto Barn. With every townsperson they passed, Kris found herself staring a bit too long, studying their faces as if they were disguised guests at a costume party. Their smiles seemed genuine enough, their eyes friendly and bright. The ones who returned her gaze did so with expressions meant to imply a compassionate sense of disbelief at the shared assault they were all experiencing. Can you believe this wind? they seemed to say. She forced herself to search for anything hidden behind their polite expressions—a crack in a smile, a twitch at the corner of an eye—something to suggest the masking of some untold pain.
Reaching the familiar row of hedges, Kris turned left, steering Sadie alongside her. The crumbling road seemed longer than before and a good deal darker. The trees to their right caught the sunlight and held it, refusing to let it pass any farther.
“Mommy.” Sadie sounded apologetic, as if she were sorry for having to speak up. “You’re squeezing my hand.”
Kris said, “Oh,” and loosened her grip ever so slightly. But not completely. She wouldn’t until she had her daughter safely back in the Jeep.
At the far edge of the driveway, the shadows arced away and sunlight illuminated the bright red face of the barn. Kris realized that a window on the second floor looked into a modern office where Camilla sat behind a sleek steel desk, her face unusually pale in the glow of a computer monitor. She seemed to sense that she was being watched, for at that exact moment, she glanced up, and her slack expression rose into one of recognition and understanding. She held up a finger to signal that she would be down in one moment.