Kitabı oku: «Last Resort», sayfa 4

Chapter Six

Pearl Cooper’s tall, rawboned figure emerged from the woods along one of the wildlife trails that intersected the lane. Her hand patted her chest in a long-familiar gesture—Aunt Pearl had claimed heart palpitations for as long as Noelle could remember. The family affectionately accused her of using sympathy to get what she wanted. She never denied it. Aunt Pearl could always charm people into giving in to her, and when she couldn’t charm them, she pulled rank—though Cecil and Jill had incorporated the business to save on taxes, Pearl owned the property and everything on it. It had passed to her through the Cooper family trust.

Pearl’s iron-gray hair stuck out in haphazard tufts, straggling over her forehead to frame deep-blue eyes—Cooper eyes that saw more, sometimes, than one wanted them to see. She seldom wore anything other than jeans and old plaid flannel shirts, even in summer, and now she had the legs of her jeans tucked into a pair of well-used hiking shoes—she’d been the one to teach Noelle this practical trick for warding off tiny, biting varmints.

“Can’t swear to it,” she said as she neared them, “but I think the geese running free and the pennyroyal I planted did the trick. No ticks in the yard or this part of the woods all summer. Of course, you’ve gotta watch close or you’ll be ankle-deep in goose poop, but it’s better than ticks, to my notion. The backwoods are another problem, though. That where you’re headed?” Without pausing, she grabbed Noelle in a fierce hug, wrapping her in the pungent aroma of rosemary that always clung to Pearl from her herb garden.

Noelle’s great-aunt Pearl lived in the same house she’d been born in, a sturdy, sprawling rock dwelling that had changed little since it had been built in the early nineteen-hundreds. For as long as anyone in the area could remember, Pearl Cooper had gathered herbs and made her old-time medicines, distributing them to anyone who needed them. She’d protested loudly when the general store in Hideaway had opened a pharmacy, and she’d been only slightly mollified when she discovered Nathan would be the pharmacist.

“Good to see you, girl,” she said to Noelle now. “I’ve been expecting you. Come to search for Carissa?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what I’ll find that others haven’t.” Noelle gave Nathan a look of caution over Pearl’s shoulder, and was reassured by his small nod of understanding.

“I thought since Carissa and Noelle are such good friends,” Nathan said, “that Noelle might have some fresh insight.”

Pearl was frowning when she stepped back from Noelle’s embrace. “All those searchers probably turned up the same rocks and looked behind the same trees two or three times. Seems this holler’s been scoured from top to bottom and end to end. If she’s any where near here, a feller’d think we’d’ve found something.”

“It seems that way, Aunt Pearl,” Noelle said. “You haven’t seen any strangers hanging around out on the property lately, have you?”

Pearl shook her head. “There’s strangers and tourists swelling the town to three or four times its normal size, but nobody ever wanders this far from the fun.”

Noelle nodded. It was unlikely that any stranger would have ventured this far into the wilderness on the off chance of happening across a twelve-year-old girl to abduct in the dead of night—if Carissa had been abducted. Noelle prayed it wasn’t so, but she couldn’t dismiss the conviction—Nathan might call it a message from God—that someone with sinister motives was involved in Carissa’s disappearance.

Pearl gestured with a loose-jointed shrug. “Seems like the loggers, mill workers and farmhands are here all the time.” She hesitated, her eyes narrowing at Noelle. “Did you hear about poor Harvey Sand? Died from that fall he took last week. I heard tell Greg’s investigating foul play there.”

Noelle shifted impatiently. Pearl could be a talker when she was in the mood, and this wasn’t the time to stand around making idle conversation.

“I don’t know what’s come of Hideaway lately,” Pearl continued, “what with all the new folks moving in and taking over. Mind you, there was no love lost between Harvey and me—heaven knows we went round and round about the price he charged for a couple hours of work every month—but the guy was just a kid, still in his forties. Such a tragic loss.” She shook her head. “That new secretary of his had all our files delivered to the shop at the sawmill on Monday. Can you believe it? Fifteen years’ worth of tax records she just dumped on us, without even offering to help us find another accountant.”

Noelle rubbed her tightening neck muscles and rolled her shoulders.

Pearl noticed at last. She patted Noelle on the shoulder and nodded at Nathan. “You two can look as far and as long as you want. I’m going back out myself after I rest up a bit and give my heart some time to catch up with the rest of me. Melva should be back to the house by now after her latest foray into the woods.” She grunted. “Surprised me to see her scrambling through brush so much. She’s not exactly the outdoorsy type, if you know what I mean.”

“Aunt Pearl, give Melva a break.” Noelle kept her chiding voice gentle. Sparks had flown between Pearl and Melva in the past—Melva had taken over the bookkeeping for Cooper Enterprises from Pearl several years ago, and Pearl was not an easy person to please when it came to the family business. “She loves Carissa. I hope you’ve been nice to her.”

“I’ve been nice as I had to be,” Pearl replied grumpily. “Guess you know Jill’s here, too. She’s been searchin’ all night. We all have. I told her to take a break.”

“Thanks, Pearl.” Nathan took Noelle’s arm and stepped along the road. “We’re headed in that direction, so we might see them.”

“When all this craziness settles down,” Pearl called after them, once more tapping her fingers against her chest, as if the rhythm of her heart would regulate better that way, “you come by my house for some iced sassafras tea. Been too long since we visited last, Noelle.”

“I know, Aunt Pearl. I will.” Noelle fell into step beside Nathan. Pearl returned to the trail through the trees, taking the shortcut to her own house nestled at the foot of the hills that formed Cedar Hollow.

“I should get down here more often,” Noelle said. “Last time I saw Aunt Pearl was at Jill’s a few months ago. I haven’t been to the hollow for a couple of years.”

“Why is that?” Nathan asked.

“Too busy, I guess.” She broke off a twig from a nearby branch and rubbed it between her fingers, deep in thought.

“Or still avoiding it for some reason?”

“Could be. Pearl implied she thought I was still stuck in the past.”

“I disagree,” Nathan said. “You wallow in guilt over the past, but I don’t think you’re stuck there.”

Noelle gave him a look of aggravation.

“So what did she say?” he asked.

“She said, ‘Noelle, you’ve got a lot goin’ for you now, kiddo. Just keep on lookin’ forward, and don’t look back so much. The past can’t hurt us if we stay away from it.’”

Nathan walked beside her in silence. The crunch of their boots against gravel matched, as if they were marching in cadence toward the house where Cecil and Melva lived with Cecil’s children, seventeen-year-old Justin and twelve-year-old Carissa.

Whenever Noelle returned to this hollow, she felt as if she were stepping back in time. She also felt as if she were returning to old, dysfunctional family dynamics. Maybe, deep down, she feared she would once again become the rebellious teenager who’d made so many wrong choices. She knew better, of course. She had a tendency to be oversensitive.

Pearl was right. The past couldn’t hurt her if she stayed away from it.

She navigated around a puddle the circumference of a small car, in which the mud had been churned up into a slick mess with tire tracks. Obviously, there had been dozens of cars in and out of this place since last night, and Noelle glimpsed several vehicles still parked out in the cleared hayfield behind the house.

In addition to the number of automobiles that she and Nathan had seen parked at the sawmill, she judged there might be as many as sixty or eighty people currently searching the place. In the field she counted three pale-green Jeeps with ranger insignias, and seven white police cruisers, all splattered with mud.

“I don’t suppose there was a chance to check for strange footprints before the searchers arrived?” she asked, gesturing toward the mud puddle.

“The police looked, but they found nothing out of the ordinary.” Nathan skirted the puddle on the other side. “Cecil needs to get some gravel in here before someone loses a car.”

Noelle’s steps slowed as they drew near the white picket fence that encircled the house and yard. There was a rumble of growls, and two black and white Australian sheepdogs came running from the backyard, barking as if a herd of cattle had suddenly descended on them.

Noelle groaned. “Just great. I’d hoped to slip past the house without stopping.”

“Not with Butch and Sundance on high alert. You haven’t been around often enough for them to be familiar with your scent or the sound of your voice. They only bark at strangers.”

“We can visit later, after we’ve found Carissa.”

Nathan tapped her on the shoulder and she looked up at him. “Relax, grumpy. It’ll only take a few minutes. Your family needs you.”

“Sorry,” she muttered.

The racket of the dogs set off the geese at the pond below the house, and the honking commenced.

Noelle gave Nathan a look of exasperation. “And I thought we’d sneak in? What could I have been thinking?”

He grinned at her.

“Speaking of dogs, is the search-and-rescue unit bringing any search dogs in?” she asked.

“They’ve got three already out in the field, more on the way, but the ones they’ve got are new, not very experienced.”

They reached the white fence that circled the yard around a big, two-story white house. The dogs finally recognized her, and their barking turned to excited whines of welcome. Noelle reached through the slats of fence to pet the animals and quiet them.

The front screen door opened, and Jill, eight years older than Noelle, stepped out onto the broad concrete porch. Jill was a couple of inches taller than Noelle, with stronger features and a more voluptuous figure—and a familiar, piercing blue gaze.

“Noelle Cooper, what on earth?”

“Hi, sis.”

Jill glanced at Nathan, disapproval—annoyance? irritation?—sharpening her gaze.

“I came to help search.” Noelle followed Nathan through the front gate and braced herself for the rambunctious dogs as they leapt forward in welcome. “Any more word about Carissa?”

Jill shook her head, shading her eyes from the warm October sun. Her thick brown brows almost met in the middle as she squinted, and Noelle noticed the shadows of fatigue around Jill’s eyes as she stepped into her sister’s tight embrace.

Jill held her for a long moment. “This is like a nightmare, sis. I didn’t want to drag you down here. You’ve already got so much on your plate right now.”

“I didn’t come down here to cause you worry, I came to help with the search.”

Unfamiliar voices spilled from the house as Jill released Noelle. The aroma of frying bacon drifted through the screen door. Apparently some of the weary searchers were taking a much-needed break.

“So tell me,” Noelle said, “what have they found?”

“One of the sheriff’s deputies found fresh horseshoe prints in the mud at the edge of the lane,” Jill said.

“Maybe one of the horses jumped the fence,” Nathan said.

“None of the horses are even on the front forty right now,” Jill said. “They’re pastured half a mile in the other direction. That means someone may have come onto the property last night, because we had a lot of rain yesterday, and the print would’ve been washed away if they’d come earlier.”

“Surely they can’t think someone carried Carissa away by horse,” Nathan exclaimed.

“Can you think of a better way to carry someone through miles of wilderness trails without making a lot of noise?” Jill asked. “The fact that the dogs haven’t found Carissa yet probably means she was taken elsewhere, and it’s unlikely she walked there herself. They could have followed her scent.”

“What else did the searchers find?” Noelle asked.

Jill closed her eyes for half a second, then opened them and held Noelle’s gaze. Sorrowful. Suddenly gentle. “Taylor Jackson, one of the rangers, he found blood on the sawmill floor. Looks like someone was injured.”

“Maybe one of the employees was injured yesterday,” Noelle said.

“Taylor asked all of them, and no one was.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t automatically mean it was Carissa,” Noelle said.

“We’ll find out before long.” Jill lifted her hair from her neck and stretched her muscles. “I know we can’t go jumping to conclusions.” She said the words quickly, as if she’d been repeating them over and over to the others. “We can’t let ourselves get discouraged and stop searching.”

“Speaking of which,” Noelle said, “that’s what I came here to do. I’d better get to it.”

“Okay, but first will you let Melva know you’re here?” Jill asked. “She’s been wanting to call you since last night—as if one more person searching would make any difference.” The lines around Jill’s shadowed blue eyes deepened with concern. She touched Noelle’s shoulder. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. I just wish you’d called me last night.”

“We kept thinking we’d find her quickly. I didn’t want to upset you over nothing.” Jill frowned and pushed at her short brown hair—which had grown out a couple of inches, and no longer resembled a hard hat as much as it did a lion’s mane. “Cecil’s still blaming himself for sending her out for the ledger. Silly, I know, but I’ve struggled with the same problem. We let her go out there after dark.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Noelle said. “Nathan told me she was going out there anyway. She’s twelve years old, not a little child. Where were you when she disappeared?”

“I’d gone up to our old house to find some other ledgers upstairs.” Jill glanced over her shoulder through the screen door, lowering her voice. “We’ve been entering this year’s records on computer and trying to justify them with the records from the accountant—you knew he died, didn’t you? Anyway, there’s a discrepancy of fifteen thousand dollars, and we can’t seem to find it. That’s why we asked Carissa to get the ledger from the office at the sawmill. Turns out she had the wrong one, anyway. It was from ten years ago.”

“I’ll go have a word with Melva, then hit the trail.” Noelle gave her sister’s shoulder another squeeze, then opened the screen door and stepped inside.

Nathan leaned against the porch railing, arms folded across his chest in an automatic gesture of self-protection as he watched Jill pace the length of the porch. The chilled morning air hung heavy and thick in the sunlight that gleamed on her dark hair.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to get Noelle,” she said at last.

He glanced toward the Coopers’ open front door. “I wasn’t sure she could get away from the store, but I felt she needed to know about Carissa.”

Jill’s boots made little noise on the concrete porch. She turned to face Nathan across the half width of the house. “I had reasons for not wanting her here. She had a bad time right after the accident.”

“Of course she did. The whole family did. Why single out Noelle?” Nathan had to struggle to keep his voice low. “She’s a grown woman, and she needs to be treated like one.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, I know that, but why should she have to trudge all the way down here when half of Hideaway’s already out looking for the child?”

“Noelle is family. She needs to be treated like family, or you’ll be wasting your time trying to get her to move back here and work at the clinic.”

Jill paused, gazing down the lane again. “Maybe she shouldn’t come back here,” she said slowly.

This was a drastic about-face. “But I thought you were trying to—”

“Never mind what I was trying to do.” Jill stepped to the end of the porch, away from the screen door, and gestured, with a jerk of her head for him to join her.

He obeyed.

“After the sawmill accident, the grief almost killed her,” Jill said softly.

“Of course it did. We were all stricken.”

“But it was worse for Noelle. She went into a deep depression, had awful nightmares, told me she woke up screaming every night for the first month after the funerals.”

“She had a lot of other things on her mind at the time, and besides, she’s not the same person she was ten years ago.” He hesitated. “Did she say what the dreams were about?”

“She kept reliving the accident, as if she were one of the victims watching the logs tumble onto her. She had to quit her job, which really threw that ex-husband of hers into a tizzy, because at the time they were dependent on her income to support them—and his drug habit.” Jill’s voice dripped with disdain.

“Did she get professional help?”

“Oh, she went to her family doctor, and he prescribed an antidepressant. She took it for three weeks, then flushed the rest down the toilet. She said it made her ears ring. You know how independent she can be.”

“She takes after her sister.”

Jill gave him a half-hearted scowl.

“Did the antidepressant help her at all?” he asked.

“Are you kidding? After just three weeks?” Jill snorted. “I even got some of that herbal stuff Pearl’s always trying to push off on everyone. Noelle still had the nightmares for a long time afterward.”

“She told me a little about that time,” Nathan said.

“Now it’ll start all over. What’s she going to do when she wakes up in the middle of the night and finds herself alone?”

“Jill, Noelle is a big girl. She can take care of herself.” He studied Jill’s expression for a moment. She didn’t look at him, but kept her gaze focused on the trees across the road.

There was something about her behavior that caught his attention. She stood with her shoulders hunched forward, arms crossed, head bowed slightly. What wasn’t she telling him? He knew better than to ask.

“You can’t shield her from pain by building a wall around her,” he said.

“I’m not building a wall, I’m just—”

“You’re still trying to be her mother. Stop it, or you’ll smother her completely. Let her handle her own problems.”

She sighed and shook her head, then turned away from him. “Fine, then you be there for her when her nightmares return.”

“She’s told me a little about Joel and her marriage.”

“Yes, but how much did she tell you? She has a tendency to downplay certain aspects of her life so no one will worry.”

“Maybe that’s because she knows we tend to worry too much,” he said gently. “Jill, you knew Joel a lot better than I did. Do you think his return could in any way be connected to Carissa’s disappearance?”

She didn’t react, which meant she’d already considered the possibility. “I don’t know. As crazy as he got sometimes, I wouldn’t put it past him.” She turned and looked up at Nathan, arms still folded over her chest. “Maybe we should tell the sheriff to check him out.”

“Maybe we should.”

Chapter Seven

Noelle felt suddenly overwhelmed. Neighbors and people from the search-and-rescue team filled the Cooper living room and kitchen, occupying every available chair. Most of them had obviously been out all night, searching through the mud and brush.

Noelle waved at several familiar faces as she passed through the living room to the kitchen in the back of the house. She recognized Dane Gideon, the mayor of Hideaway, who also owned the general store and ran a boy’s ranch across the lake from town. He sat on the sofa beside some teenaged boys, who looked grimy and disheartened. Perched across from them on a love seat was Taylor Jackson, a tall man with rusty-brown hair, wearing a mud-spattered ranger uniform. Beside him

sat Karah Lee Fletcher, a striking redhead, almost as tall as the ranger. She was the newest doctor at Hideaway’s clinic.

Noelle had met Karah Lee and Taylor last month at the Hideaway Festival, when Dane Gideon and Dr. Cheyenne Allison had exchanged marriage vows in the park.

Several people called out a greeting to Noelle as she passed, and the evidence of such overwhelming support once again brought tears to her eyes. Here was the real meaning of community. She’d missed that.

She entered the warm, fragrant kitchen to find several locals, including Bertie Meyer and the newlywed doctor, Cheyenne Gideon, preparing breakfast for the searchers. Melva stood with her generous backside to the room, scraping dishes. Bertie and Cheyenne called a greeting to Noelle, and Melva swung around, water dripping from her spatula.

“You came.” Her voice trembled; her chin was quivering. Melva’s Ozark accent always became more pronounced when she was upset. She dropped her spatula in the sink and grabbed a dish towel as she crossed the room to Noelle. “Jill said not to call you because we were going to find Carissa any minute, but we…didn’t.” Melva’s pretty face reddened with an obvious effort to keep tears at bay, and her short golden lashes, uncharacteristically devoid of makeup, glistened, attesting to the fact that she had recently lost the battle.

“Nathan drove to Springfield this morning and picked me up.” Noelle wrapped her arms around Melva’s plump shoulders and held her, glad, at last, that she’d stopped at the house.

“Tell me she’s going to be okay,” Melva whispered.

“She is.” For that moment she was sure of it. She only wished the moment would last.

Bertie Meyer crossed the kitchen floor and caught them both in a loving hug. “Honey,” she said to Melva, “you know how much we’re praying, and I know you believe in the power of prayer.”

“I keep trying to believe in it, Bertie.” Melva disentangled herself from the two pairs of comforting arms and reached for a tissue to dab at her nose. “I was so sure Carissa was just lost out there in the dark, but now they’re talking about horse tracks that shouldn’t be there and blood on the sawmill floor and somebody hauling her away.” She bowed her head and picked up the dish towel again. “I just don’t know.”

Bertie shook her head sadly. “I felt the same way when Red turned up missing last year.” She paused for a moment, the smile lines around her eyes and mouth giving way to remembered grief for her late husband. “We’ve just got to give it more time. Melva, I wish you’d eat something. You need to keep up your strength.”

Melva grabbed another tissue from the counter and blew her nose. She took a deep breath, visibly composing herself, then patted her ample derriere and glanced over her shoulder at Bertie. “Don’t you think I’ve got enough reserve to keep me going for a few days?”

At least Melva hadn’t lost her self-deprecating humor.

“How about you, Noelle?” Bertie asked. “I bet you didn’t have time for breakfast before you came down.”

“I’ll grab something later, Bertie. Nathan and I want to check out a few of our favorite old haunts first, just in case someone’s missed something.”

Bertie patted her arm. “The way you two young’uns traipsed over these hills and woods when you were growing up, you should be able to find her if anybody can.” She jerked her head toward Melva. “See if you can get her to sit down. I’m afraid she’s going to keel over.”

“I’m not going to keel over,” Melva said as she returned to her sink of dishes. She definitely didn’t look like her usual groomed self. Her auburn hair, customarily held in place with stiff mousse, fell about her neck and face in charming disarray. She still wore the jeans and long-sleeved man’s shirt she had obviously worn into the woods to search for Carissa. The jeans were probably the only pair she owned. Her typical attire was tailored dresses and suits to minimize her voluptuous curves. Now she stood in her stockinged feet, looking vulnerable and lost.

Noelle gave Bertie another hug, then stepped up behind Melva. The way that Melva was plying the spatula revealed her frustration, and Noelle placed an arm around her old friend’s shoulders.

“Melva, I heard Gladys has been trying to contact Justin and Carissa.” She felt Melva’s shoulders stiffen. “Could she have anything to do with all this?”

Melva cast a warning glance toward the others, then placed a half-scraped plate back into the sink and dried her hands. “I wouldn’t put it past her.” Weary bitterness laced her voice. “Except I don’t think she cares enough about Carissa to go to the trouble. That sea turtle wouldn’t know a maternal instinct if it bit her nose off, and I wish it would.”

Noelle bit her lip to keep from laughing at Melva’s-colorful phrasing. “Has anyone contacted Gladys about Carissa’s disappearance?”

“Cecil tried, but couldn’t get through. She’s probably just ignoring his calls because she’s mad.” Again, she glanced toward the others, lowering her voice. “She got the kids all stirred up yesterday morning, calling before they left for school, promising them a cruise with her and her latest lover in the Caribbean. She wants to take them out of school, can you believe that? After she’s pretty much ignored them all these years, now she’s trying to bribe them like this? We told her no, of course.”

“What was Carissa’s response?” Noelle asked.

“Oh, she desperately wanted to go, and you know how that girl can wrap her daddy around her little finger. Cecil started to weaken, said maybe they could go on the cruise during Christmas break, and I said, ‘Cecil Hanson Cooper, are you crazy? Let our children traipse off halfway around the world with that woman and a stranger?’ And of course he had to remind me, real quick, that she was their mother.” Her light-brown eyes flashed, and the decibel of her voice increased with her words. “What he meant was she’s their real mother. Like what I wanted didn’t count now that Gladys is trying to wiggle her way back into the family and—” She stopped suddenly and glanced around the room.

The others stayed silent, listening.

Melva rolled her gaze to the ceiling in chagrin. “Leave it to me to blast the news to the four corners of the county. Sorry, don’t mind me. I’m angry at the whole world right now, and I will be until we find our little girl. And blast it, I don’t care what anyone says, she’s my little girl!”

Noelle gave Melva’s shoulders another affectionate squeeze. “You tell ’em, pal!” she said, then lowered her voice. “How badly did Carissa want to take that trip?”

“Very.”

“You know how headstrong she is.” Noelle felt like a traitor to even suggest such a thing, but maybe her instincts were wrong for once, and this conviction that Carissa was in trouble was pure imagination.

“I know what you’re thinking, Noelle Cooper, and don’t you start that, too. That’s what the sheriff said. Carissa wouldn’t just run away like that.”

“But if she’s angry—”

“Nope.” Melva raised a hand to silence Noelle. “I can’t believe she’d do that.”

“I would have at her age,” Noelle admitted.

“But Carissa isn’t you,” Melva snapped. She paused, sighed, shook her head. “Sorry. I know you and Carissa are close. I just…don’t ever be a stepmother. The kids are never totally yours, no matter how much you want them to be. Blood relatives always seem to come first, even coldhearted women who should never have been mothers in the first place—although I have to admit that if Justin and Carissa had never been born…” Her voice trailed off, and tears once again filled her eyes. “Listen to me jabber on. I know I can’t be worrying about something like that now.” She squared her shoulders and glanced through the kitchen doorway at the houseful of searchers, still talking, eating, several of them praying at the round dining-room table. She touched Noelle’s arm and gestured toward the far-west corner of the kitchen, where the door to Carissa’s bedroom was closed. “Come with me,” she whispered.

Stepping past muddy shoes, raincoats and umbrellas, they entered the expansive bedroom, which was, as usual, untidy. “She still hasn’t learned to make her bed, and I stopped nagging her,” Melva said. A chair rail border surrounded the room with horses racing across open prairie, and the curtains had been fashioned from fringed suede the color of buckskin. Noelle knew Melva had spent a lot of time helping Carissa decorate this room with all of the child’s favorite things.

Melva closed the door behind them. She stepped to the antique dresser and opened the top drawer. Pulling out a handful of pages from a notebook, she sifted through the stack and tugged one sheet from the others. “Take a look at this. Carissa’s always scribbling notes to herself, and you know she’s started writing poetry lately.”

“She showed me some of her poems a couple of months ago. They’re all about her favorite animals and her closest friends. But, Melva, what do they have to do with—”

“Read that one. There’s no rhyme scheme, like with her others.”

The first words caught Noelle’s attention.

Dead silence in the darkness lurks in wait for

someone,

Maybe me. Maybe you.

It waits, listens, calls

Darkness calls again, deepens with the moonset,

Whispers with its song of longing,

Growing deeper until I go with it,

Until it enters me and controls me,

With the death of the moon,

With the dying moon.

Suppressing a shudder, Noelle handed the page back to Melva. How could a twelve-year-old girl write something like this? Especially when all her other poems reflected the happiness and joy of life that came from her spirit, or her innocent words of wondering about a mother who didn’t want her.

“Apparently, she didn’t show it to anyone,” Melva said. “Because I found it here in her drawer beneath all the others.”