“Who are you looking for?” I asked. Ma shot me a look that said to shut my mouth and get into the car.
“This girl, she’s about your age.” He showed me the piece of paper. It was an image of a pretty blond girl, her name across the bottom and the words Missing and Possible Kidnapping stood out to me. I just glanced at it quickly before he folded the paper and put it back into his notebook.
“Hate to say it, but they should be looking for a body at this point,” the cop said quietly. “She’s been gone months, and, well, you know how these things go. Anyhow, sorry to have bothered you. Y’all have a good evening now.”
He nodded at Ma and headed back to his cruiser. Ma handed the guy with the cart a five-dollar tip. “Thanks for your help—we’re so excited to get all this set up at home!” she added cheerfully. I knew that we wouldn’t be setting up anything, we would sell it, probably by tomorrow morning, at a discount price. Still, it would be a cash sale, and that money would be ours. We casually climbed into the van and pulled out of the lot, Ma watching for lights behind us.
“I was hoping to hit the liquor store on the way home, but now I don’t know—we should just get on,” she grumbled. I knew she was mad about the ID and the credit card, but there was always more where that came from.
CHAPTER 24
I CLOSED MY EYES and tried to block out the bright, hot morning sun, the sounds of the park around me. It could not have been more like that day if I had planned it. That had to be a sign. But a sign of what? “Okay,” I finally said quietly—not so much to Sarah as to myself.
I stood up from the bench and Sarah followed my lead, pulling her bike over to the rack. I knew where her bike had been on that fateful day, and carefully moved us to the other side. I couldn’t do that, let her lock the bike in the same spot.
Without speaking, I walked woodenly past the group of campers, third or fourth graders. They had been told, I was sure. A girl went missing here, years ago, and they never found her. So walk in a line, no going off the path . . .
Past the fountain, the oak tree with the plaque commemorating a long-ago battle that took place here, to the slope at the back of the park, where the trails began. I knew where the back trail was, the one that led up to the picnic area. It was shorter than the main trail by half a mile, but it was steep. Too steep for bikes. The goat trail, we had called it.
I stood at the bottom of the main trail, looking at the sign for a moment. Carved in wood:
CRYSTAL LAKE 0.5 MILES
PICNIC AREA 0.8 MILES
We started up the main trail, then needed to cut right. I surprised myself by remembering exactly where to go, like I was in a dream.
“This way.” I moved through the brush at the side of the trail, stepping over a low wooden railing, where a path had been worn by feet and had no sign.
“Careful,” I told Sarah, realizing she wouldn’t know, “sometimes there’s poison ivy here.”
We started up in silence, the slope of the trail gaining as we went, so narrow you had to put one foot in front of the other. It grew so steep, the earth below us almost formed steps, carved into the hills. I stopped to catch my breath, wishing that we had brought water. The tart sweetness of the lemonade pop lingered in my mouth, making it feel dry and tacky. Sarah looked up at me, leaning on her knees and breathing hard.
“Almost there,” I told her. Because she had never been here before.
More steep steps leveled out into a trail—still upward but not at such an acute angle. I was pushing through now, hearing Sarah’s breath behind me as I went. I didn’t want to get there, but then I did. I had been waiting such a long time. And now it was real.
This was no dream.
At the place where the goat trail reconnected with the main trail, it came out under a low oak tree, the branches hiding the way until you were practically on it, blocking the beautiful view of the lake, just below the cliffs. I stood there, leaves touching my face, until Sarah caught up. She said nothing, just stood beside me, breathing hard. I stepped out of the darkness of the goat trail and onto the wider main trail, where sunlight filtered down, the glittering lake off to one side.
“She came up this way, I knew she would, because she had her bike,” I said. “She was meeting him at the picnic area. I locked my bike down at the rack, took the back way up, the goat trail, so I got here first.”
Sarah lifted her sunglasses and wiped sweat from her face with the back of her hand.
“I thought she would be biking. But those boots. They had slippery bottoms, no treads. They weren’t good on the pedals. I had forgotten that. So she was walking up, and pushing her bike along.”