CHAPTER 9
The silver plating had lost its luster, but the cast image of a cowgirl firing two single-action revolvers and the lettering etched along the perimeter remained distinct: 1993 Washington State Champion.
They’d found the belt buckle.
They’d found Sarah.
The emotion that welled inside Tracy surprised her. It wasn’t bitterness or guilt. It wasn’t even sorrow. It was anger, and it coursed through her like venom. She’d known. She’d always known Sarah’s disappearance wasn’t what everyone had wanted her to believe. She’d known there’d been more to it. And now she had a sense that she could finally prove it.
“Finlay.” Calloway’s voice sounded as if it were coming from the far end of a long tunnel. “Take her out of here.”
Someone touched her arm. Tracy pulled away. “No.”
“You don’t need to be a part of this,” Calloway said.
“I left her once,” she said. “I’m not leaving her again. I’m staying. To the end.”
Calloway nodded to Armstrong, who stepped back to where Rosa had resumed digging. “I’ll need that back,” Calloway said. He held out his hand for the belt buckle but Tracy continued to trace the surface with her thumb, feeling the contour of each letter. “Tracy,” Calloway said.
She held out the buckle, but when Calloway grasped it she did not release her grip, forcing him to look her in the eye. “I told you, Roy. We searched this area. We searched it twice.”
She kept her distance the remainder of the afternoon, but she could see enough to know that Sarah had been buried in a fetal position, legs higher than her head. Whoever had used the hole created when the root ball was pulled free of the ground had misjudged the size of the hole, which was not uncommon. Spatial perception can become distorted when a person is under stress.
Only after Kelly Rosa had zipped closed the black body bag and padlocked the zipper did Tracy hike out of the woods back to her car.
She navigated the turns down the mountain without thought, her mind dulled. The sun had dipped below the tree line, causing shadows to creep across the road. She’d known, of course. It was why detectives were trained to work so hard to recover anyone abducted within the first forty-eight hours. After that, statistics showed that the odds of finding the person alive plummeted. After twenty years, the odds of finding Sarah alive had been infinitesimal. And yet there had remained that small part of her, the part that Tracy shared with other families whose loved ones had been abducted and never found. It was the part of every human being that clung to the hope, no matter how unlikely, that they could beat the odds. It had happened before. It had happened when a young woman in California, missing eighteen years, walked into a police station and said her name. Hope had been reignited that day for every family who had ever lost a loved one. It had flared for Tracy. Someday that would be Sarah. Someday that would be her sister. It could be so cruel, hope. But for twenty years it was all she’d had to hold on to, the only thing to push back the darkness that lingered on the periphery, searching for every opportunity to enshroud her.
Hope.
Tracy had clung to it, until that very last moment when Roy Calloway had handed her the belt buckle, and extinguished the final, cruel, flicker.
She drove past the spot on the county road where, twenty years earlier, they’d found her blue truck, and it felt as if just days had passed. Miles down the road, she took the familiar exit and drove through a town she no longer recognized or felt connected with. But rather than turn left for the freeway entrance, she turned right, driving out past the single-story houses she remembered as vibrant homes filled with families and friends, but which now looked tired and worn. Farther out of town, the size of the houses and the yards increased. She drove on autopilot, slowing to turn when she saw the river rock gateposts. She stopped at the bottom of a sloped driveway.
Bright perennials, regularly tended by her mother, had once filled the flowerbeds, but they had been replaced by the bare stalks of dormant rose bushes. At the top of a manicured lawn outlined by neatly trimmed English boxwood hedges was a severed stump, where the weeping willow had once stood like an open umbrella. Christian Mattioli had enlisted an architect from England to design a two-story, Queen Anne–style home when he had founded the Cedar Grove Mining Company and the town of Cedar Grove had sprung to life. As the story went, Mattioli later requested that the architect add a third story to ensure the home would be the tallest and grandest in Cedar Grove. A century later, long after the Cedar Grove mines had closed and most of the residents had moved on, the house and yard had fallen into disrepair. However, Tracy’s mother had fallen in love at first sight with the fish-scale siding and the turrets rising above the low-pitched gabled roofs. Tracy’s father, in search of a country medical practice, had bought her the property and together they had restored everything from the Brazilian-wood floors to the box-beam ceilings. They’d stripped the paneled wainscoting and cabinetry to the original mahogany and refurbished the marble entryway and crystal chandeliers, making the structure once again the grandest in Cedar Grove. But they’d done more than refurbish a structure. They’d created a place for two sisters to call home.
Tracy turned off the bathroom light and stepped into her bedroom wearing her red fleece pajamas. A towel turban entwined her hair. She sang along to Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton’s version of “We’ve Got Tonight,” which played on her boom box as she leaned across the bench seat and considered the night sky out her bay window. A magnificent full moon cast the weeping willow in a pale blue light. Its long braids hung motionless, as if the tree had fallen into a deep sleep. Fall was slipping quietly into winter and the weatherman had predicted the nighttime temperature would dip below freezing. To Tracy’s disappointment, however, the sky sparkled with stars. Cedar Grove Grammar School shut down for the first winter snow and Tracy had a test on fractions in the morning. She was less than fully prepared.
She hit the “Stop” button on the boom box, cutting off Sheena but continuing to sing. Then she clicked off her desk lamp. Moonbeams spilled across her down comforter and throw rug, disappearing again when she switched on the lamp clipped to the headboard. She picked up A Tale of Two Cities; they’d been slogging their way through the story the entire semester. She didn’t much feel like reading, but if her grades slipped, her father wouldn’t take her to the regional shooting tournament at the end of November.
She continued singing the lyrics to “We’ve Got Tonight” as she pulled back the comforter.
“Boo!”
Tracy screamed and stumbled backward, nearly falling over.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Sarah had popped out from beneath the covers like she’d been spring-loaded, and now lay on her back laughing so hard she could barely catch her breath to speak the words.
“You are such a brat!” Tracy yelled. “What is wrong with you?”
Sarah sat up, trying to talk in between her high-pitched giggles and gasps for air. “You should have seen your face!” She imitated Tracy’s shocked look, then fell back onto the comforter holding her stomach, continuing to laugh.
“How long have you been under there?”
Sarah got to her knees and balled her fist as if singing into a microphone and mimicked Sarah singing the lyrics.
“Shut up.” Tracy undid her turban, flipped her hair forward and rubbed vigorously with the towel.
“Are you in love with Jack Frates?” Sarah asked.
“That is none of your business. God, you are such a child.”
“No duh. I’m eight. Did you really kiss him?”
Tracy stopped drying her hair and lifted her head. “Who told you that? Did Sunnie tell you that? Wait.” She glanced at her bookshelf. “You read my diary!”
Sarah picked up the pillow and began making kissing noises. “Oh, Jack. Let’s make it last. Let’s find a way!”
“That is private, Sarah! Where is it?” Tracy leaped onto the bed, straddling Sarah, pinning her arms and legs. “Not cool. Totally not cool. Where is it?” Sarah started laughing again. “I mean it, Sarah! Give it back!”
The door opened. “What is going on?” Their mother entered in her pink robe and slippers, holding a brush. Her blonde hair, freed from its customary bun, fell to the middle of her back. “Tracy, get off of your sister.”
Tracy slid off. “She hid under my covers and scared me. And she took my . . . she hid under the covers!”
Abby Crosswhite walked to the bed. “Sarah, what have I told you about scaring people?”
Sarah sat up. “Mom, it was so funny. You should have seen her face.” She made a face that looked like an overexcited chimpanzee. Their mother covered her mouth, trying hard not to laugh.
“Mom!” Tracy said. “It’s not funny.”
“All right. Sarah, I want you to stop scaring your sister and her friends. What have I told you about the boy who cried wolf?”
“One of these times you’re going to hide and no one will ever find you,” Tracy said.
“Mom!”
“And I won’t even look for you.”
“Mom!”
“Enough,” their mother said. “Sarah, go to your own room.” Sarah slid off Tracy’s bed and started for the door to the adjoining bathroom. “And give your sister back her diary.”
Tracy and Sarah both froze. Their mother was like that, psychic or something.
“It’s impolite to be reading about her kissing Jack Frates.”
“Mom!” Tracy said.
“If you’re embarrassed to have it read, then you probably shouldn’t be doing whatever you’re writing about in the first place. You’re too young to be kissing boys.” She turned to Sarah, who stood just inside the bathroom between their rooms making smooching noises. “Enough, Sarah, give it back.”
Sarah walked back to the bed, savoring each step as Tracy glared at her. Sarah pulled the flowered book from beneath the covers and Tracy snatched it from her hand, taking a swipe at her. Sarah ducked and ran from the room.
“You’re not supposed to be reading my diary, Mom. It’s a total invasion of my privacy.”
“Turn around. You’ll get tangles.” Abby Crosswhite ran the brush through Tracy’s hair, and she relaxed at the feel of bristles tickling her scalp. “I didn’t read your diary. That was a mother’s intuition. Nice admission of guilt, however. The next time Jack Frates comes over, tell him your father would like a word.”
“He won’t come over. Not with that brat here.”
“Don’t call your sister a brat.” She pulled the brush through a final time. “Okay, bed.” Tracy slid under the covers, feeling the lingering warmth of Sarah’s body. She adjusted a pillow behind her back, and her mother bent and kissed her forehead. “Good night.” Her mother picked up the wet bath towel from the floor and closed the door halfway, then leaned back in. “And Tracy?”
“Yeah?”
Her mother belted out the song lyrics.
Tracy groaned. When the door shut, she climbed from bed, closed the door to the bathroom, and looked for a better hiding place for her diary. Finally, she slipped it beneath her sweaters on the top shelf of her closet, where Sarah couldn’t easily reach. Back beneath the covers, she opened Dickens.
She’d been reading for nearly half an hour, and had just flipped forward to find the end of the chapter, when she heard the bathroom door creak open. “Go to bed,” she said.
Sarah swung from the door handle into Tracy’s peripheral vision. “Tracy?”
“I said, go to bed.”
“I’m scared.”
“Too bad.”
Sarah stepped to the edge of the bed. She’d dressed in one of Tracy’s flannel nightgowns. The hem dragged on the floor. “Can I sleep with you?”
“No.”
“But it’s scary in my room.”
Tracy pretended to continue reading. “How can you be scared in your room and not scared hiding under covers?”
“I don’t know. I just am.”
Tracy shook her head.
“Please,” Sarah pleaded.
Tracy sighed. “Fine.”
Sarah leaped onto the bed and climbed over her, scurrying under the covers. Settled, she asked, “What was it like?”
Tracy looked down from her book. Sarah lay staring up at the ceiling. “What was what like?”
“Kissing Jack Frates.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever kiss a boy.”
“How do you plan on getting married if you never kiss a boy?”
“I’m not going to get married. I’m going to live with you.”
“What if I get married?”
Sarah’s face scrunched in thought. “Could I live with you?”
“I’ll have a husband.”
Sarah bit at a fingernail. “Could we still see each other every day?”
Tracy lifted her arm. Sarah slid closer. “Of course we will. You’re my favorite sister, even if you are a brat.”
“I’m your only sister.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I can’t.”
Tracy put Dickens on the nightstand and slid beneath the covers. She reached overhead for the power switch to her lamp. “Okay, close your eyes.”
Sarah did so.
“Now take a deep breath and let it out.” When Sarah exhaled, Tracy said, “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“I am not . . .”
“I am not . . . ,” Sarah repeated.
“I am not afraid . . .”
“I am not afraid . . .”
“I am not afraid of the dark,” they said in unison, and Tracy clicked off the light.