“Can’t we play something else? Dolls or cards or something?”
Fawn shook her head, then lifted up Mimi, who shook her head as well, the scratched button eyes looking right at Ruthie.
“Mimi will only play hide-and-seek. She has a new favorite place to hide.”
“But last time, I couldn’t find you.”
“So maybe try harder,” Fawn said, grinning impishly.
“Okay,” Ruthie sighed, “but if I say I give up, you have to come out. Deal?”
“Deal,” Fawn said.
Ruthie covered her eyes and counted out loud. “One, two, three …” she shouted, listening closely, trying to hear which way her sister’s footsteps went. Down the hall.
She thought of Sara and Gertie playing hide-and-seek here in this house. How good little Gertie was at hiding. And Sara must have been good at hiding, too. At hiding papers, at least.
“Ten, eleven, twelve …”
She heard the closet door in the front hall open, then close. But Fawn did stuff like this to fake her out, to lead her the wrong way. She was a clever kid. Too clever sometimes.
“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Ready or not, here I come!”
She rose from the couch, listening hard. The fire popped. The cat thumped down the stairs, coming to see what all the noise was about.
“Where’d she go, Roscoe? Did you see her?”
The cat rubbed against Ruthie’s leg, gave her a m-m-mur-r-r-l?
Trick or not, she went right for the hall closet, pulled the door open, pushed aside the jackets and coats, and pawed through the jumbled pile of boots and shoes on the floor.
“Hmm, not in the hall closet,” she said loudly. She turned and looked out the window in the front door. It had gotten dark. She flipped on the light, saw that it was snowing heavily. Ruthie hadn’t heard a forecast. Keeping track of the weather had always been her mother’s job. Ruthie relied on her each morning to know how cold it was going to be, if it would rain or snow.
“Where, oh, where can my lost little lamb be?” she asked, moving into the living room, the office, then the kitchen. She went to the downstairs bathroom and flipped on the light. The pink tiles glowed as Ruthie pulled back the shower curtain to find the old claw-foot tub empty except for her mother’s chamomile shampoo and a lonely yellow rubber duck.
“Not here,” she said, making her way to the stairs, tired of the game already. She’d do a quick once-over of the upstairs, then call it off.
She looked halfheartedly through her room, Fawn’s room, the upstairs bathroom, announcing her location, wondering aloud where Fawn could be. Finally, she entered her mother’s room, though she doubted Fawn would ever hide there. Fawn wasn’t under the bed. The only other place in there to hide was the closet. She stood before the door, hesitant. Stupidly, she knocked. Nothing knocked back. She yanked open the door and was grateful to find it empty.
“Fawn?” she called out. “I give up!” She listened. Nothing. She went from room to room again, calling, then headed back down the stairs.
There it was again: the familiar panic. Fawn was missing. Really missing this time. Ruthie should never have agreed to play hide-and-seek again. Not in this house, where Sara Harrison Shea had called her little dead daughter back to her.
“Fawn!” she called, voice edgier now. “If you don’t come out right now, I’m never going to play hide-and-seek with you again!”
She was down in the office. Her father had kept it so tidy, the old mahogany desk clear, books carefully arranged on shelves, nothing on the floor but a woven rug. Now that it was her mother’s realm, chaos reigned. Papers, books, knitting patterns, poultry catalogues, and mail were piled in stacks on the desk and floor; there were tote bags full of wool and knitting projects in various stages of completion. Ruthie sat down in the chair and reached into one of the bags to pull out the hat her mother had been making when Ruthie last saw her.
It was New Year’s Day, and she was sitting on the couch knitting a hat on circular needles, using chunky yarn in bright colors: fuchsia, lemon yellow, and neon blue.
“Where are you off to?” she’d asked when she saw Ruthie head into the hall and pull on her parka. She didn’t stop knitting, the needles clinking away in her hands while her eyes were on Ruthie.
“Buzz is picking me up. We’re going to hang out with some friends.”
The needles continued to move, stitch after stitch in the round.
“Be back before curfew,” her mom said, looking back down at her knitting.
Ruthie hadn’t answered. Hadn’t even said goodbye. She just opened the door and headed out into the cold, down the driveway to the road, to wait for Buzz.
A hand touched her shoulder. She saw it out of the corner of her eye—a tiny, filthy, flipperlike hand.
She flinched, and spun to see it was just Mimi the doll. Fawn laughed, hugged Mimi to her chest.
“Jesus, Fawn! Not funny. You were supposed to come out when I called you,” she snapped. “Those are the rules. Now, where were you?”