The next photo is of Rhiannon, a candid of her lying on her stomach across her bed with her fuzzy slippers on, her gaze tilted up, chin propped on her hands. The last photo is of the Fit being towed out of the woods.
“You should read it,” Mags says, sitting next to me with a bowl of cereal. “It’s a pretty good article.” She doesn’t say anything about seeing a car parked on our road again last night, so either she slept through it or I dreamed that flash of headlights across my wall. I shrug, don’t say anything.
Mom finishes wiping down the counter and sits by me. “You got in early last night.”
I look up. She almost never says anything about when I come and go, as long as I don’t show up wasted. While I watch, something unspoken passes between her and Mags. For the first time ever, I get the feeling they’ve been talking about me.
Mom coughs and crinkles the cellophane on a fresh pack of Kools, keeping her eyes on what she’s doing. “Everything good?”
I bite my lip for a second. “Yup. It’s all good.”
When I woke up this morning, I thought hard about not going to work. The harvest is almost over. The barrens should be cleared by Saturday at the latest, and Bob will probably send most of us home before then because he won’t need as many hands. I’d lose only a couple days’ pay. It might be worth it to dodge Jesse, Shea, the whole stupid mess.
But that’d be chickenshit, and I know it. Shea’s cheating all of us, every single person who busts their back in the heat while he does the same work for extra pay. If Jesse’s too gutless to do something, then I guess it’s on me. So, I put on my cutoffs, tank top, and cowgirl hat, lay the SPF 50 on thick, and get ready to survive this day.
Nell comes knocking, and on our way out the door, we grab our bags of donations for the migrants who lost their stuff in the fire. I’m surprised to step into the first hint of fall crispness in the air. It’ll be seventy-five by noon, but right now, I’ve got goose bumps on my legs.
I brought the front page of the American with me. Wait till Libby shows up and sees that somebody messed with her morning ritual of coffee, toast, and paper. I read the Rhiannon article on the ride in, Nell reading over my shoulder. The reporter gives the facts of Rhiannon’s disappearance, then talks about Charlie Ann’s “quiet resolve and determination”: “Somebody out there knows the truth. It’s been a year. Maybe this story will help them find the courage to come forward and bring Rhiannon home.”
It mentions Rhiannon’s dad only once, which isn’t surprising, since Jim and Charlie Ann divorced when Rhiannon was nine and have that awkward on again, off again thing going on. Once he even moved back in with them for a whole year, until the day Rhiannon came home from school to find him gone and her mom mopping the kitchen floor with a vengeance, saying that he wouldn’t be coming back and to stop asking about it. I remember Rhiannon called me, crying so hard she could barely talk.
“Wow. Look,” Nell says, and I glance up to see a big new poster stapled to the telephone pole in front of Gaudreau’s. It’s printed on white poster board with Rhiannon’s sophomore-year photo, a full-color five-by-seven, dead center. Missing—$5,000 Reward for Information.
It’s a parade of Rhiannons all the way down Main Street, her face smiling out of every business, bulletin board, and telephone pole. We even pass the people hanging them up, some guy stapling a poster in front of the post office while a woman waits in the car. I think I catch a glimpse of auburn hair, but I’m not sure.
We’re called up to headquarters before work begins for the day, sitting in clusters on the grass, knowing something big is brewing. This time, Mrs. Wardwell stays in her chair, watching her husband with a tired but not-too-mean I give up kind of look. Bob stands with his fists on his hips, working his mouth around his dentures like the words he’s mulling over have a bad taste.
“I got something to say, and then I ain’t gonna bring it up again. But I never thought I’d see you people—some of you I known for years—walk away from folks needing help. That’s not what small-town livin’s supposed to be about.”
I notice Jesse looking at me. He sits beside Mason with his forearms resting on his bent knees, looking up at me slantwise from under his hair, which has gotten shaggy this summer, and shot through with reddish sun streaks. He doesn’t look like himself without a grin. I can see how badly he wants to say something to me. It hurts to see him hurt, no matter how mad I am at him. I turn away. I didn’t make him lie, didn’t make him set me up as a fool, or be so totally blind to what’s really between me and Shea.
“Now, you know who you are, so I ain’t gonna go namin’ names, but the ones I seen drivin’ off down the road while we were putting that fire out . . .” Bob jerks his chin. “Well, there ain’t gonna be work here for you next year. If the woods had caught, or one of them little kids had been inside—” He steps back, shaking his head. “Just don’t be coming around looking for work.” He claps his hands together once. “Get to it.”
You can feel the shock, people looking at each other, whispering, maybe the migrants most shocked of all. The faces of the locals who left yesterday are like hard masks as we get up and spread out across the rows. A couple of them leave, just plain leave, without a word to the Wardwells or anybody else. I watch Shea brush off his jeans, giving him time to feel me looking and meet my eyes. He grins. This time, though, he must sense that something’s changed, because he doesn’t give me any crap as I follow Mags and Nell into the barrens.
But he follows me. And sets up two rows over.
I rake hard because I want money. I rake hard because that’s how I like to work. I’m not killing myself anymore to try to beat Shea in a rigged game.
His presence beside me is like heat, like weight, something I’ve carried around on my back too long. Can’t believe how he’s steered my time and energy toward him this August, feeding his lame love/hate thing, while all I could think about was proving how tough I was. I fill a box and close the top, letting my gaze meet his, staying cool as I can, not giving him a reaction.
He pushes his hat back and wipes his brow. “Looking rode hard and put away wet, Princess. Rough night?”
“You’d love to know.”
“Nah. I’m not into sloppy seconds.”
“From what I hear, you’ll take whatever you can get.” I drop an empty box on top of my stack with a bang. “And I hear you take handouts pretty regular.”
“What, you mean like the handout you gave me at the quarry? I do okay. You worried about me?”
“No. But you should be.”