Until a masked man ripped away her innocence and changed the path of her life.
Changed but not destroyed, she reminded herself, as she pressed the starter and began to back her Chevy Cruze out of the parking lot. She’d come back to Prairie Creek to give her daughter the kind of childhood she’d enjoyed—lakes and horses and family and a sense of community at the foot of the Wind River Mountains. She had also returned to prod the sleepy town forward in terms of mental health services. The next time a woman in this town was raped, Ruth wanted to be there to help her through recovery. Someone had to let these women know that they were not alone.
She thought of the teenager who was missing, Addie Donovan. The girl had gone riding, and her horse had returned without her, though there was some talk that she might have run off to join a boyfriend.
I hope so. Because disciplining a recalcitrant runaway daughter was far better than trying to mend the tattered shreds of a girl’s soul, her essence and identity.
As she pulled up to the exit of the parking lot, the shriek of a siren made her hit the brakes. Two vehicles from the Sheriff’s Department zipped through the streets, lights flashing, sirens popping. Two shrieking police cars were a rare sight in Prairie Creek. Ruth tried to see if Kat Starr was behind the wheel of one of the Jeeps, but the vehicles flew past so quickly it was hard to tell. Like her father, Kat had joined the Sheriff’s Department. Ruth owed her a phone call—Kat had left a series of messages, but Ruth hadn’t summoned the nerve to call back yet. Besides, she’d been busy settling her daughter in, laying the groundwork for her practice and now setting up the hotline. She would have just enough time to put the groceries away before her meeting with Chrissy Nesbitt, the mayor’s wife, who was funding her hotline, and Doc Farley, who had been giving her client referrals. So far he’d sent her a teenaged girl named Brooklyn, who was working through anger management, a housewife named Lorelei, who’d suffered domestic violence, and Hank Eames, a fiftyish cowboy who was recovering from a traumatic brain injury caused by a tractor accident. Yes, her plate had been full since she’d moved back to Wyoming, but wasn’t that the point? She’d come with a mission to help the women in her hometown, women who had nowhere else to go, and she wasn’t going to rest until she’d made some inroads.
*
Addie lay on the dirty cot in the shack, staring blankly at the way the tall windows caught the orange sunset for the first time that day. Sunlight was supposed to be a sign of hope, but for her it marked the end of day two—at least twenty-four hours during which no one had come for her.
No one.
Where were her parents—her mom and dad, who would both cry when they learned what he had done to her? Where was the Sheriff’s Department and the neighbors and all the people from church who rallied together when bad things happened to someone in Prairie Creek?
And Dean? Oh please, Dean. Come rescue me and tell me you still love me.
In the alone hours, between the times when he was poking and prodding at her, violating her body and expecting her to do disgusting things to him, Addie listened hard. She listened for sounds of the searchers, the distant call of her name, the whir of helicopter blades, the squawk of a police radio.
But the only sounds came from him and the wilderness. She was used to birdsong and the cry of a hawk. The odd whine of mule deer. The scurry of raccoons, hares, or squirrels. The scuffle of coyotes, wild goats, or bobcats. The wilderness was her backyard.
But she would never get used to him. His smell. His calloused touch. His greed.
“Do you understand about sacrifice?” he’d asked her that first day in the gloomy shack, counseling her like a minister. “The sacrifice of one can save the lives of many. That’s what we got here. You’re helping me, and you’re saving others because of it.”
She didn’t understand what he was talking about, but that was no surprise. The man was a psycho with a capital P. “Leave me alone,” she’d cried, jerking away as he grabbed her by the shoulder. “Keep your hands off me.”
“I can’t keep my hands off you, darlin’,” he’d growled in a low voice. “From now on, you’re here for me.”
“Who are you?”
“Call me Lover . . .”
She bit back a cry when he took her by the shoulders and pinned her down on the dirt floor. When he climbed onto her, she closed her eyes. That way, she could keep him out of her soul. All the force and pain and savagery hurt her body, but she refused to let him inside.
He would never have her soul.
*
When Ruth returned home, she was dismayed to find the screen door of her parents’ house unlocked. “Hello?” she called, stepping inside the tidy house.
“In here,” Bev McFerron called from the kitchen.
Ruth locked the door behind her. “Mom, you left the door unlocked again.”
“That’s what folk here do,” Bev said as she peeled and pitted a peach with lightning speed and added it to a large pot to prepare for canning. “Living in Santa Barbara really put you in fear of your fellow man, Ruthie.”
With her short, over-dyed red hair and wide smile, Bev McFerron had an air of confidence and concern that served her well as a minister’s wife, though it wasn’t entirely genuine. Sometimes Ruth wanted to call her on it.
If you’d been paying attention, you would know that this has little to do with Santa Barbara. You would have noticed that I was nearly catatonic with fear my last two years of high school.
Shaking off her resentment, Ruth asked. “Is Penny upstairs?”
“She’s out in the potting shed with Jessica.” In the past few weeks, her eight-year-old daughter had begun to stick like glue to one of the neighborhood girls, and Ruth had been grateful for her mother’s pleasure at having the two girls over while she attended to business. “Penny wanted to put together some flower bowls for your front porch, and I let her have at the marigolds and petunias.”
Ruth pushed the starched white kitchen curtains aside to peer out back. She couldn’t see Penny from here, which tightened her stomach. She couldn’t help thinking about Addie Donovan, who would most likely turn up quickly, but what if she didn’t? Bev didn’t understand why Ruth rarely let her daughter out of her sight, but Ruth knew there were bad people out in the world.
“How’d your meeting go?” asked Bev.
“Great. Chrissy Nesbitt is a real go-getter. She got some funding for the hotline and has offered to volunteer her time. And Doc Farley was more receptive than I expected. He’s agreed to open his office, day or night, to treat any emergencies that come in through the hotline. Honestly, I didn’t think an old-school doctor would be that attentive, but he told me he’s had some very sad cases with women who won’t admit to being beaten. Doc suspects rape, but he thinks the women are too frightened to speak honestly.”