Theresa looked sharply at me. “You’re changed. As changed as Ray thinks he is.”
I felt the insult but let it go. I had changed. I wasn’t here to morph back into the tiny Leeanna shape that allowed everyone to stay comfortable and uninvolved.
To get it over with, I asked, “How much has he changed?”
“Ray Levis,” Theresa said with a deep sigh and a fast glance around the store. “Ray Levis is the guy who pays the bills at Riverdale.”
I felt something in my body shift threateningly. If I didn’t sit down, I might fall. I reached for a T-shirt rack. I hoped I was misunderstanding.
“Ray is the one who keeps your dad. There’s assistance, sure. But it doesn’t cover everything.” She looked uncomfortable. “Also, they visit him.”
“But—why?”
“He didn’t tell you.” Theresa shook her head. “I’ll be damned.”
“He thinks he’s making it up to me. He has some nerve.”
“I won’t argue that. But I think he started out believing that if he did something for your dad, people wouldn’t think he’d done something to you. That’s not how it went. Karma must be really hard to buy.”
I remembered Ray seated at his own kitchen table, rubbing the photo of Joshua. We had to move. You wouldn’t believe the looks he gets in town.
What would I have thought if I’d been one of the bystanders?
“They wanted to think he’d killed me,” I said, seeing it all clearly. “And then he gave them a reason to believe it.”
Chapter Thirty-five
At the Vilas County sheriff’s office, the chief was out. A bored officer with a walrus-whisker moustache sat at the front desk alone, his gut bumping the counter. He wouldn’t say when his sheriff was due back, wouldn’t get anyone from behind the security door to talk to me. He took my information down.
“Do you get missing kids from Indiana up here all the time?” I said, my blood starting to rise.
He finally rose to the challenge of noticing me, his demeanor telling me what they got most was crazy out-of-towners. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” he said.
I slammed the door on my way out.
I found another sticky pay phone in the lobby and tried Sheriff Keller’s office again. The Parks County dispatchers had traded shifts, but the new one was no more help. She wouldn’t put me through to anyone else. “He’s out on a call,” the woman said. She sounded older, not smoking while she worked, but she was all business. “I can put you through to the nonemergency number and you can leave a message.”
“But this is actually an emergency.”
“Deputy Lombardi said you’d say that.”
So now I had a reputation among the ranks. I did as I was told, leaving a message. But it felt as futile as it probably was. Who was going to get that message? And when?
I dialed the only other number I had memorized. The phone rang and rang in Kent’s office in Indianapolis until voicemail engaged. “Kent, it’s Anna. This is going to sound crazy, but what’s new, right? Listen, I’m up in Sweetheart Lake. It’s where—” I pictured Kent’s precise way of talking, the delicate way he asked what I wanted to know. “My hometown, but you probably remembered that. Look, that kid missing from Parks, Aidan Ransey . . . I swear he’s here. I don’t know how or why yet, but he’s here. I can’t get through to Keller, but if you could get someone up here with one of your shiny badges, I could use the support. I need to get back to Parks and my phone doesn’t work here . . .”
I looked over my shoulder at the lonely lobby. “Kent,” I said. “I’m trying to do what you told me. I’m trying to do everything I can—”
The system beeped at me so that I wasn’t sure if it had stopped recording or hadn’t caught a word. I hung up.
The street outside the station was quiet. Maple Street. Of course. And a block away was Birch. In the other direction, Spruce. And don’t forget Pine, the heart of Sweetheart Lake.
I retrieved my truck and took Maple to Railroad Street, crossed the river. In town the river was little more than a creek. The water was low now, the grass up both banks a fragile yellow. A breeze blew in through my window, pleasant but cool. When I hit a red light, I stuck my arm out the window and caught the wind with my cupped hand. Not just cool, but maybe a little cold. I stared out my windshield at the trees as if I’d just woken up from a long sleep. I hadn’t paid attention, but the maples had begun to turn gold. It was October and, if I blinked, it would be November. And Joshua, out there in just a thin jacket. He hadn’t packed for the Northwoods.
The car behind me honked to urge me through the green light. I couldn’t remember what to do for a second, but I did it anyway, unconsciously, driving up Railroad as it widened and led me past landmarks I knew, like the golf course, where Ray had done maintenance for a few months one summer until he’d pissed off too many people. I drove out of Sweetheart Lake, recognizing an old house turned into an antiques store, a motel that still seemed in working order. I swung into a dirt turnaround and back toward town.
When the Dairy Bar appeared, I turned in. I wasn’t hungry so much as empty. I took my time getting out and walking up to the window, where a girl in a pink Dairy Bar shirt checked her hair for split ends.
“A—malt, I guess.”
“What flavor?”
“Chocolate.”
The girl ducked out of the window.
I leaned against the counter and looked around. I was the only customer. They’d shutter the place for the winter and reopen in April when the summer tourists started trickling back. Theresa’s store probably closed for a few weeks, but stayed open for the winter visitors: the snowmobile adventurers, the ice fishermen. For the long-lost friends she thought were dead. Long-lost friends she’d come to rely on being dead. People got used to things, even things that were hard to get used to. They wrote the stories in their heads and rewrote them until they made sense. That’s what I’d done. And now the story was unraveling.
I closed my eyes and imagined Joshua, wherever he was, safe and warm and being fed. If I believed it, maybe it would be true.
But I couldn’t wish him home or pray him home. I could only rely on action. If only I knew what the best action was. I opened my eyes. The malt, whipped cream and cherry, too, sat on the counter. I slid a handful of dollars to the girl. “I never knew these were a chain.”
The girl took the money. “They’re not.”
“How many are there?” Maybe I could find another Dairy Bar town, just to see the look on Joshua’s face.
“They’re not a chain.” The girl slapped my change onto the counter. “Do you live in Indiana?”
I glanced at my truck. The license plate was visible, but the girl had extraordinary eyesight. “For now.”
“There’s one in Indiana and one here. If that’s a chain.”
“That’s weird.”