One of the goats tilted his head toward me, a tuft of yellow weed hanging from his mouth. His rectangular pupils stared up at me, asking questions I couldn’t answer. We breezed past him.
The ridgebacks smelled us coming and paced in their big metal crates, rattling the sides. I flipped the latches, and all seven of them poured out, surrounding us with snouts and fur, nuzzling into us and wagging their tails so hard that their rear ends shook. The kids let Cassius and his father, Zeus, lick their palms. With a snap of my fingers, I put the dogs on a sit-stay. Cassius was still a pup, but a big one—seventy pounds at just five months. He was what they called a “black mask” ridgie, with dark coloring across his nose and the band of his eyes. His forehead stayed wrinkled up with concern, and I stroked his head until he relaxed.
I looked to Patrick and said, “We’ll need to take the flatbed to fit the dogs.”
“No,” Patrick said. “We want to head into town quietly.” He distributed shotgun shells into the various pockets of his jacket. “We have no idea what’s waiting for us.”
We made uneven time, slowing for the kids. After twenty minutes Patrick took my backpack so I could piggyback JoJo. Rocky matched our pace and didn’t complain. I followed Patrick’s lead just like always. He kept us off the main road, cutting through fields and forests, splashing across Hogan’s Creek on the set of boulders behind the Widow Latrell’s. The dogs kept close. Zeus, my biggest boy, forged ahead of us, 110 pounds of muscle on alert.
I noticed that Patrick was steering us around houses as well as roads. In the distance, the lit windows of the Latrell farmhouse flickered into view through the dense pine trunks as we passed.
I wondered about what was happening behind those lit windows and what state Mrs. Latrell was in. I pictured Mrs. McCafferty inside the grain silo, turning slowly to give us her profile over one shoulder, shallow breaths clouding the cold air. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t scrape that image out of my mind.
We continued on for what seemed like forever, keeping to the forest and fields. The Blantons’ house waited at the edge of town. It was nicely kept, with its white picket fence, wraparound porch, and Cape Cod shutters. We drew up to the property, peering around the detached garage. No lights on in the house.
There was something so much cleaner about the houses in town, owned by folks whose jobs didn’t require them to toil in fields or slop hogs. Blanton came from money, or so everyone said. That seemed to be another thing he didn’t like so much about Patrick and me: We didn’t.
He’d never thought Patrick was good enough for his daughter. He wanted a bigger, better future for her. Not with some orphaned kid who worked a ranch and probably would for the rest of his life. More than once we’d overheard him telling Alex, “Rain only goes one direction: down.” But that didn’t discourage her. No, it just gave a Romeo and Juliet gleam to their relationship, like those wedding pictures at the mall they shoot through some kind of filter so the couple looks all dreamy and out of focus.
The house sat still now, with its proud blue-slate paint and white trim, its porch swing swaying gently in the night breeze. Everything just as it might be on another night, on any night.
“Maybe they’re still asleep,” I said. “Maybe they don’t know anything’s wrong.”
At my side Cassius and Princess whined uneasily, and I hushed them.
“Stay here,” Patrick said to the kids. Then to me, “Make the dogs stay with them.”
I gave the command, and they sat. I looked Zeus in his yellow-brown eyes. I always thought of him as my warrior, his face marred with scars from play-fighting with the others or driving coyotes off our property. Having fathered five litters in his seven years, he occupied the top of the hierarchy, the others falling in behind him whenever he gave a directed stare or showed his teeth.
“On guard,” I said, and his ears flattened back against his skull. Then I looked at Rocky. “You see anything, tell him to S-P-E-A-K, and he’ll bark like crazy. You guys are our lookouts. Got it?”
He nodded, but his face was pale with fear.
I followed Patrick across the open front yard. We took a turn around the house, peering in windows. Behind us an empty hammock squeaked at the swivels. Patrick went up on tiptoes to peer into Alex’s bedroom, and I saw his back stiffen.
“What?” I whispered.
He gestured for me to look. Her bed was empty, the sheets smeared to one side, half on the floor.
As if she’d been dragged off the mattress.
The rest of her room looked normal enough, her closet door ajar, a big leopard-print beanbag in the corner, a vintage steamer trunk pushed up against the footboard of the sleigh bed.
Behind us the hammock squeaked and squeaked.
Patrick stepped away from the window, shotgun in hand. My own hands cramped around the baling hooks. A sprinkler leaked at our feet, turning the flower bed to mush.