“Greer?” I glance to James who is suddenly eager for information. “Yes—yes it is.”
“My name is Nora Stewart. I run the Saginaw Library District as the head librarian. A woman by the name of Heather Evans came by yesterday. She says you have a child fathered by a Black Stone Indian.”
“Fuck.” I take in a ragged breath and jump to my feet. Leave it to stupid, stupid Heather Evans to blow the most precious details of my life right out of the water.
“Well, I have the information she was looking for. I’m not sure how well you know her, but she said that she was in some kind of trouble. I hope you don’t mind me calling. She left two numbers, and one of them was yours. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t reach her.”
Stupid, stupid Heather.
“Oh?” I’m only mildly concerned at the thought of Heather in trouble. It’s most likely a lie she concocted to cover up for being there to begin with.
“Anyhow.” She pauses and I try to picture this woman, elderly by the sound of her rickety voice, Indian, a Black Stone according to Heather. I imagine her dressed in a purple sweater that she hand-knitted. Comfortable shoes. “We had an appointment at ten and it’s almost noon. She said this was an alternate number to reach her at. She explained to me you were her best friend.”
“Of course, she did.” I scratch the hell out of the back of my head because for the life of me I can’t ever seem to escape that title.
“Well, I’m a bit worried for her. She seemed awfully paranoid while she was here. She kept saying something about being followed. Something about a little girl threatening her.”
“A little girl?” A nervous laugh burps from me as I glance to Ota. “That would be her paranoia.”
“Not necessarily. Not if you knew anything about the Black Stone tribe.”
A fire line of electrical jolts runs up my back, spreading over me, embedding their vampire-like teeth right into my flesh, my nerve endings.
“Ms. Stewart?” I cup my hand over the receiver, walking deeper still into the hall. “Whatever you know about the Black Stone tribe, you need to tell me right now.” I swallow hard, tempering my breathing in the event I miss a single detail.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that over the phone. You know where to find me. But if I were you, I’d check on your friend. Something seemed very, very off to me. I have to go.” The line goes dead.
Something seemed very, very off to her? It sounds like Heather was having an ordinary day.
I step into Reagan’s room to find James seated at the table, the two of them coloring away like father and daughter.
And according to James, that’s exactly what they might be.
12
James
There are some people who come into your life that no matter how brief the interaction you will never forget. Ota, our little mystery girl, is panning out to be one of them, although not in any positive way. I spend the afternoon studying her. Sitting right next to her on one of Reagan’s pastel chunky wooden chairs and pretend to color alongside her. There is a beauty about being near a child, something all around rejuvenating about the experience. Her thick dark hair hauntingly reminds me of my own, but those eyes of hers, those deep wells—they don’t belong to me. I don’t want there to be a child with Monica—especially not this one. I study the ridge of her nose, the outline of her features for a trace of anyone in my family and come up empty each and every time. She looks like no one I had seen before, and yet like every other child. But Ota had too many dimensions, too much depth, to be your ordinary child. She was multilayered, and each of those layers exhibited some dark twisted root system that ensured a mindfuck at every turn.
Why is she here? I can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that someone sent her to the door last night. I don’t buy it for a minute that she wandered here herself. But why? They could have asked for a ransom without sending the little girl. Why put her in jeopardy? They can only assume that Allison and I are good people. How can they trust what happens behind closed doors? But, then again, these are not sane people we’re dealing with. They’re already on the hook for felony kidnapping. By logical deduction, Ota must belong to them, whoever they are, since nobody came forward to claim her as missing.
“Can I see the pictures?” I flick a finger at the stack she’s amassing and she slides them over without looking up. I thumb through them quickly, mostly dogs, rabid looking dogs, a forest of evergreens—but tucked in just about every single one of them is an eye—an errant floating eye. Sometimes the eye has wings. Sometimes the eye has a tail. Rarely is it ever unadorned, but it is almost always floating.
Allison comes back in with a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches piled high on a tray and a glass of frothy chocolate milk.
Ota lights up at the sight, pushing aside her work to make room for the carbohydrate-laden feast.
“It is delicious,” Allison trills, taking a seat across from her. She sets the chocolate milk on the bookshelf just out of reach, a move both Ota and I find disconcerting. “I know you must be very, very hungry.” She turns around and sets the plate on the nightstand behind her. “And you can eat as many as you like once you answer a few questions for us.”
The little girl takes a quick breath as if protesting the idea. Her forehead wrinkles in elongated waves—but those eyes, those brows of hers have zeroed all of their disdain in on Allison.
“Let’s start with the basics. What is your real name?” Allison doesn’t waste any time.
The girl straightens. “Otaktay.”
She speaks!
Allison and I glance at one another, the equivalent of a mental high five.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I fish it out, only to find it’s from Hannigan, aka Hailey.
I need to see you.
I bury the phone back into my pocket and shake my head at Allison as if to say it was nothing. But it was something—something that I never in my life want to deal with.
“Otaktay,” Allison repeats the name slowly, this time setting it to memory as do I. She was right. It does sound like pig Latin. Go figure.
Ota points to the stack of sandwiches bleeding their sickly sweet perfume all over the room, and even my stomach growls to have one.
Allison leans in. You can see the elation exuding from her for accomplishing that one small verbal feat.
“Is Reagan safe?” She holds her breath as she asks the question.
Ota looks from Allison to me with a simple twitch of the eyes, her chin still staunchly tucked to her chest, that glowering affect staunchly in place.
“Ota?” I lower my voice, soften it around the edges, sounding every bit the loving father. “Do you know where Reagan is?”
The little girl pulls another sheet of paper off the desk, stark white, and begins tracing out an eye, coloring in the iris a violent shade of red.
“Is that Reagan’s eye?” Allison’s hand shakes as she bounces her fingers off the page.
Ota lets out a quiet sigh before shaking her head. That look of perennial hatred for the two of us takes over again as she points hard to the peanut butter promise land.
Allison scoots her seat over to effectively block her view. “Just tell me what you know about Reagan. About the people who took her. Do you know if she’s alive?”
Ota takes the stack of artwork she’s been working on all night and all morning and begins to rip at it in a fury.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I snap up the stack and hold them over my head. “You don’t have to do that.”
A squeal of frustration emits from her as she lunges into the art bin and begins snapping crayons in half, two and three at a time until most of them hang limp like broken candy canes.
“Stop.” Allison clamps her hand over the little girl’s, and in one swift move Ota glides her nails over her arm, leaving behind a trail of bloody welts.
“Shit.” Allison retracts her hand as if pulling it from an open flame.