Crooked River: A Novel (26 page)

“No, I told you already. No.” He threw his cigarette butt on the ground and stomped the ember out with his boot. “She was never there.”

He reached for the lighter.

I curled my fingers around it. “I don’t believe you.”

He scowled at my fist, then shoved his hands in his pockets again, took them back out, rubbed his neck.

I said, “I think you know what happened to her. Maybe you even had something to do with it.”

He shook his head. “It’s not what you think.”

“You put that key in my bag, didn’t you?”

He couldn’t look me in the eyes.

“And this lighter? It’s hers, isn’t it?” I rubbed my thumb over the etching.

“Listen to me, Sam. I can explain everything. Just stop talking for a second. Just stop . . .” He reached for me.

I tried to get out of the way, but I was stuck up against the table. He grabbed my wrist, held me still.

“You’re hurting me.” I twisted my arm, but he squeezed harder, forcing my fingers open.

The lighter fell to the ground.

“There’s something you need to know. Something important. Your . . . there’s . . .” He clamped down on the words, then took a deep breath and said, “Come with me.”

“What? Why? No. No way.”

“Please. Don’t make this any harder for me than it already is.”

I stared at him and in his mirrored lenses saw my mouth stretched thin, my teeth clenched, my freckles darkening against my pale skin—I saw myself scared and all alone.

I said, “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

He looked down for a second. The muscles in his neck tightened, released. When he lifted his head again, something in his face had changed, the lines hardening, bearing down. “Yes, you are.”

I leaned as far away from him as I could, but he was still holding on to my wrist, and the table pushed sharp into my back. There was nowhere to go.

“I’ll scream,” I said.

“They won’t hear you.”

“Why are you doing this?”

He said nothing.

“Travis. Please. Let go.”

Before either of us could say or do anything else, a loud horn blasted through the meadow, and Zeb’s truck roared to a stop somewhere on the other side of the trees. Travis and I both turned toward the path. A door opened but didn’t close, and the engine kept running.

“Sam!” Zeb shouted through the trees.

Travis relaxed his grip.

I jerked my arm away from him, pulled it close to my chest, and rubbed at the red sore spots forming on my wrist.

“Sam!” Crashing, crashing through the brush.

He broke into the sunlight and kept coming, hobbling across the meadow toward us with one hand on his bad hip, the other grabbing the air and throwing it behind him, saying my name over and over.

I pushed away from the table and ran to Zeb. He grabbed hold of me, leaned. I put my arm around his shoulder and held him up. He was out of breath and panting. Sweat beaded his forehead. His cheeks were flushed red and his eyes glittered moist.

I hushed him and told him to calm down. “What’s happened?”

“It’s Ollie,” he said. “She’s gone.”

Those were the exact words Grandma had used the morning after Mom died when she sat me and Ollie down on the couch and said, “Sometimes life’s not fair. Sometimes we pray and pray and God says no.”
She’s gone
.

An invisible hand grabbed my throat and squeezed. It was hard to tell at this point if Zeb was leaning on me, or if I was the one leaning on him.

Zeb said, “She took her bike.”

The invisible hand released me, and I could breathe again.

“She didn’t tell Franny where she was going?” I asked.

Zeb shook his head. “Franny said she didn’t even hear her come downstairs.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Let’s not panic.” More for my sake than his. “I’m sure she’s fine. I’m sure she just got bored and went for a ride. She probably went into town. I bet she’s on her way back now.”

Zeb nodded. “I hope so.”

“But maybe we should still look for her, just in case?”

“You know where she likes to go?” he asked.

I squeezed his hand. “We’ll find her.”

I glanced over my shoulder to where I’d left Travis by the picnic table, but he had disappeared. I took a few steps in that direction, scanning the meadow, the apiary, the trees all around, but he was nowhere. Just like that—vanished into the bright sun.

Zeb said, “Sam, let’s go.”

Beneath the table, the rattlesnake lighter winked and glinted in a freckle of sunlight. I picked it up and slipped it in my front pocket.

Trying to sound more confident about finding Ollie than I actually felt, I said, “We’ll try the library first.”

I hooked my elbow into Zeb’s and hurried us along the path toward the truck.

30
ollie

I
left something behind. When Mrs. Roth was pushing me out the back door and up the concrete steps, the gray tabby ran under her feet, and she tripped. I pretended to trip, too, and dropped
Alice
on the ground. If my sister is looking for me, she will probably go to the library first, and when I’m not there, she’ll come to the store second. If my sister is looking for me, the book will be obvious, and she will know I left it behind on purpose and that there is something important for her inside the pages.

If my sister is looking.

I am in a shed, tied to a chair. Every time I move, even just a little, the ropes dig deeper into my wrists and ankles. I am in a shed, tied to a chair, and though the sun is high above the trees right now, it will set soon.

I don’t want to be here after dark.

Mrs. Roth stands beside the half-open door and keeps the gun at her side where I can see it. She glances outside and then back at me. Outside and then at me.

The one who follows me won’t come inside the shed. Or can’t. Maybe it’s too thick in here for her, the air too unsettled and broken. So she stays close to the small building’s only window where I can see her out of the corner of my eye, sparking white.

Behind me, Billy Roth hammers something. The sound rings in my head and makes my teeth hurt. His pale girl is close by. I can’t see her, but I hear her moaning. She is trying to let go and being ripped in half.

When Mrs. Roth first pushed me into the shed, Billy Roth turned around and smiled at me. He said, “I remember you.”

Mrs. Roth shoved me into a chair and tied my hands and feet. She told me not to move a muscle.

Billy Roth leaned in close and grabbed my braid, ran it through his finger and thumb. “So much like my Delilah.” He straightened and returned to his workbench, saying, “I’ll be finished with her soon and then you can see for yourself.”

Mrs. Roth tied double knots and stuffed a rag in my mouth. I gagged on the oil taste at first, but I’m used to it now.

Outside, there are engine sounds coming up the driveway.

“Finally,” Mrs. Roth says, and then, “Billy, honey, keep an eye on her.”

He strikes his hammer, down and down in a steady beat.

Mrs. Roth goes out the door but stays close enough to the shed that when the engine stops I can still hear everything she says.

“Where is she?”

Travis answers, his voice, distant at first, then getting closer and louder, “Zeb showed up before I could get her to come with me.”

“Did you tell her that her sister was here?”

“I didn’t have time.”

They’re standing together outside the door now, just out of sight.

“What do you mean you didn’t have time?”

“They know Ollie’s missing. They’re looking for her.”

“Who is?”

“Zeb, Franny, Sam. Probably the sheriff by now.”

Mrs. Roth sighs, then says, “Jesus Christ,” and I can’t tell if she’s praying or cursing.

Travis rushes his words. “I tried, Mom. But then Zeb was just . . . there. And you said no one else could know. You said she had to come alone. I didn’t know what else to do. I did the right thing, didn’t I? Leaving? Coming back here? Mom? Say something.”

She speaks softly. “You did the only thing you could have done. You did what you thought best for our family.”

“She doesn’t know what really happened, Mom,” he said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“We’re not in handcuffs, right?”

“Don’t be smart with me.”

“She might have theories, but she doesn’t have any real proof,” he said. “So we can just forget this whole thing, right? Take Ollie home, wait for the trial, see how it plays out, keep on pretending we had nothing to do with it?”

“No,” Mrs. Roth says. “No, I’m afraid not.”

“But they’re leaving soon. Sam told me. She said her grandparents . . . she said she wouldn’t be back. So it’s okay, right? We can just—”

“I wish it were that simple.” And then her voice changes into something jagged and scarred with holes. “All these loose ends.”

“What do you mean?”

Mrs. Roth comes back inside with Travis close behind her. He stops just inside the doorway and stares at me and the double-knotted ropes and the rag keeping me quiet.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

“Language.” Mrs. Roth stands a few steps away and taps her thumb against the pearl white pistol grip. Taps and taps and taps.

Travis looks behind me then, to where Billy Roth is working, and his face scrunches. He takes one step forward, then a half step back, like he can’t decide what to do. He says, “What the
hell
is that?”

Mrs. Roth says, “Keep your voice down.”

“This is what he’s been working on?” He shuffles closer, but not too close, squints and tilts his head. “Is that . . . ? What’s that at the base? Are those . . . are those
bones
?” He stumbles backward, staring at his mother and shaking his head. “It’s made out of wax, right? Or wood? It’s not real. I mean, it’s not—”

“Travis!” Mrs. Roth slices her hand sharp through the air, silencing him.

There is a moment where we all hold our breath, waiting for something to happen. Then Travis wipes his hand down his face and turns away from his father’s sculpture, focuses on me instead.

“We have to let Ollie go.” He moves toward the chair. “We have to just untie her and set her loose in the woods. That’ll buy us enough time—”

Mrs. Roth grabs his arm, stopping him from coming any closer to me. “Leave her.”

He looks at her, fear darkening his eyes. “You can’t be serious.”

“We can still fix this.”

“What? How? Mom. Listen to me.” He’s talking fast now, his words tripping and mashing together. “We’re in way over our heads, we can’t just, this isn’t the way it was supposed to go. You promised everything would be okay but it’s not, it’s a goddamn fucking mess and there’s no fucking way we’re ever going to fix it, not like this, not now, no fucking way.”

“Language,” she says calmly, and then, “Call her.”

Travis shakes his head, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

Mrs. Roth continues, “Call Sam and tell her that if she ever wants to see her sister alive again, she won’t tell anybody what she knows, not the sheriff, not Zeb, not a single person. She’ll come straight here so we can work things out. And she’ll come alone. Do you understand?”

Travis nods.

Mrs. Roth turns and smiles at me.

A silver-white moth bangs against the window.

31
sam

T
he librarian nodded and said, “Sure, she was here. Real cute kid, right? With pigtails and purple glasses?”

“Yes, that’s her. That’s Ollie.” I gripped the edge of the counter so hard my knuckles turned white.

The librarian scratched his cheek and glanced at the ceiling. “Yeah. Yeah, I remember her. She came in about three hours ago, around two thirty, maybe. Looking to do some research on Billy Roth. Not a very talkative one, now is she?”

“When did she leave?”

“Now, let’s see . . .” He stared over my shoulder and drummed his fingers on the countertop.

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, one foot, the other. Zeb was waiting in the parking lot, engine still running. I glanced at the front door. The bottoms of my feet itched. My palms itched. I leaned closer to the librarian.

He stopped drumming his fingers and said, “Actually, I’m not really sure.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure?” I had to unclench my teeth to get the words out.

“Well now, well, let me think.” His fingers scratching and scratching at his five o’clock shadow. “She was still here when I ducked into the back to load up a cart with returns. That was around three, I think, maybe a little before . . . and that took about twenty minutes . . . and when I came back up to the front, your sister was gone. Cleaned up her work area and everything. Nice girl. Why? Has something happened?”

I glanced at the clock hanging on the wall above the librarian’s head. A lot could happen in three hours. So much could go wrong.

“Is she okay?” The librarian started to come around the desk. “Did she—”

I ducked away from his questions and hurried outside. I climbed back into Zeb’s truck, slammed the door closed, and said, “She’s not here.”

Zeb reversed, spinning the truck’s front end toward the driveway exit. “Where to next?”

T
he sign in the Attic’s window was turned to
SORRY WE’RE
CLOSED, PLEASE COME AGAIN
, but I tried the front door anyway, rattling it inside the frame.

I knocked on the glass. “Hello? Mrs. Roth? Are you in there? It’s me. It’s Sam.”

Zeb leaned out the passenger-side window and waved me to come back to the truck idling at the curb. “If they ain’t home, they ain’t home.”

“I think there’s a back entrance,” I said, and when he started to protest, “It’ll only take a few seconds.”

He nodded and settled back into his seat.

I went around the corner of the building into the alley. A shock of bright green stood out against the dull gray asphalt. I bent and picked up the hardcover book, rubbed my fingers over the embossed white rabbit. I looked up and down the empty alleyway.

“Ollie?”

No answer.

I went down some concrete steps to a closed door that I assumed led into the Attic’s basement. I pounded and pounded and shouted her name, but the only response was my own muffled echo. I tucked her
Alice
book under my arm and returned to the truck where Zeb was waiting, one hand hanging out the driver’s window.

“Anything?” he asked.

I showed him the book, then slipped it into my back pocket. “She was here, but I don’t know how long ago.”

He nodded and leaned across the bench seat to open the passenger door.

I said, “We should try Patti’s.”

“You think she’s there?”

“No,” I said. “But maybe somebody saw something.”

He rolled up his window and turned off the truck.

We went inside Patti’s together. Most of the booths and tables were empty. An old man sat at the bar. He turned when we came in and nodded at Zeb.

Zeb nodded back and said, “Albert.”

The old man Albert hunched over his coffee cup again.

Belinda pushed through the swinging doors from the kitchen carrying a plate piled with a roast beef sandwich and fries. She glanced at Zeb and me waiting by the front counter and said, “Be right with you folks.”

She took the sandwich to a booth near the back of the diner. When she returned, she straightened her blouse, reached for two menus, smiled at us, and said, “Just the two of you today?”

“We’re not here to eat,” I said.

She frowned and dropped the menus back into their rack.

“We’re looking for a little girl,” said Zeb.

Belinda’s penciled-in eyebrows shot up.

“You remember my sister?” I asked. “Ollie? Remember we came in on Monday? For lunch? She ordered tomato soup and grilled cheese. She’s about this tall. Wears purple glasses and pigtails that go all down her back . . .”

“Of course I remember,” Belinda said.

Albert was watching us now, leaning close.

“Did she come in here today?” I asked.

The lines on Belinda’s forehead creased, and a dimple formed in her chin. “No, sweetheart,” she said. “No, I haven’t seen her since the two of you came in here together.”

“Sam?” Deputy Santos was standing a few feet from us in the middle of the diner, dabbing her mouth with a napkin.

She was in plain clothes, and her dark hair was pinned back from her face with hot pink barrettes. She must have been tucked away inside some booth when we came in, just out of sight, but she came closer now, saying my name again and then, “Is something wrong?”

Everything. Absolutely everything.

She lifted her eyes to Zeb.

“Ollie’s took up missing,” he said.

Deputy Santos was close enough now to put her hand on my shoulder. “Tell me where you’ve looked already.”

Zeb left out the part about me and Ollie being grounded for taking his truck, but he told her all the rest.

When he finished, Deputy Santos pulled out her wallet and handed Belinda some money. “Change is yours,” she said, and then to Zeb, “You and Sam go on back to the house now in case she shows up. Double-check the meadow again, and down by the river. I’ll call in a report, then swing by the hospital.”

Belinda said, “Oh dear, oh dear,” and then put her hand over her mouth.

Deputy Santos continued, “I’ll take a couple passes through town, too, drive out Smith Rock Way and then down to Lambert. If she hasn’t turned up in the next hour, we’ll get some search-and-rescue dogs out to your place.”

Albert tossed a five-dollar bill on the counter and said to Zeb, “I’ll round up Clinton and Mack and some of the others who ain’t got nothing better to do on a Friday.”

Zeb nodded. He put his arm around my shoulder.

Belinda untied her apron and laid it over the cash register. “I’m coming, too.”

Deputy Santos checked her wristwatch. “It’s almost six. Let’s plan on everyone meeting at the Johnsons’ in an hour.” She rubbed her thumb over the watch face and then looked at me. “I’m sure she’ll be back by then and we’ll all just end up sitting around eating some of Franny’s famous hot-from-the-pan crullers.” But she rushed out of the diner like she believed something else entirely.

Zeb ushered me toward the door. Over my shoulder, I asked Belinda, “Is Travis working today?”

“He was scheduled for the lunch shift, but he never showed. Kids.” She shrugged in a way that made me think he’d skipped out on work a few times before this, and then she disappeared into the kitchen to tell the rest of the staff she was leaving.

O
n the ride back to Zeb and Franny’s, the knot that had been forming in my stomach since we left the diner grew and pulled tighter with each mile. I stared out the window, rubbed my thumb along the spine of Ollie’s
Alice
book, and played Travis’s words over in my head.
There’s something you need to know. Something important. Come with me.
I spun my wrist in a quick circle, feeling the bruises where he’d grabbed on so tight I thought my bones were going to snap in two.
What does your gut say?

“Please,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “Please, Zeb. Go faster.”

He pushed down on the gas pedal, and I did something I hadn’t done in years. I closed my eyes and prayed.

W
hen Zeb pulled into the driveway, I jumped out of the truck before he could even turn off the engine and ran into the kitchen, where Franny was waiting at the table, staring at the phone on the wall like she thought, if she only stared hard enough, she could will it to ring and Ollie would be on the other end, telling her everything was all right.

I stopped in the doorway. Franny spun her head around to look at me. Our eyes met and what small glimmer of hope she had blinked out in the time it took me to say, “Anything?”

Franny shook her head real slow and twisted a napkin in her hands. She turned her attention back to the phone and said, “I think it’s about time we called the sheriff.”

“We saw Deputy Santos at Patti’s,” I told her. “She’s getting a search party together. They’re all meeting here in an hour.”

Zeb came into the kitchen behind me. “No use sitting around worrying yourself half to death, Mother. Might as well keep your hands busy.”

Franny rose from the table. She went to the sink, filled a pitcher with water, poured in a packet of powdered lemonade, and stirred in ice with a wooden spoon. Then she put a saucepan on the stove, measured in water, butter, sugar, and salt and settled in to stirring, waiting for the ingredients to boil. She worked methodically, slowly, putting all her worry into the familiar routine of making crullers. I left them in the kitchen and went upstairs to the guest room.

Ollie’s duffel bag was still on the floor beside the dresser. Her pajamas were folded neatly on the end of the bed. I searched for a note. On the desk, the dresser, her bed, mine, on the window, behind the door. Nothing. A corner of the Ouija board peeked from underneath her bed. I pulled it out and opened the lid. The wooden pointer had slid into one corner.

I placed my fingertips on the edge of the pointer and whispered, “Is Ollie safe?”

The pointer didn’t move. I jammed the lid back on the box and placed the game on top of the dresser.

I sat down on the end of Ollie’s bed, then stood right up again and took her
Alice
book from my back pocket. She carried this book with her everywhere, and if she’d left it behind, it was for a good reason. I thumbed quickly through the pages. Tucked near the beginning was a small piece of paper torn from a larger calendar page. August 1 and some of August 2 and 3, too, but it was that first day, the day of Billy’s interview, that Ollie wanted me to see. Under this was another piece of paper, folded in fourths. I unfolded it and only had to read the headline to recognize it as a photocopied article about Bear’s accident and the awful, horrible night ten years ago that changed the entire course of our lives. On the opposite page, she’d underlined a passage in her book in thick, red ink:

“It was much pleasanter at home,” thought poor Alice, “when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!”

I looked at the news clipping again. Billy Roth’s name was circled so many times the paper was starting to rip, and in the blank space at the bottom of the paper it looked as though Ollie had tried to write something, but the letters were all jagged and streaked and crossed through with lines, and I couldn’t make out a single word. But it didn’t matter. I knew what she was telling me, what she’d been trying to tell me all along, and I knew, too, where to find her now: in the exact place I’d prayed she wouldn’t be.

I left the book on the bed and ran downstairs. A map showing the farm and the meadow and a long stretch of Crooked River was spread out over the coffee table, but the living room was empty.

In the kitchen, Franny was at the stove turning a cruller in crackling-hot oil. She’d already fried up two plates’ worth, but the mixing bowl was still half full of raw dough.

“Where’s Zeb?” I asked her.

She waved her free hand toward the sliding glass door. “He took Albert and a couple other men to search along the river.”

“Is Deputy Santos here?” I asked her.

“Not yet.” Franny wiped her forehead with a dish towel and narrowed her gaze on me. “Sam? What is it? Did you find something?”

I ignored her questions and took the stairs two at a time back up to the second floor and Zeb and Franny’s bedroom, where I could have some privacy. I shut the door behind me and left the light off. There was a phone on the nightstand beside the bed. I picked it up and listened to the dial tone for a few seconds. Then I punched in Deputy Santos’s phone number. It rang and rang and rang. I slammed the phone back in its cradle, feeling stupid. Of course she wasn’t going to answer. She was out searching for Ollie. I’d have to call 911, have them get her on the radio and tell her to come straight here. I reached for the phone again, but before my fingers wrapped around the receiver, it rang.

I jerked my hand back. The phone rang a second time.

I grabbed it off the cradle and pressed the speaker to my ear. “Hello?”