The Blood Lie (4 page)

When Lydie and Emaline finished their stew, they settled into the living room to do some beading. Emaline was finishing up the bracelet she was making for her mother's birthday next month. Lydie decided to try her hand at a choker.

After a while, Mrs. Durham came in from the garden and walked over to the telephone. “It's 1:30,” she said. She picked up the receiver, then put it down, hesitated, then picked it up again. Finally she spoke to the operator. “Good afternoon, Bess. Would you put me through to my sister-in-law? Thank you.”

“Clarisse?” Mrs. Durham said after a moment. “Yes, Lydie's right here. She can stay as long as she likes. Listen, Daisy didn't happen to walk over there, did she?…No, everything's fine. Maybe she wandered back over to the Pools' house…Yes, I do trust that family, Clarisse… Yes, I know them well enough—Eva Pool is my friend…No, nothing else. I'm positive, Clarisse.”

Next, Mrs. Durham tried phoning the Pools, but no one answered. Then she called her cousin Mickey and the Pikes down the street, whose new litter of barn kittens drew the neighborhood children, but they hadn't seen her. She called the Pools once more, again with no luck.

“Emaline,” Mrs. Durham called.

“Yeah?”

“Daisy must still be in the woods. Go fetch her, will you, before that stew spoils? Both of you.”

“Can we finish our beading first?”

“No,” she said more sternly than she meant to.

“Okay. Come on, Lydie.”

Mrs. Durham handed Emaline a biscuit in a paper bag. “Here,” she said. “Give this to her right off. She'll be half-starved by now. And keep at it till you find her, you hear? I'll whistle for you if she beats you home.”

After Emaline and Lydie had hiked the forest path for a little while, chatting and calling for Daisy every now and then, Lydie put a fresh piece of gum in her mouth and said carefully, “Your mother seems pretty upset.”

“She's always upset,” Emaline said. “Upset and worried. Like I said, we haven't pulled ourselves together like you and your ma have. She's just overreacting. Honestly, how far could Daisy have gone? She's only four year old! She's probably poking around for frogs or stones, the way she always does.”

“Daisy?” Lydie shouted.

Another half-hour passed.

“
Little girl, little girl, where have you been? Gathering roses to give to the Queen
,” said Emaline. “
Little girl, little girl, what gave she you? She gave me a diamond as big as my shoe
. Daisy?”

“C'mon, Daisy, we've got a biscuit for you,” Lydie called. Her voice was getting scratchy. “What time is it, anyway? It gets dark so early this time of year.”

“It's…
God!
It's going on four. I had no idea. She's been out here since—when did Ma say she sent her out?”

“I don't know. Hey, do you see any deer traps?”

“Oh, no,” Emaline moaned. “
Boys and girls come out to play, the moon does shine as bright as day. Come with a hoop, and come with a call, come with a good will or not at all
… Daisy!”

The girls walked on until they were dragging. “Are your feet hurting as much as mine?” Lydie asked.

“They're burning,” Emaline said. “I'd love to dip them in the river about now…the river! Ma never lets her near the water alone, it's so cold, and the undertows and the drop-offs, what if she accidentally…?”

“No one jumps into the river by accident, Em, not even a little kid. Calm down. You either jump or you don't, and she knows better…hey, listen.”

“What?”

“
Shhh
. Listen. Over there, I think, in the brambles. Footsteps.”

“Daisy? Daisy?” Emaline called. Twigs and leaves crackled underfoot, but no one answered. “Daisy?”

A raccoon waddled out into the open. It rubbed one eye and swished its plump tail, blinked, and scooted back into the brush.

“If I'd just gone straight home like I promised,” Emaline said. “If only I'd been on time. If only…”

“Look, maybe Daisy's already home,” Lydie said. “Maybe your ma whistled for us but we were too far away to hear. Maybe that's why we can't find her.”

“So should we—?” She straightened abruptly. “Lydie, listen. I hear something…Daisy?”

“Nope, just us,” came a man's voice. Emaline's neighbor Jed Pike and his son Emmett stepped out from a crowd of evergreens. “Your mother called us about Daisy. Afraid we haven't had any luck so far.”

Emaline stole an anxious glance at Lydie.

“Don't you fret now,” Mr. Pike said, stepping closer. He
smelled like cows and hay. “My nephew is out here too, and your mother had an alert put on the radio, so there'll be others. We'll find her. Say, you ladies have lights?”

“Lights?” Emaline said. “No. We didn't think we'd be out this long. We thought we were just—”

“You might want to get something then,” he said. “The sun'll set in another hour.”

The girls stared at him.

“Good idea,” Lydie finally said. “C'mon, Em, let's scoot back to your house for a flashlight or a lantern.” She tugged at her cousin's arm until Emaline finally let herself be pulled along.

When they got to the house, Emaline couldn't find her mother—the house was so crowded with neighbors and friends. “What are all these people doing here?” Emaline asked Lydie. “Look at all the food they brought, like for a funeral.” She looked around for Jack, but he didn't seem to be here. Maybe he was out looking for Daisy.

“Why is everyone staring—?” Emaline said. She stopped mid-question, her legs suddenly wobbling, her head light.

Lydie helped her onto the sofa. “Let me get you some water,” she said, lifting Emaline's feet onto the coffee table. “Or some juice. You need something—I'll fix you a plate.”

“No, I'd gag on it.” She leaned her head against the sofa and closed her eyes. “I'm fine, I just need a minute. Just one minute.”

“Miss Durham?” came a deep voice overhead. “Emaline Durham?”

Emaline looked up to see her Aunt Clarisse and a uniformed man hovering on the opposite side of the coffee table.

“Emaline,” said the big man with the brick-red mustache. “I'm Victor Brown, state trooper, and I want you to know—”

“I've seen the trooper. He's older than you. And a lot shorter.”

“That was Billy Moore.” He said the old trooper's last name like it was MOO-wah, like it had no ‘r' in it, like he wasn't from around here. “He left a few weeks ago. I'm your trooper now. I'm in charge of this case.”

“Case?

“Case. Your aunt wants me to tell you—”

“Where's my mother?” Emaline took her feet off the table and started to stand, but Lydie pulled her back down.

“In the kitchen, dear,” Clarisse said, taking a seat on the sofa and squeezing Emaline's hand with her pudgy one. “She really wants to see you.”

“Well, what the heck does he want?”

“I just—your aunt wants you to know we got a lotta men searching for your sister,” the trooper said, twisting one end of his mustache between his fingers. “Upwards of a hundred, by my last count, including the whole fire squad. Won't be long now till we get her home, I think. Anyways, you should call it a night, miss. It's getting dark. No time for a young lady to be out.”

“You're right,” she said. “It's no time at all for a
young lady
to be out. So we'd best get Daisy
in
, hadn't we? Now if you'll excuse me, sir, I'm going to go find my sister.”

“I'm gonna insist now, miss,” he said. “We don't need two girls going missing on us tonight.”

Emaline shot him an acid glare, then stood up and headed for the kitchen. As she went, she glanced at the
mantelpiece clock. It was past six. Daisy had been missing since lunchtime—
six hours
!—and there still wasn't a sign of her. She'd vanished, and no one knew where or how.

Mrs. Durham sat at the kitchen table, her chin on her hand. She was surrounded by a flock of women who stepped aside as soon as Emaline came in. The choir teacher and Sister Frances were there. So were most of Mrs. Durham's quilting bee ladies, all of them with grim, pressed lips and narrow eyes.

“The poor dear,” one of the women whispered. “First her father and now this.” Did she really think Emaline couldn't hear her?

“Ma?” she said, stepping closer.

When Mrs. Durham raised her chin, Emaline let out a small gasp. Her mother looked just like one of the mannequins at Pool's Dry Goods—so stiff and pale, staring at nothing.

“Emaline, thank heavens you're all right,” she said. “I was getting worried about you too.”

“I couldn't find her, Ma. But I will. I'm going to find her.”

“No, stay inside. I don't want you wandering those woods at night.”

The other women murmured their agreement.

“I have to, Ma.”

“But…,” She squeezed Emaline's hands. “Just be careful then, do you hear me? Be careful. Promise.”

“I promise. I'll be back as soon as I can, honest.” She glanced at the women, then back at her mother. Then she left the kitchen without saying good-bye or thank you or any other thing to anybody.

Lydie was waiting for her by the coffee table. “How's your mother?” she asked.

“She looks just like she did the day Daddy died. Like a shell, like a broken shell.”

“I'm sorry, Em.”

“Yeah.” She scanned the room again and cleared her throat. “What's going on out here?”

“Nothing but bull. Spud McMann is beating his gums about hungry bears walking down the middle of the street over in Potsdam. Mae Petru is yammering about the maximum-security prison in Dannemora, how it's only an hour away, how she wonders if they ever escape. I blocked out the rest.”

Emaline's eyes started to glisten.

“Come on, Em, they're all just a bunch of saps, gossiping instead of doing something useful. Look, I found a flashlight in the other room. Let's head back out.” She took her cousin's hand and gave it a tug.

Emaline took a shaky breath, then the two of them hurried out the door where the first stars were twinkling in the evening sky.