Making Her Way Home Page 6

  Determined to regain her dignity, Beth said, “Nothing permanent. I slipped, that’s all.” Blinded by his light, she couldn’t make out his face at all. Her own flashlight had fallen and gone out. She lifted an arm to protect her eyes. “Do you mind?”

  The detective sighed and turned the light away from her. He found and picked up her flashlight, fiddled with it for a moment until it came back on and then switched it off before handing it to her.

  She hurt, and was mad at herself. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to say.

  He sat down next to her and turned off his own flashlight. They sat quietly for a minute, the soft shush of small waves the only sound. It wasn’t really totally dark, either, not the way it might be on a cloudy night. The moon was only a quarter full, but the stars were bright. Beth found that to be comforting.

  When I hid, I would have liked to be able to have seen the moon and stars.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I’m all right.”

  “You shouldn’t be here alone. Why didn’t you call someone if you were determined to come?”

  She almost said, “Who?” But that sounded—and was—pathetic. And she did have friends, of a sort. It hadn’t occurred to her to call any of them. They weren’t those kinds of friends. If Rachel were still alive, if this were Beth’s daughter missing… No, she thought sadly, I wouldn’t have called Rachel, either. She’d failed her sister too devastatingly to expect her to feel any obligation.

  “I met your parents.”

  She was already tense; now she went rigid.

  He waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he continued, “I was a little surprised when your mother said she hadn’t seen Sicily since your sister’s funeral.”

  Beth shrugged, guessing he’d feel the movement even though they weren’t touching.

  “Why is that?” he asked.

  “I told you we don’t have a good relationship.”

  “But she’s their granddaughter.” His tone sharpened. “Or is it not them? Did you refuse to let them spend time with Sicily?”

  “The issue hasn’t arisen.”

  “But if it did?” he persisted.

  “I suppose I’d let them see her,” she said slowly, reluctantly. “But not stay with them.”

  “Why?”

  She turned toward him and exclaimed, “What does this have to do with anything? You don’t have to know everything about us!”

  “Yeah, I do. I never know what’s going to turn out to matter.”

  “You don’t seriously think they stole her,” she said incredulously.

  “Not now that I’ve met them, no, I don’t.” He sounded thoughtful. “Clearly that never crossed your mind.”

  “Of course it didn’t.”

  “As your mother pointed out, if they’d wanted Sicily they could have contested for custody.”

  “No.” She had never in her life been so tired. She was afraid she sounded it. “They wouldn’t have won.”

  Of course, he asked, “Why not?”

  Some things she didn’t have to tell him. “Why would they? Rachel named me as guardian. I’m an upstanding citizen, a business and home owner.” She’d managed to inject a note of indignation. “I’m the logical age to raise a child. I live in one of the best school districts in the state. What grounds could they have used to persuade a court they’d do better than I can?”

  Beth ached from holding herself so rigid. She hoped he wouldn’t notice that she’d been evasive.

  “All good points.” He still sounded reflective. His mind was working, poking and prodding at her words, suspecting…something.

  Turn this back to him, she thought. “Why are you here? Surely you don’t work around the clock.”

  “Actually, I sometimes do when a case first breaks. With a homicide or a kidnapping, it’s best not to let people’s memories fade.”

  She swallowed. “You really think…”

  To her astonishment, his big hand found hers and engulfed it rather gently. “I do think.”

  Fear swooped over her like a bald eagle descending on a tiny, cowering field mouse, so swift and black she couldn’t have done anything to save her life. The fear was even greater than her terrible sense of guilt.

  “Nothing to say?” Detective Ryan’s hand was still gentle, but his voice had turned cold. “If you know something…”

  She wrenched her hand free and stood up. “I don’t know anything,” she said, and turned to march down the beach toward the trailhead.

  He fell into step beside her. He turned on his flashlight to light the way up the trail. Even so, she stumbled a couple of times. Before they reached the parking lot, he had a firm hand under her elbow to steady her. He steered her to the passenger side of his SUV. She tried to pull away.

  “No,” he said, “You’re in no shape to drive. I’m taking you home. I’ll pick you up in the morning and bring you back to the park.”

  “There’s no reason…”

  “There’s every reason.” Now he sounded impatient, and she clamped her mouth shut. It was true that her head was swimming and her knees wanted to buckle. She felt ashamed of how desperately she wanted to curl up in her own bed and close her eyes.

  Beth didn’t last that long. They hadn’t been on their way five minutes when she listed sideways in the big bucket seat, thinking, It won’t hurt anything if I rest my head against the door frame.

  The next thing she knew, he was shaking her awake.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KNEES TO HER CHEST, SICILY LAY curled on her side. The mattress was on the floor of the small, mostly bare room, and she clutched the too-thin comforter around her. Positioned so that she was looking at the door, scared and miserable, she waited. There wasn’t anything else she could do.

  Practically the minute he—whoever he was—had left her alone, she’d leaped to her feet, wanting desperately to throw herself at the door and hammer at it. She was bewildered and terrified and her head hurt and she wanted Aunt Beth.

  Thinking about Aunt Beth was what had stopped her. She was so different from Mom. Aunt Beth was always dignified and careful. She was super organized and thoughtful. You could tell she wouldn’t do impulsive or dumb things. If she were here, she’d stay cool.

  I can, too. Even if my head does hurt.

  Sicily had already figured out that she was more like Aunt Beth than Mom. That comforted her a little. After all the stuff Mom had told her about Grandma, Sicily had always hated the idea that she might be anything like her. But it was okay to be like Aunt Beth.

  So instead of sobbing or screaming or anything useless like that, she inched carefully off the mattress and explored, shuffling her feet forward and holding her hands out in front of her. She’d never been anywhere that was utterly black. That was one of the scariest parts of all.

  She hadn’t encountered anything until her hands flattened on a wall. It was just a regular wall, she thought at first, until she felt downward and came to a shelf that was really rough, and discovered that the bottom half of the wall was cold and rough, too. Concrete. Okay, that made sense, if she was in a basement. She and Mom had lived in a basement apartment in Portland for a year. It was dank and mold kept growing in the shower and it had only little tiny windows high on the wall. Sicily had hated it.

  She groped her way around the room, hoping she didn’t touch anything really gross, like a big spider or a cockroach. She hated cockroaches. She reached a corner and discovered that this wall didn’t have the concrete part. So it must be an inside wall. Partway along it, she came to the door. It was cold to the touch and felt different from the way her bedroom doors had always felt. That was because it was metal, she realized, and fear stabbed at her. Why would somebody put this kind of door on a bedroom unless it was to keep someone priso
ner? She stood there for a minute, breathing hard, trying to picture her aunt’s face, always calm, no matter what.

  Aunt Beth would be looking for her. Of course she would be. Even though Sicily wasn’t sure she’d actually wanted a kid.

  But that doesn’t matter. She’ll still look. Because…because I saw the look on her face at the funeral when she put her arm around me, stared hard at Grandma and said, “Sicily will be living with me.” Just like that. No question. As if saying, “Don’t argue with me, because there’s no point.”

  Reassured, Sicily calmed her breathing and wrapped her hand around the knob. It turned, but nothing else happened. So there must be a dead-bolt lock, like Aunt Beth had on her front door—except doors usually locked from the inside. But Sicily hadn’t expected to be able to just walk out. After a moment, she slid her hand along the wall. The light switch was always right next to the door, right?

  But it wasn’t. It turned out to be in a weird place, on the opposite side of the door from where it should have been. If you came into the room, the switch would be behind the door, which so totally didn’t make sense. But then, she thought, her fear peeking out of hiding again, someone must have added this door later. Maybe really recently.

  Maybe for her.

  She hesitated, afraid of what she might see, then flicked the switch.

  For a minute the bright light blinded her and she squeezed her eyes shut. Then, heart pounding, she opened them. Oh, no! There wasn’t even a window. She had really, really wanted a window, even if it was one of the kind that was in a well in the ground and you couldn’t see out of it but a slice of sky. It still might have given her a chance somehow to break the glass and get out, or attract someone’s—anyone’s—attention. But this was like being in a concrete box.

  Well, not quite. She’d been right; on two sides, rough concrete reached halfway up the wall. There was a closet on one of the regular walls, but instead of a regular sliding door it had a curtain rod but no curtain, and she could see that it was totally empty. So was the rest of the room except for the mattress and…oh, wow, a bucket. Now her eyes widened. He didn’t think she was going to pee in that, did he? But why else would it be there?

  She might have to puke in it pretty soon.

  Sicily shivered, wondering if he could see light under the door. But maybe he didn’t care, even if he could. It wasn’t like anyone else would see that a light was on. And anyway, maybe that heavy door fit so tight there wasn’t any kind of crack around it. She hadn’t been able to see light from the other room. And she could still just barely hear voices and laughter that she was sure were coming from a television.

  Sicily wrapped her arms around herself. It was kind of cold in here. She remembered how that other basement apartment had been cold all the time, too. It hadn’t had a furnace or even baseboard heaters. Mom and she had to use plug-in space heaters, and Mom always said they should never leave them on when they went out or at night when they were asleep, because they could cause fires. So they’d each had a huge heap of blankets and comforters on their beds, and Sicily had gotten used to pulling covers over her head at night. When Mom got drunk or stoned, she would forget to turn off the heaters, but Sicily never did. She would always sneak into Mom’s room after she passed out, even if there was a man with her, and hurriedly yank the plug from the wall.

  Sicily looked around. This room didn’t have any heating vents or a baseboard heater, either. She was lucky it wasn’t winter.

  Lucky. Right.

  The bed did have a fitted sheet on it, one scrawny pillow and an old comforter with stuffing seeping out of the places where fabric had worn through.

  Eventually she went back to the bed and sat down on it. She felt sick, but also hungry. She and Aunt Beth had never eaten the lunch they’d brought to the beach. And it was dark when that man carried Sicily into the house, so she’d missed dinner, too. She wondered what time it was. And if he would feed her.

  Mostly, shivering, she wondered what he wanted. What seemed like hours later, she was still wondering.

  * * *

  BETH DID SLEEP AFTER DETECTIVE Ryan left her, even though she hadn’t thought she could. But she woke only after a few hours had passed, and lay frozen in her bed. All she could think about was Sicily. Where was she? What could have happened? And in only half an hour?

  Oh, God, Rachel, you shouldn’t have trusted me. Why did you? she all but begged, but there wasn’t any answer. And she knew, anyway—Rachel’s friends weren’t the kind of people you trusted with your ten-year-old daughter, and her worst nightmare would have been for Sicily to live with her grandparents. Rachel hadn’t actually trusted Beth at all. It was only that there wasn’t anyone else.

  This wasn’t what Rachel would have feared, though, if her last thoughts when she went over the ferry railing had been of her child.

  But then Beth felt a burst of anger. Wasn’t abandonment as bad as abuse? How could Rachel have done that? Sicily needed her mother.

  Lying in bed shuddering, Beth almost hated her sister now. But she couldn’t, because Rachel’s problems were her fault.

  I could have rescued her, but I was selfish.

  In the end, that’s what it came down to, didn’t it? No matter how apprehensive Beth was about suddenly having a child depending on her, there’d never been any real choice.

  Ever since Beth had left home, she’d been torn by guilt. She couldn’t live under the burden of more. Maybe the person Sicily really needed was her mother, but she couldn’t have her. What she had was Beth.

  And look how quickly she’d failed her.

  If only I hadn’t fallen asleep.

  As exhausted as she was, she struggled against it now. It was wrong that she was cozy in her own bed when Sicily was…wherever she was. Her sin was sleep. Closing her eyes and succumbing to it now felt like another betrayal.

  She should have hidden and not let the detective find her at the park. She’d meant to stay, even though her rational side knew how fragile the hope was that Sicily was actually there and alive. Beth didn’t want to think he was right, that Sicily had been kidnapped or even murdered, but the terror pulsing in her agreed. Someone had taken Sicily.

  As unrelenting as a sheepdog snapping at her heels, her mind spun through all the reasons someone might have wanted Sicily. Over and over and over.

  * * *

  THE SOUND OF THE ALARM JOLTED Beth awake. She was shocked to realize she’d slept after all.

  She took a hurried shower and then, queasy and not at all hungry, still made herself sit down with coffee and a toasted bagel slathered with peanut butter. The detective was right. She did have to eat if she was going to stay strong enough to help find Sicily.

  She was trying not to think about him. He was ally and enemy both. No, that wasn’t right—he’s Sicily’s ally, and my enemy, she realized. She hated him and feared him and needed him all at the same time. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.

  At exactly 7:30 a.m., her doorbell rang. As promised, he was here to pick her up.

  She’d half hoped he would look different to her this morning. Less dominant, less sexy, less appealing. Or maybe his eyes would have softened and she’d realize that his hostility and suspicion had all been in her head.

  But there he stood on her doorstep, exactly the same. Instead of yesterday’s slacks and wrinkled white shirt, he wore jeans, running shoes and a heavy sweater over a T-shirt. The sweater made his shoulders look even broader.

  His face had not softened. His eyes, sharp and clear, assessed her, but she couldn’t read any emotion in them at all.

  “You’re ready?”

  “Yes.” She let herself out and locked the front door, dropping the keys in the tote bag that already held her wallet, phone and a bottle of water.

  Once they were in his SUV and backing out, he said, “I hope you g
ot some sleep.”

  “A little.” She hesitated. “It’s my fault you didn’t get much. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t need much.”

  She nodded even though he wasn’t looking. After a minute she said, “You haven’t heard anything?” even though of course he’d have told her if he had.

  “No.”

  After that she looked out the side window, clenching the seat belt in one hand where it crossed her chest, and didn’t say a word. Neither did Detective Ryan. The entire drive passed in silence.

  There were already other vehicles in the picnic area parking lot.

  “Good, they’ve gotten started,” he said, and she realized he meant the volunteers who’d spent yesterday searching.

  “Where can they look that they didn’t already yesterday?”

  He shot her a glance she couldn’t read. “Some of the park is old growth forest with no trails. There’s also wooded acreage, pasture and beach outside the park boundary.”

  “Why didn’t you issue an Amber Alert yesterday?”

  His stare was cold. “Because the reasonable first assumption was that your niece was lost. Lost kids are a regular occurrence. The word will be out now, for what good it does this long after she went missing.”

  The moment he braked in the parking slot, she unbuckled her seat belt and got out. He did the same, circling to her and nodding toward her car.

  “You know, nothing’s to be gained by you staying. We can call you if we find anything at all.”

  “You really think I’ll go home?” she said incredulously. “I’m here to look for Sicily.”

  “I’ll have to pair you with someone.”

  Staring at that rock-hard face, she kept herself from recoiling with an effort of will. I think you know where her body is. That’s what he was really saying. He thought she would claim to have already searched someplace so nobody else would. Beth wanted to be angry but instead felt momentarily dizzy.

  He frowned and reached out a hand to her, which made her wonder whether she’d gone completely pale or her eyes had done a whirligig like a Saturday-morning cartoon character. She stepped back so that his hand dropped without touching her.