The Story Keeper (32 page)

Lily Clarette didn’t follow as I turned toward home but instead stood there shivering, looking over her shoulder, the blanket wrapped tightly to her head. With the muted morning light drifting through the trees, she looked like a child playing Mary in a church Christmas pageant.

“What?” I followed her line of sight toward the mountains.

“Nothin’.” She turned to follow, bending against the wind so that I couldn’t see her face as we walked back.

The cabin was warm and inviting, but my sister remained strangely quiet as we shed the soggy blankets, then climbed the hill to the car. I wondered what she was thinking. “Listen, it
might be best if I drop you at the library or one of the coffee shops. Someplace where you won’t have to worry about Craig or Daddy finding you. I know you must be tired after last night.”

Wincing, she moved the seat belt off her shoulder. “Don’t be fussin’ over me, okay? I wanna help. I’m not some dumb little child.”

“I know you’re not.”

We let the topic die on the way to Looking Glass Gap. Several sheriff’s department vehicles sat parked outside the pharmacy when we arrived, and the tactical truck for a canine unit waited in the alley. Inside, Helen Hall and her workers were alternately supplying coffee and calling everyone they could think of who might’ve seen Hannah.

“Anything so far?” I asked as Helen hung up the phone at the pharmacy counter.

Her gray hair surrounded her head in a frazzled halo. She laid a hand over it, seeming lost as to what else to do. “Nothing. I just can’t believe Hannah would run away on purpose. Something has to have happened to her.”

“How’s Violet doing?”

“The doctor gave her a sedative. She was beside herself when they figured out that Hannah was missing. Vi blames herself for not being able to look after Hannah and for Evan being gone so much to the doctor’s appointments . . . and for being asleep yesterday . . . and for Jake getting himself in trouble again. She’s just sure he’s got problems because of something she did raising those two. I don’t know what’s wrong with that boy. He’s always been so foolish. You know he hasn’t even turned up again yet? He doesn’t even know about Hannah.” She blinked hard, holding back tears.

Lily Clarette stretched a hand across the counter and touched
Helen’s arm. “I been prayin’ we’ll find her real quick. I just know we will.”

Helen gave my sister a confused look, and I made introductions. Helen’s gaze lingered on Lily Clarette’s face as if she were discerning the bruises beneath the wind-reddened skin. This morning, a faint black-and-blue semicircle rimmed the cheek Lily Clarette claimed had been struck by the truck door.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Helen said finally, her face lifting as a sheriff’s deputy came in the door, then falling when he obviously was only there to warm up and grab coffee. “It’s so cold outside. I just don’t know where that child could possibly be.”

I thought of Lily Clarette when I’d picked her up at the Algers store
 
—how chilled she’d been after only a short time outside. Would Hannah have any idea how to survive if she was lost in the woods? Worse yet, if someone had found her as it grew dark and the storm came in, would she have been naive or desperate enough to trust the wrong person?

There had to be something else I could do to help. Something more efficient than going from cabin to cabin around the lake looking for information. “Has anyone been to the Time Shifters camp to ask if she was seen down that way yesterday? The other day she was admiring some jewelry I bought there. Maybe she went to look.” I was grasping at straws, and I knew it, but if Hannah had been there, Robin might have seen her.

Pushing her glasses up, Helen wiped her eyes. “It’s worth a try, I guess. I hope Hannah didn’t go all the way down there. What if one of those people followed her off into the woods?”

“Let’s just take things a step at a time.” But Helen had put horrible images in my mind. What if Hannah had been to the camp? What if people there knew who she was?

A crime that wasn’t random hadn’t even occurred to me until now. But Evan Hall had money . . .

Another sheriff’s deputy came in, this time with a police dog in tow. Helen watched hopefully as he crossed to the counter to catch the deputy who was filling his thermos. The body language was easy enough to read even without the snatch of conversation that drifted across the store. “. . . luck in the snow.”

The dog wasn’t picking up anything.

Helen excused herself, and Lily Clarette and I turned toward the door. The need for coats and dry shoes was evident as we stepped onto the street again. “We can grab some coveralls and boots at the outfitter’s store.”

Lily Clarette caught my arm. “Jennia Beth, we need more than what we can pick up at the clothin’ store.” Her teeth worried the side of her lip. “We need to call Daddy and Roy and Levi. Get them to bring us mules and four-wheelers and the dogs. Daddy’s coonhounds can find a mouse in a Christmas snow. You know they can. If there’s anybody that can go from where that little girl started and maybe figure where she ended up, it’s them.”

My reaction was instant and visceral, my insides burning with revulsion and blinding resentment . . . and fear. “I’m not letting you anywhere
near
those people. No.”

“You know I’m right.”

“Lily Clarette, yesterday Daddy gave you away to the man who decided to knock you around. And now you want to
call
them? You think they’re going to just
show up
here and help?”

“’Course they will.” Lily Clarette had so much more confidence in our family than I did . . . and even that worried me a little. “They’re upset at me, Jennia Beth, and they won’t like what I’ve decided for myself, but they’re not gonna let a child freeze to death in the woods.”

Chapter 27

T
he street outside Mountain Leaf Pharmacy was crowded with vehicles, ATVs, and searchers dressed in all-weather gear ranging from brightly colored ski clothes to faded, mud-covered camouflage. Over the mountains, the evening sky dimmed and promised another cold night. Portable floodlights created an unnatural glow above the street, giving the town the feeling of a snow globe, but the idyllic confectioner’s coating was only a wicked illusion. Beyond the shelter of the buildings, the wind howled mercilessly, a knife against even the smallest bits of exposed skin.

Lily Clarette and I parked a few blocks from the pharmacy and limped toward the back alley, hoping to avoid the chaos in front. Word of the search had spread, bringing an onslaught of news crews during the time we’d been out combing the woods.

I couldn’t imagine what Hannah must be going through as night fell, and now I realized how unprepared I’d been to still be
looking for her. When my father, my brothers-in-law, and the men of Lane’s Hill had arrived in the afternoon with their dogs and coon-hunting mules, I’d been convinced that we would find Hannah before dark. The mules could cover amazing amounts of ground in almost any terrain, and Lily Clarette was right
 
—our dogs could sniff out a mouse in a blizzard. On Lane’s Hill, hunting and tracking weren’t only matters of pride but of providing sustenance and family income.

Now my father and the rest of the men had gone home, taking the dogs and the mules with them for the night. They’d found nothing. Hannah and Blackberry had literally disappeared off the face of the earth.

I thought of Evan and his family as we pushed our way through a mill of reporters and curiosity seekers who’d now staked out the back entrance of Mountain Leaf. Lily Clarette caught a breath when we finally closed the door behind us. She’d been clinging to my coat, letting me drag her through the crowd.

“Don’t they know they’re gettin’ in the way? That there’s a little girl lost out there someplace? I hadn’t ever seen so many people in all my life.” A weary, wide-eyed glance flicked toward the door as if she were afraid they’d push through any moment. We’d been stopped by news crews earlier while scouring the roadsides on two mules belonging to one of my father’s neighbors.

“I’m used to it, I guess.” A bone-rattling cold traveled through my body as I peeled back damp coveralls and threw them over a stack of boxes with my hat and gloves. “Crowds, I mean. Not circumstances like this.”

“I don’t know if I could live around so many . . . strangers. I can’t even understand the way some a these people talk.” Shivering, she shrugged out of the coat Coral Rebecca had sent from home and fingered a rip along the seam, looking uncertain.

Maybe she was second-guessing herself. When we’d turned the mules over to their owner, Lily Clarette had refused to leave with Craig and my father, but we both knew they’d be back again tomorrow with dogs and mules . . . and the expectation that Lily Clarette would come to her senses. If there hadn’t been law enforcement personnel everywhere, they probably would have escorted her home already.

“Let’s warm up and get something to eat.” Weariness gnawed like a demon, determined to take possession of my body. I hadn’t been on a horse or a mule in years, or out in the weather for so many hours at once. “You did the right thing tonight, Lily Clarette.”

Anxiety lined her wind-reddened eyes. “I hope so. Craig was real upset, and now everybody in the church is gonna know . . .”

“Don’t worry about them.” I guided her through the storage area toward the hush of whispered conversation and the scents of hot coffee and food. “A girl who can break through thickets and climb down gullies on a mule can make her own choices.”

“Anybody can ride a mule.”

“Not the way you can.” My sister was like a woodland sprite, like Sarra in the story, seeming to feel the forest in her very being, to sense its sheltered folds and hidden places. In her, there was much of those generations of Gibbs women who’d learned to live off this hard land, to gather the mountains’ secret gifts and herbal remedies. How would she feel when all of this was far away, when she was surrounded by concrete and glass and a sky sectioned by the neatly geometric profile of buildings? “You can have whatever kind of life you want. Don’t let anyone else tell you who to be.”

“I’m just worried about that little girl right now,” she said as we walked into the large storage room where folding tables held food, hot coffee, drinks, flashlight batteries, and other materials gathered for the search.

Helen was deep in a conversation about Violet’s condition. “. . . to sleep. She’s just too weak to handle the news that we haven’t found Hannah yet.”

She glanced my way as I reached for coffee. “You two are frozen through. Go out in the main room and sit by the woodstove once you get some food. We moved the shelves and put up some tables.” A weary look followed. “Thank you for all you’ve done and for calling your family in. They’ve been a big help. I tried to get them to stay for food, but they wouldn’t. They promised they’d be back at first light.” She turned specifically to Lily Clarette. “Your fiancé said to call him when you’re ready for a ride home. He’ll come and take you to your daddy’s house, no matter the time.”

“Lily Clarette is staying with me,” I answered quickly. Helen had enough to think about without our family drama playing into it.

“The dogs’ll be fresh in the mornin’,” Lily Clarette changed the subject. “They’re always best when they’re fresh.”

Helen offered my sister a sad smile. “Goodness, you’ve got a nasty little cut there by your eye.”

I craned to see, but Lily Clarette shrugged away. “Oh, it’s nothin’. I was busy starin’ at the ground, and the mule run me under a branch.”

Slipping around the table, Helen caught my sister’s arm. “I don’t like the look of that. Come on in the pharmacy and let me doctor it up, hon.”

Lily Clarette obediently followed Helen from the room, and I took a plate of chili and bread to the makeshift dining area out front. The store had emptied considerably since earlier that day, many of the searchers having gone somewhere else to rest. Residents of Looking Glass Gap had opened their spare rooms,
and even those left in the Time Shifters camp had offered extra beds in their RVs and motor homes.

If the town had been of a divided spirit before, it was now united in the search for Hannah.

On a bench near the woodstove, Evan sat with his elbows on his knees, his head drooping forward, his hands and forearms crimson and raw. Once again, there was no sign of Hannah’s father among the searchers. The last I’d heard, the police had been unable to locate him, but they didn’t believe he had taken Hannah. After being seen at a drive-through beer barn the day he left the ranch, he’d simply fallen off the map.

Alone by the fire, Evan looked for all the world like a man who’d been crumbling for a while and was now breaking open, bits of mortar and stone falling away.

Setting my plate aside, I took the empty place beside him. “How are you holding up?”

He shook his head, his hair hanging in wet, dark curls, the last ice crystals still melting off. “Not so good, I think.”

I laid a hand on his arm just below the damp cuff of a pushed-up sweatshirt sleeve. Cold skin against cold skin. “I’m sorry. I was so sure we’d find her before dark. My family’s putting out the word, though. By tomorrow there’ll be coon hunters and trackers from all over the area here. If anyone knows how to ferret out all the concealed places in these mountains, they do. They’ll find her.”

“I just can’t picture . . . how she’ll make it another night out there in this . . .” His voice broke, and I swallowed hard, blinking against the pressure of tears.

Words wouldn’t come. I tightened my fingers around his arm instead.

“It’s so cold,” he muttered as if the temperature of my skin had reminded him.

Don’t cry. Be strong. Say something encouraging. That’s what he needs to hear right now.
“But she comes from mountain folk. She’ll make it the way people always have here. She’ll find a place to shelter. Just like Rand and Sarra. They figured out how to survive with practically nothing. She will too.”

“That’s the difference between fiction and reality, Jen. In fiction, you can make sure people have the basic things they need. A field glass to start a fire, some dry tinder, a pouch full of hardtack or corn pone. Hannah didn’t have any of those things.” Cool droplets fell from his hair as he shook his head again. “I’d give anything if I could just go back and . . . do things differently with her. Stop waiting for Jake to step up.” The muscles in his jaw tightened as he said the name.

I thought of my own family, of all the frustrations between us, of all the things I wished I could change and didn’t know how to change. I thought of Rand, caught in the soul-splitting tug-of-war between the life his family expected him to live and the life his heart yearned for. Would he ever find a way to weave together the two? Would I?

Staring into the flames of the old stove, I tried to convince myself that there must be a way, that amid what seemed like impossible circumstances, there was a promise
 
—the very one spoken of between Rand and Sarra in the kitchen house at Sagua Falls.

Even when we are lost, God has not lost us.

“You’ll get that chance with her, Evan. You will.”

“I hope so,” he whispered. “I’m just ready for daylight to come so we can get back out there and keep looking.”