The wind cried beneath the tin roof as Jonah seared a steak on the stove and Sally slept on the couch.
She needed to eat so they wouldn’t have to stop until they were long gone. He’d wanted to leave earlier, but the blinding snow had come in so fast and hampered him, and he’d decided to wait it out. Despite the few gusts of wind blowing snow now, the storm had passed. It was time.
He laid the rifle on the table, grabbed an extra box of rifle cartridges, and dumped a handful of cartridges into his trouser pockets, to have them at the ready.
He flipped the steak.
What was that sound?
Cries? Voices?
No.
It was the wind.
There it was again.
Voices?
Yes.
Out on the porch.
“Get up,” Jonah barked at Sally, who rested on the couch. “Wake up.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and gently shook her.
She did not move.
“Wake up,” he said.
He shook her shoulder, but she didn’t move. She was as limp as a rag doll.
What was wrong with her? Why wouldn’t she wake up?
He cupped her chin in his hand and lifted it. Her head lolled, loose on her neck, like a sunflower too heavy for its flimsy stalk.
“Wake up!”
The voices outside rose.
The sound of boots on the porch.
Something was wrong with Sally. She was cold. Too cold.
“Wake up,” he pleaded. “Please.”
He placed his cheek to hers. It was cool. Waxen.
“Please.”
He shook her by the shoulder. Hard.
“Wake up. We’re leaving. Going home.”
He shook her harder.
She moaned. Thank God.
A knock came at the door.
“No,” she said. “No no no.”
He looked around as if for help, but there was no help to be had. He was alone.
The knock came again.
Who would come for him in this darkness?
Not the loggers.
The law. They knew. Somehow they knew.
He looked into her eyes, his daughter’s eyes.
They were catatonic with fear. “No one will hurt you,” he said, “no one will take you from me again.”
He scooped her up in his arms and rushed her into the back room, looked around for a place to hide her. Where. Where. There was but one place.
The trunk. Open and empty.
He knelt and set her into the trunk as carefully as he could. She made an odd soft crying sound, barely audible. Then fell silent.
“Shhh,” he said. “Shhh.”
He started to shut the trunk lid.
“No,” she mewled and held up a palm against the underside of the trunk lid.
“It’s the only way,” he said. “They’re here. They’ve come for you. They’ll take you. I know. I know it’s dark in the trunk. But it’s safe. It’s just like closing your eyes. Close your eyes and dream a nice dream and I will be back before you know it.”
A fist pounded on the cabin door.
“Please,” he said. “We’re out of time.”
She nodded, a tear leaking down her face.
He shut the lid and stepped to the doorway, looked back at the trunk. The lid remained closed. He shut the door behind him and hurried to the front door as its latch was jostled, and a voice cried, “Jonah!”
Jonah grabbed the rifle from the table and eased open the door a crack to see her standing on his porch. Lucinda, and her man. The collar of her deputy’s jacket flapped against her neck in the wind.
“What?” Jonah said.
“How’s your hand?” Lucinda said and looked behind him to see into the cabin.
“Better.” Jonah lifted his hand to show her.
“That’s not better,” she said.
“Better than it was. Better than your eye.” Her eye, her face, jarred him. It looked as if she’d been struck by a shovel. “Now you’ve seen it, go.”
“I’d like to come inside. Talk.”
A noise behind him disrupted his thoughts, but he dared not turn around to see what had made it.
“No,” he said.
The noise came again.
Logs settling in the woodstove?
Her?
Had she sneaked out of the trunk?
“We’re freezing out here,” Lucinda said. She smiled, trying to persuade him.
“That’s not my fault.”
“I’m not leaving,” Lucinda said.
“Sit out on the porch all you like.” He made to shut the door.
“Please. Look. Look at these.”
She held something out to him, folded sheets of paper.
He looked back up at her. “Leave me be. I told that asshole I’d be gone by spring.”
“Why’d you go to your house the other night?” Lucinda said.
How did she know he’d been in his house? Had the police been watching him? Had the ATV man been up here under false pretenses? Had Jonah been under suspicion the whole time? How long had they known he had her up here with him, how long had they planned to move in and take her from him?
A hissing noise came from behind him. The steak, sizzling in the cast-iron pan. Fat melting. Burning. He’d forgotten it. If it got too hot, it would catch fire.
“Please leave.” He tried to push her from the open door. But she would not budge.
“Why were you in your house?” Lucinda wedged a boot between the door and jamb.
“I wasn’t.”
He could smell the butter now. Scorching. Its acrid smoke.
“I know it was you,” she said.
“So what? It’s my place. It’s my house.”
“I found these,” she said.
She thrust the papers toward him.
“Everyone’s shoving papers at me,” he snapped. He eyed her. And her man who stood behind her. Why must she torment him like this? Why didn’t she just come in and take her? If she wanted to arrest him, arrest him and get it over with, end it. Maybe she was trying to ease into it, knowing he would not give her up without a fight. Not now. He clutched the rifle more tightly.
“You have no right being in my house. Taking my stuff.” His fear of being caught with Sally was being edged by his ire at his privacy being trampled.
“Have you seen these?” Lucinda said. “Please, Jonah, look at them.”
For a moment Jonah saw the girl Lucinda had been; the heartbroken innocent girl who’d thought she would stop by to see if Mr. B. wanted to go find his daughter with her in some pit in the woods. Sweet little Lucinda.
“I got a steak burning,” he said.
The pan spewed smoke. Any second now, it would erupt into a wild grease fire.
“Look at the damned papers, Jonah!” Lucinda shouted. “Look at them!”
The pan burst into flames.
“Jesus!” Jonah yelled and raced to the fire.
Flames leaped from the pan as he grabbed a pot lid and slammed it down, killing the flames.
A shadow passed at the bottom of the door to the back room.
Or he thought it did.
Damn it.
He wheeled around. Lucinda stood inside the cabin now as smoke hung between her and Jonah. Her man stepped inside, snow blowing in behind him and melting on the floor as he shut the cabin door.
“This has nothing to do with the logging company. This has to do with Sally.”
So she knew. His heart squeezed into a rock.
He moved up close to her. Close enough to see her good eye twitch at the corner. He clenched the rifle in his hand.
He bit into the inside of his cheek, tasted copper as blood seeped.
Lucinda unfolded a paper. What was it, a warrant for his arrest?
His thumb worried at the rifle hammer.
“Look,” she said, shaking the paper at Jonah. “Please.”
Jonah finally looked. Nausea rose in him. The paper was a drawing. A black sky and a silver evening star in it. Stick figures streaked with red crayon.
His own blood rushed out of him as if he’d been gutted.
“Where’d you get these?” he said.
“Her room.”
“You have no right.”
“I’m a deputy. I got a report someone was in your old place.”
“Those weren’t in my house.” Jonah nodded at the drawings. “Those were not in my daughter’s room. I’d know. What are you trying to do? Why are you doing this?”
“They were behind coloring book pages tacked on her bulletin board,” Lucinda said.
“I had enough of getting blamed years ago. Arrest me if you’re going to arrest me.” But he would not be arrested. He would not allow it. He’d gone too far. If it all ended here, so be it. “Leave me be. Or I swear—”
Lucinda laid the drawings out on the table. “She knew. Sally knew or sensed something wrong.”
“I know all about the drawings,” he said. He lowered his voice, worried she would come out from the back room to see what was wrong. “Not these exact drawings. But I saw some. Your father found them and wanted to keep them. But we knew the state police would use them against me somehow. Twist everything all around. They were dying to pin it on me. Like they used everything against me. So I tore them up. He wanted to keep them, as possible evidence. But he left it up to me in the end, what came of them. He was a friend. The only one I had. Ever had. I don’t know what Sally saw to make her draw such things. Or maybe she saw nothing. Maybe they’re just a kid’s drawings. You two were hiding out in that awful pit. Scaring yourselves.”
A shadow passed at the bottom of the door again.
“There’s a girl missing,” Lucinda said. “The same age as Sally was.”
So this was it. She’d been leading up to it. He was trapped. His hands were slick with sweat around the rifle. “I heard,” he managed to say.
“And?” Lucinda said. “What do you think?”
“I don’t think anything.”
He looked at the drawings. Glanced at the door to the back room.
“The girls are the same age. Sally and this new missing girl. Same eye color. They look a lot alike. Could be sisters, or even—”
Not the same eye color, Jonah thought. The same eyes.
“There’s a lifetime between their disappearances,” Jonah said. “It’s got nothing to do with me.” A shadow seemed to pass under the door to the back room. “Go.” He jerked the rifle up at his hip and pointed the muzzle at her gut.
“Hey,” her man said, stepping back. “Easy.”
Jonah lifted the rifle to his shoulder and squinted down the barrel at Lucinda, at the center of her chest. No missing from here.
His thumb rested on the hammer.
“Easy,” her man said again.
Easy was right. Jonah could shoot them both right here. Easy. Hide her Wrangler. The bodies. Drop them down a mine shaft. Never to be seen again. Easy. He’d do it. He would. He’d be gone a month before anyone found Lucinda and her man up here. If anyone ever found them.
“There’s no need for that,” the man said, backing up more.
“I decide what there’s a need for in my home,” Jonah said.
He heard a sound behind him. If she came out now, she’d ruin everything. He did not want to shoot them in front of her. But he would, if forced.
He held his breath tight. His trigger finger buzzed against the trigger.
“You were a good girl,” he said. “You were my daughter’s friend. You knew me. You knew us. We let you come and go as you pleased. You were family. How could you think that I did—”
“You? I don’t think you did it. Listen to me. Trust me.”
Trust. He’d abandoned it twenty-five years ago.
“The star,” Lucinda said. “It’s not a star. She had my doll. Sally, she had my doll. It was Beverly at your house.”
Jonah didn’t know what she was talking about. Nonsense to distract him. He pushed the rifle muzzle at her.
In his periphery the shadow passed under the back door.
Lucinda’s eyes followed his.
“What is it?” she said, staring at the door to the back.
“Rats,” he said.
“Luce,” her man croaked, “let’s go, before he kills us.”
“Wise words,” Jonah said.
Lucinda stepped toward Jonah, looked him in the eye. “You never killed anyone,” Lucinda said. “You aren’t going to start now.”
“I will.”
“Listen to me. I know where your daughter is, I know where Sally is.”
Yes, the voice said, but she’ll never take her from us.
“Sally and your wife,” Lucinda said.
Lucinda’s eyes fell to the children’s books stacked on the table. The coloring books. Two place settings. “What is all that?”
“Sally’s stuff.”
Lucinda stepped closer to it.
“Stop,” Jonah said.
“That’s a new coloring book. New crayons.”
Stop her, now, the voice said.
Lucinda flipped through the coloring book.
“They’re Sally’s,” Jonah said.
Lucinda looked at the door to the back room.
“What’s back there?” she said
She picked up the backpack. “Are you packing, going somewhere?”
“Leave my things be,” Jonah said. Why wouldn’t she listen? Why was she making him have to do something he didn’t want to do? He thumbed the rifle’s hammer, cocked it back, hammer worn smooth.
Click.
Lucinda stared at the rifle. She was trying hard to keep her breathing calm but her chest rose and fell heavily, Jonah could see that. She unzipped the top of the backpack.
Jonah lunged at her and yanked her arm, the rifle barrel swinging wildly. Food and children’s books and clothing tumbled to the floor as Dale grabbed at the rifle and wrested it from Jonah’s weak grasp, clutched it to his chest awkwardly. The man had never held a rifle, that was clear.
Jonah spun, grabbed at the rifle, but the younger man was stronger than Jonah, who could not wrest it free.
“Get out of here,” Jonah shouted. “Get out. Get out. Get out of my home. Get out and leave me be.”
Lucinda looked at the backpack and children’s books. The two place settings on the table, astonishment flooding her face. “What’s in that back room, Jonah?”
Jonah reached for the rifle again, but Lucinda grabbed his shoulders with both hands and pulled him back.
“What’s back there?” she said. “Who is back there? I can help you sort it out if she’s not hurt. I can get you help.”
Just like her old man. She knew all along, the liar, the voice said. Came up here prattling about Sally, baiting you, distracting you. Pretending to be a friend. She knew.
Lucinda strode to the door to the back room.
“Stop,” Jonah railed. “You have no right.”
“We’re here to help,” Dale said.
“I’ve heard that before,” Jonah said.
Lucinda turned the doorknob.
“Goddamn it,” Jonah shouted and shoved Lucinda as hard as he was able, sent her reeling to the floor. Her forehead cracked against the table edge. Blood came. Goddamn it. Look what she’d made him do. Look at it. Good.
“I told you!” Jonah spat as he stood over her, frothing, seething, that ancient rage roaring up out of him as he grabbed her by the jacket and shook her. “Goddamn you, this is my house!”
Jonah grunted as he was slammed into the wall and crumpled to the floor.
Dale stood over him, rifle trained on his forehead, steady.
Lucinda grunted and managed to gain her feet, her forehead torn and dripping blood. She took hold of the doorknob to the back room.
“No,” Jonah said. “Please.”
“Tell me what’s in there,” Lucinda said. “Who’s in there.”
“I—” Jonah stared at the door. He wanted to tell her. That he’d found her. She’d found him. She’d come to him. He had meant to take her back, had tried, but the things he’d heard, he couldn’t return her to that. He knew that life. He knew. The odds of escaping it. So he’d kept her here with him, safe. He’d found her for a reason. She came to him, found him, for a reason. It could not be for nothing. She was his now. His. And he was hers. They were all each other had now.
But he didn’t say it. Couldn’t. They’d never believe him. They never had believed him.
“Okay,” Lucinda said and opened the door to the back room.
The lone trunk sat in the barren room.
Dale stepped behind Lucinda.
Lucinda wiped blood from her eyes, her face pale and grim yet her eyes keen with mistrust as she looked back at Jonah.
“Open the trunk,” she said.
“You think I put a girl in a trunk?” Jonah said. “You think I’d do that? You lied, told me you know where my daughter and wife are, but you came here because you think I have Sal—, have her, that other girl, up here?”
“Open the trunk.”
“You open it,” Jonah said. “You want it open so bad, you open it.”
Lucinda stepped into the room and stood over the trunk. Blood ran from her wounded forehead.
“We need to get you out of here, to a doctor,” Dale said.
Jonah watched helplessly from the doorway as Lucinda lifted the trunk lid open and peered down into it.
She drew a sharp breath and reeled backward, staggered into the doorframe.
“I— I don’t know what to say,” Lucinda said and put her face in her hands, blood leaking from between her fingers.
Jonah limped into the room, looked down into the trunk.
It was empty.
“I’m sorry,” Lucinda said. “I thought. What with the coloring books and the place settings—”
Jonah stared unblinking into the trunk’s emptiness.
As empty as his heart. As confusing as his memories.
“The books,” he murmured, “and place setting are for my daughter, for when she comes back. I keep them ready for her. Buy her new ones.”
He shut the trunk lid to see behind the trunk. Nothing. The room was empty. Where was she?
He turned in a circle. Swooning.
The lone window was shut tight.
The walls breathed.
“No,” he said.
The floor fell away.
The ceiling floated.
He heard voices far away, calling, calling.
He lifted the trunk lid again.
“No,” he said.
His own voice far away.
Thin and hollow.
Calling from the distant past.
A long ago life.
Another life.
A life that had ended years ago.
He careened back through the doorway and collapsed into a chair at the table. Had she ever been here at all? Old man. Old fool. Had he heard the story on his transistor radio and been bitten by a spider or fallen into a fugue? What had happened?
Lucinda sat in the chair beside Jonah. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“She’s gone,” Jonah said, trying to reason out the past days, untangle his labyrinth of dark thoughts. “My daughter’s gone.”
“She’s been gone a long time, sir,” Dale said.
“You don’t understand,” Jonah murmured.
“No, I don’t,” said Dale.
“I think I know where she is,” Lucinda said, her voice one of sorrow. She put her hand on Jonah’s.
“Where who is?” Jonah said, his voice a ghost.
“Your child. And your wife.”
“My daughter,” he whispered. “I thought—” He hung his head. “I get confused.”
Lucinda looked at the coloring books. The two place settings. “It’s okay,” she said.
“It’s just,” Jonah said. “I miss them. Still. I know how long it’s been. I know what people said. What people say. I know the world moved on. Long ago. I’m not stupid. I’m not crazy.”
“Of course not,” Lucinda said.
“I just. I miss them. I want them back.”
Jonah rubbed his face.
“My heart doesn’t know they’re gone,” he said. “It might as well be yesterday. Every door I walk through is my front door, every room I enter is my daughter’s room, and every time it’s still empty. Every day. Every second is a lifetime. Even up here. I kept waiting. Thinking. Maybe. Maybe. Today. But they never come back. All I want is for them to come back. All I want is to see them again.”
“I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“I’d doubt me too,” he said.
“I think,” Lucinda said. “I think news of this missing girl triggered something in you. You saw her posters in town, maybe, or heard it on your truck radio or transistor radio up here, and it brought back memories—it made you want something so badly that you imagined—I’m so sorry.”
“No,” he said. “My daughter. She went out the window. She’s out there in the cold. The dark.”
Lucinda touched his cheek. “Your daughter’s dead. Sally is dead.”
It was the first time she’d said it, because it was the first time she truly believed it. Knew it.
“Yes,” Jonah said. “Of course she is. Of course. I know that.”
His body caved and his shoulders collapsed as if the wiring from his brain had been cut with a razor. He thought he’d go blind. Mad. He’d thought the pain could be no worse. He’d been wrong.
“Come to town with me.” Lucinda placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I can’t. I can’t leave her. Here,” he said.
“Please, Jonah.”
“I can’t. I can’t.”
“If I find her, them,” Lucinda said, “I’ll have things to do. Take care of. So if I’m not back soon, you’ll know I’ve found them.”
She patted his hand.
“Where are they?” he said.
“I have to find out for myself before I say,” Lucinda said. She squeezed his hand once more. “We’ll see ourselves out. But please. Come to town. Jonah. Come back.”
Jonah said nothing, stared through the doorway into the room at the empty trunk, the shut window.
An icy wind chilled him as Lucinda and Dale left the cabin.
The door clicked shut against the outside world.
Jonah sat in the pulverizing silence.
He put his head down on the table and wept.