WE SEARCHED FOR the remainder of the day, walking the entire property, shaking feed buckets and swinging carrots. Beatrice never showed. After a while, I agreed to walk down the path to the pond by myself. I agreed to do it because it seemed the best way to get on to something fun.
“Beatrice. I’m all alone. I’m happy. Come and make me miserable, you stupid, worthless piece of crap!”
Nothing. Not a hum. Not a rustle of a tree branch. I sat on the dock and dipped my feet in the water. The ducks and geese glided towards me in hopes of a handout. Mildred wasn’t among them. We’d left her at the vet. Something was wrong with her wing joint and she needed X-rays. The rest of the flock floated calm and subdued without their leader. They accepted the lack of treats without biting or honking. The vet could keep Mildred indefinitely.
“So no luck, huh?” April dropped down beside me. Frank sat beside April with his hands balled up in his lap.
“Nope,” I said.
“Maybe you should go lay down. You do have a concussion,” said April.
“I’m okay. My head doesn’t hurt much. Besides, we have to find Beatrice.”
“Do you think something happened to her?”
“I’m not that lucky.”
“Come on. Aren’t you just a little worried?” April unbraided her hair and shook her head, letting a shower of gold rain down on her shoulders.
“I don’t give a shit, but she’ll probably show up,” I said.
“Well, I’m worried,” said April.
“Why?”
April gazed past the pond and into the woods towards Miss Pritchett’s house. “Do you think Greenbow did something to her?” asked Frank.
“No way. He hunts, but—” I started.
“Illegally,” interrupted April.
“Okay, he hunts, illegally, but nobody hunts llamas. Nobody eats llamas,” I said.
“He didn’t eat the deer. It was just a trophy kill,” said April. “And what about Mildred?”
“What about her? She’s still at the vet.”
“The vet called. Somebody shot her, too.”
“Really? Well, it was probably just an accident. Who would shoot a goose?”
“Who would shoot a llama? That’s what you think, right?”
“No, not really. I’m not that lucky,” I said.
Despite what I said to April and Frank, I was worried, but not because I wanted Beatrice to be okay. A massive stroke or her being hit by a runaway dump truck was fine by me. I was worried because she never left the property. We’d had her every summer for years and she never left. If something happened to her, it happened on Ernest’s land. The thought made my butt cheeks clench together. I didn’t want Greenbow near us. I never would’ve expected Ernest to let him on his land in the first place, much less let him fire a gun. Maybe Ernest couldn’t stop him.
“I guess we better go back and tell the others it didn’t work,” said April.
I looked at her and Frank. April sat with her back to him. Behind her, Frank wasn’t looking at me or the flock, but at April. At her hair to be exact. The tip of his finger was touching, just barely, a lock of my sister’s hair.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Nothing. What?” Frank jerked his finger back, crammed both fists in his lap.
“Dude, you are so weird.”
“What happened?” asked April.
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything.” Frank inched backward, looking straight-up terrified just like when Miss Pritchett asked him a question in class.
April patted his shoulder. “Don’t mind, Puppy. Let’s go make something.”
“Do you have your grandmother’s recipe for bread pudding you were telling me about?”
“Sure and you like raisins, right, but no nuts.”
“That’s right. Do you want to do that whiskey cream sauce I found the other day?” asked Frank.
I yawned. A day of cooking wasn’t what I had in mind. “Why don’t you two go back? I’ll hang here. Maybe she’ll show if I wait a little longer.”
April bit her lip, but they stood up anyway. She hooked her arm through Frank’s. “Are you sure, Puppy?”
I nodded and they walked away, heads together discussing whether or not Mom would give up some of her Tullamore Dew in the name of dessert.
I waited until they disappeared along the path before I got up and walked around the pond towards Miss Pritchett’s house. The ravens swooped around over my head. I kept expecting them to dive-bomb me, but they stayed in the treetops, oddly silent.
I found my spot behind the blackberry bramble and the ravens landed behind me. They arranged themselves in a half-moon with their wings spread. They tilted their heads and stared at me with their beady eyes, while remaining totally silent. I didn’t even know they could be silent.
“Just when I think you can’t get any weirder,” I whispered, “you pull this. Go away. I don’t have any food.”
They didn’t move a feather or start making a racket like they normally would, so I turned back around and started looking for signs of Beatrice. Part of me wanted her bloody carcass nailed to a tree. Another part wanted her safe, because her safety felt like my own, my family’s.
There was no bloody carcass. No nothing. Miss Pritchett wasn’t in sight, but her car was in the driveway. Greenbow’s car wasn’t there. His lawn chair lay tipped over in the yard and there were a few more beer cans scattered around. Besides that, everything was the same, except for a faint noise coming from the house. I leaned forward, turned my ear towards the noise, but I couldn’t quite place it. Appliance? Cat? Squeaky door?
I edged around the bramble and crawled across the yard to the familiar and seemingly safe spot under Miss Pritchett’s living room window. The ravens hopped after me, wings still spread and silent.
The noise flowed out of the window and chilled me instantly. It wasn’t an appliance or a cat, but someone crying. Whimpering, really. A soft, low whimper of someone who’d been hurt so badly they could barely make any noise at all. Shasta appeared in my mind and I almost stood up to look. Instead I merely listened. Shasta had no reason to be there and knew to stay away.
The whimpering stopped and the person made sharp sounds, like painful inhalations. Then there was a shuffling noise and a door closing. I retreated to hide behind the bramble, followed by the ravens, and waited to see if Miss Pritchett would come out. I told myself I didn’t care, because she deserved whatever was wrong with her, but deep inside I was worried. What could make someone sound that way?
Miss Pritchett didn’t come outside, neither did anyone else. My head started hurting in a hammer-on-top-of-the-head way, so I left, wondering if I really heard what I thought I heard or if perhaps I’d hit my head a bit harder than I thought.