All day, I keep an eye on the breaking news, which isn’t too difficult. It seems the whole school wants to know what’s happening in rural Georgia and how it connects to the girl who was taken not five miles from here when we were all little kids.
But I’m a little more invested than most.
Instead of eating lunch with my team, I’m in the library, researching. I figure there might be a new story about the foster children living on the Goudy tract, now that there’s national news happening there. And I’m right.
Police records show there might have been typical complaints and challenges of raising teenagers—no mention of Savannah’s outrageous allegations about the girl kept under the floorboards—but no known formal complaints against the Goudys have been filed with Family Services until the woman Chatham identified as her birth mother recently started ranting at the Goudy gate.
As for Chatham’s birth mother—identified as J. Stevenson—the list of complaints against her with the state of Georgia is extensive. It seems she’s been in and out of prison as often as she’s been in and out of rehab. Her testimony at the gate of the Goudy tract has been determined as nonsensical and a nuisance to the investigation.
But one investigative reporter points out: if it’s nonsense, why can’t the authorities comment on the whereabouts of the two foster children entrusted to Loretta and Wayne Goudy?
Furthermore, why haven’t the minor children been reported missing, if not considered endangered, as no one has seen them since the investigation began?
Police neglect to comment, except to say Loretta is cooperating, and if there’s reason to presume the girls are missing, reports will follow.
This is strange.
Because technically, they are missing . . .
Chatham is in Sugar Creek without her foster parents, and according to what she told me, they don’t know she’s here.
Savannah may or may not be in Northgate. No one knows where she is . . . unless Chatham’s lies extend beyond knowing or not knowing the girl with the shamrock tattoo.
What’s going on?
I send the link to Chatham, hoping she’ll volunteer some information or want to clarify.
I search for information about J. Stevenson’s hot Nissan and the day she left her kids inside it. Now that I know her name, it’s easier to find information. There are a few old articles, but none offer much information about the children.
I look up Chatham Stevenson. Nothing of importance hits.
I try Chatham Goudy. No dice.
I text her again: Everything okay?
Minutes go by, and Chatham doesn’t reply.
Hello?
Nothing.
Panic booms like thunder through my system.
She’s with my sisters.
“Jesus.” Not that she’d deliberately put my sisters in danger, but what if she’s in danger, and they’re with her?
My mouth goes dry.
This is all too familiar. Memories emerge from dark places:
Rosie leaves me with some guy. She has no choice. She has to work. And he’s a nice guy, after all . . . who just happens to get his kicks beating the fuck out of his son, and watching his son beat the fuck out of me. How was she supposed to know? You can’t see the truth about someone if you love him.
I shake off the memories. The girls are fine. They have to be.
I try again: How’s it going?
I wait a few minutes, drumming my fingers against my jeans. I can’t sit still.
When there’s no reply, I call, but she doesn’t answer.
Why wouldn’t she answer?
What should I do?
Call the cops for a welfare check?
Call Rosie and admit I found a proxy to sit with the girls today?
I glance at the clock hanging above the double doors that lead out of the library. It’s almost one. I’m out of here in an hour and a half.
But then I have practice. I won’t be home until four thirty, the earliest.
That’s too much time to wait and see.
I’m sure everything is fine.
But if it were, wouldn’t Chatham be replying? Even if she was in the middle of holding a ponytail back from the bucket while one of my sisters throws up, she’d have a minute to text me back in between emergencies. And I haven’t heard from her in over two hours.
Something’s wrong.
I don’t have a choice. I have to go.
I pack up and practically sprint out of the library.
“Mr. Michaels?”
I ignore the hall monitors and keep running through the maze of hallways, ignoring the stop-right-there and where-do-you-think-you’re-going.
I burst out the back doors, by the gym—some retired guy they hired to stand guard at the door is calling after me, but I don’t have time to explain—and go straight to my car.
Chatham’s cell rings nonstop every time I call.
God, let them be okay.
I rip through town, and practically skid to a stop on my driveway.
I dart across the lawn and almost drop my keys at the door when I’m unlocking it.
“Chatham!”
I take the stairs two at a time.
All is quiet.
Eerily so.
Her phone is on the kitchen table.
I pick it up and see all the missed calls from my number, my number, my number. Unopened texts from me, me, me.
The floor creaks somewhere in the house.
“Chatham?”
She’s standing at the end of the hallway, in front of my sisters’ room, putting a finger to her lips in the universal signal to shut up. She’s closing the door.
Relief gushes through me at the sight of her.
I put down her phone.
What must this look like? Me, looking through her phone?
“What are you doing here?” she asks. “School’s not over.”
“I’ve been texting. Calling. I was worried.”
“I gave the girls a bath,” she says. “It helps with the fever.”
I’m nodding. Of course she’s been busy.
“I was reading to them. They fell asleep. I didn’t want to bring my phone in—”
“Sorry. It’s just that . . .”
She’s looking at me like I’ve overreacted. Like I’ve just made the pop of a firecracker out to be the blast of an H-bomb.
“Here.” I tap on my phone to pull up the link to the story about the Goudy tract. I hand it to her to let her read it. “The police don’t think you’re missing. Why wouldn’t they think you’re gone?”
“I don’t know.” She scrolls through the story.
“I don’t understand it.”
Her brow crinkles up as she reads.
I’m growing more and more impatient. There has to be something she isn’t telling me.
“I just don’t get it,” I say.
She shoves my phone back at me. “You think I do?”
“Explain this to me, Chatham. Please. If we’re going to help each other, I have to know what you know.”
“You want me to explain why the police force in Moon River hasn’t declared Savannah and me missing.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, how should I know why they do anything? Maybe Loretta spun a great story. Maybe it’s taking the police a while to put it all together. I don’t know.”
“But you’d think, especially with Family Services now involved—”
“What? What would you think? Would you think two little girls wouldn’t end up in the hands of someone with a cattle brand? Because it happens all the time. People have kids who shouldn’t. People trust people to be parents, when there’s no way in hell they should be around kids. You know that, Joshua.”
I guess I do.
“I don’t get it, either,” she says. “But if you’re looking for answers, I can’t give them to you. I can’t explain what I don’t understand.”
I pull her into my arms.
With some reluctance, she eventually folds against my chest.
“I just started thinking about all the terrible things that could be happening, and nothing makes sense,” I say. “I got scared. For you. For my sisters.”
She’s warm against me. “The girls are fine.”
“I have to ask you. And I don’t want you to get mad. But you can trust me, Chatham. Is there anything you know that you’re not telling me? About Wayne and Loretta. About Savannah. About that girl with the tattoo at the rave.”
Her lips brush over mine. “I’ve never told a single soul as much as I’ve told you.”
She didn’t exactly answer my question.
“And I’m trying to make sense of all this,” she says. “Savannah. My foster parents. Rachel Bachton. I want to explain it all to you. But I don’t understand it either.”
“Will you call the police in Georgia? Will you tell them you’re here? That you’re worried something might have happened to Savannah?”
“You don’t know what’ll happen if I do that, Joshua. What if they bring me back?”
“Then we find a way through it. Just like with everything else.” I hand her my phone. “Please.”
She looks up the number, then punches it into the phone.
“My name is Chatham Claiborne,” she says. “I’m calling to tell you I’m okay.”