Dream Country (3 page)

Daisy and Hathaway waited all day, until the school bus passed by and Sage didn’t get off, until Daisy had called Amanda, Zoe, Robin, Cale, and Billy to ask if they had seen Sage or Ben, heard about any groups playing hooky at the orchard. No one had. Then they waited until suppertime. Sage had been gone for three meals: breakfast, lunch, and now dinner. Hoping that hunger would bring her back home, Daisy made Sage’s favorite: tuna noodle casserole.

The kitchen smelled good. The October evening was still and cold. Opening the back door, Daisy gazed into the garden, through the pine trees to the bay. Trying not to think of that other waiting time, when the search parties had fanned out over the range and into the canyons, while she had stood on the front porch, in case Jake would somehow wander home. Daisy now imagined Sage hiding nearby, nursing her anger over the fight, over her mother’s injustice. Smelling her favorite supper, she would finally come home.

“Are you going to call the police or am I?” Hathaway asked.

“Should I give her a few more minutes?” Daisy asked, looking at her watch. “Sometimes we don’t eat until a little later . . .”

“It’s getting dark,” Hathaway said.

That did it.

Chapter Two

S
he’s sixteen,” Daisy told Detective Barbara LaRosa and her partner, Detective Adele Connelly. “This isn’t like her. I know you probably see kids who do this all the time, leave notes and run away, but Sage isn’t like that. She’s never done it before.”

They were standing in Daisy’s kitchen. This time when Daisy had called 911, the officer had said someone would be right over.

“What’s she like?” Detective LaRosa asked.

“Well,” Daisy said, “she’s incredible. She loves to write, essays and stories. Poems. She wants to be a writer—”

“What does she
look
like?”

“She’s about five three. She weighs one hundred and fifteen pounds. She has reddish brown hair down to”—she touched her own shoulder and, again, her collarbone—“here. Her eyes are green. Hazel. More green than brown.”

“In certain light,” Hathaway said, “they’re gold. She can look like a little cat sitting in the dark.”

“Yes,” Daisy agreed, seeing Sage sitting on a bench in the garden at twilight, writing in her journal, looking up at the sound of her mother’s footsteps. “They can be golden.”

“She looks like her mother.” Hathaway handed Detective LaRosa Sage’s school photo. “Like Daisy did at her age. Very pretty.”

“Yes, she is.” The detective regarded the photo.

“We’re alike in lots of ways,” Daisy said.

“Emotional,” Hathaway said. “Like opera.”

Daisy couldn’t deny it, picturing how quickly Sage’s face revealed her feelings, the way joy registered in her eyes, the way sorrow showed in her lower lip. Knowing that she was the same way.

“What about her father?”

“He’s not in the picture,” Daisy said.

“May I see her room?” Detective LaRosa asked.

“Of course.” Daisy’s throat ached as she led the way.

Sage loved animals. She worried when she saw crippled children or blind people. Daisy gave her money every month to send to Save the Children, the organization that sponsored children of war and poverty. Beautiful music, especially opera or pop music with string sections, could make her cry. Daisy told Detective LaRosa all those things.

“She’s at the top of her class,” Daisy added. “She gets all A’s.” But as she spoke, she caught herself. Was that a different Sage? What about the grades slipping, her sudden disinterest in school?

Detective LaRosa was about fifty, with handsome gray streaks in her dark hair. She had deep-set eyes that seemed compassionate and alert, and she caught Daisy’s hesitation.

“Any recent change in habits? Does she use drugs or alcohol?”

“She’s very straight,” Daisy replied. “She’s totally against drinking and drugs. We talk about everything.

“She’s a very cool kid,” Daisy added, her voice catching. “She tolerates other people doing whatever they want, but she knows what’s for her and what’s not. Her schoolwork has slipped since the beginning of the year, but—”

“That’s often a sign of drugs,” the detective began. “Even the best kids—”

“Not Sage,” Daisy insisted, shaking her head.

When they entered Sage’s room, Daisy’s knees went weak. Her daughter should be here right now, sitting at her desk, doing homework after dinner.

“She likes the Wild West,” Detective LaRosa commented, gazing at the mountain posters, the elk antlers and everything hanging from them, the collection of arrowheads.

“She loves it,” Daisy said.

“Why is that?” The detective was staring at the photo of red mesas against a bright blue sky. “Did you take a trip there once?”

“She was born in Wyoming,” Daisy said. “We lived there until she was four years old, and we haven’t been back since.”

“Her father lives there,” Hathaway added.

“You said he’s ‘out of the picture,’” Detective LaRosa said.

“We’re divorced,” Daisy said. “He lives on a ranch, and he sent her those antlers for her tenth birthday. She covers them with things like they’re a Christmas tree.” Stepping forward, she looked at the photo of James dangling from a blue ribbon. He was a stranger to her now, older, still lean and tan and unsmiling.

“That’s him?” the detective asked.

“Her only photo of him,” Daisy said. “He hates having his picture taken. She must have begged him—he sent it to her a couple of Christmases ago.”

“They’re in touch?”

“Not very much.”

“He doesn’t visit?”

“No.”

Hathaway stepped forward, as if she sensed Daisy needed protection. Staring at James, Daisy’s throat closed up. She felt tears coming, and she lowered her eyes. She had gone to Wyoming because she wanted to find inspiration in the wilderness. Instead, she had met James Tucker, a man with the wilderness inside him.

“Why hasn’t he seen his daughter since she was four?” Detective LaRosa asked.

“Because he won’t leave the ranch,” Daisy answered. “And I wasn’t going to send my daughter out to Wyoming alone.”

“Blue booties?” The detective touched Jake’s tiny knitted shoes.

“My son,” Daisy explained. “He was Sage’s twin, and he died when he was three.”

The detective’s head snapped up.

“How did he die?”

“We don’t know,” Daisy said quietly.

The detective waited.

“James—my husband—took him out riding. It was a roundup, lots of men. James, his father, and their foreman were there. He always took Jake with him—Jake loved it. He was a little cowboy, always wanted to be with his father. James put Jake down for one minute, told him to sit still and watch—” At the detective’s expression, Daisy shook her head. “No—I know you think that was crazy. But we did it all the time. We lived on a ranch—there was always so much going on. We thought the kids were so lucky—all those wide-open spaces. The air was so clean, they loved the animals. Jake was such a good little boy. He’d do what he was told—”

“So, your husband told him to sit still,” the detective prodded.

Daisy nodded.

“What happened next?”

Hathaway stepped closer. Daisy swallowed. The words were so hard to get out. “We don’t know what happened next.”

“Was there an investigation?” Detective LaRosa asked.

“Yes,” Daisy said. “Oh, yes.”

The canyon was vast, the natural dangers obvious and brutal, but the police had seemed to count those out. They immediately focused their attention on James. Daisy thought of the detectives with their hard eyes, their suspicious voices. She was insane with worry, and they were treating her like the wife of a murder suspect. They kept James from joining the search party those first critical days, bombarding him with questions.

“They never found anything,” Daisy said. “No sign of my son. The area where he’d been waiting was covered with prints—boots, horses—we couldn’t find Jake’s tracks at all. We had search parties, helicopters, a Shoshone shaman. The police questioned my husband for hours and hours—”

Detective LaRosa nodded. Everyone knew the father was the first suspect, no matter how much he—or the rest of the family—protested.

“By the time they let him go,” Daisy said, spinning back, “he was like a tornado. He told me he wouldn’t come home until he had Jake—he promised me. He went out searching.” Daisy swallowed. “And I didn’t see him again for fifteen days, until long after the search party quit. He was sick and dehydrated—his father and the foreman had to go find him, bring him home.”

“And he didn’t find Jake?”

“No.”

“What about Sage? Where was she in all this?”

“With me,” Daisy said, remembering how her daughter hadn’t left her side all that time. How quiet the little girl had been, as if she’d sensed that her mother needed calm, that no question she might want to ask could be answered just then. Daisy had made a necklace for Sage that week, praying while she worked, sending all her love for Jake into the stones and bone. Sage wore it still: She never took it off.

“James will never leave Wyoming,” Daisy said. “In case Jake comes back.”

“Is there any reason to believe—” the detective started to ask.

Daisy shook her head. Hathaway’s hand rested on her shoulder. Daisy stared at the detective, thinking of the things that had run through her mind during all these years of not knowing where her son had gone: buzzards, bears, coyotes, rattlesnakes. The fissures in the red rocks. Chasms and caves. The vast open space. The sound of his voice calling for help, no one hearing.

“There’s animosity between the two of you?” the detective asked. “You and your ex-husband?”

“Maybe so. I’m not sure animosity’s the right word,” Daisy said, wondering what was.

Detective LaRosa nodded. She just stood there, examining the things on Sage’s desk. She flipped through a pile of notebooks, looked in drawers. Opening a plastic film canister, she looked inside and sniffed. She touched the top of Sage’s wooden box. Dark mahogany, it had a cowboy riding a bucking bronco carved into the lid. This was where Sage kept her jewelry, her ticket stubs, her father’s notes—all her most important mementos. Daisy bit her tongue: She knew the detective was searching for drugs.

“This is beautiful.” The detective held up a bracelet Daisy had given Sage last Christmas. She touched the delicate carving, examined the finely inked etchings. “Very unusual.”

“Daisy made it,” Hathaway said.

“I know your work.” The detective smiled, glancing at Daisy. “My sister has a pair of your earrings. ‘Moon Goddesses,’ I think they’re called.”

Daisy nodded. She named all her pieces. The bracelet Detective LaRosa held in her hand was called “Pine Ghosts.” It came from the voices Daisy heard whispering in the wind, rustling the pine boughs, saying the word “love” over and over, telling people to love their families. The pine ghost faces were wise and knowing, old women who had lived forever in the trees’ bark and needles. Wherever Sage was right now, Daisy wished she had taken the pine ghosts with her for protection.

“What are these?” the detective asked, staring at a tiny series of concentric rings etched on the face of one of the ghosts. “My sister has them on her earrings, too.”

“Just symbols,” Daisy said.

“Daisy often uses circles in her work,” Hathaway said, stepping in because Daisy was staring at the bracelet, momentarily unable to talk. “They’re an ancient image of protection—the clan gathering around to keep out intruders, evil spirits, wild animals . . .”

“Intriguing,” the detective said.

“Just let her be safe,” Daisy said out loud.

“Is there anything she always does, a place she always goes?”

“She loves nature,” Daisy said. “She hikes, canoes . . . she knows all the parks. I’ve taken her camping in Vermont and New Hampshire. We’ve rented a cottage the last three summers in Maine.”

“Where in Maine?”

“Near Mount Katahdin,” Daisy said. She had chosen the wildest place she could find in New England, the closest in spirit to Wyoming. They had seen eagles, moose, and black bears. The roads were unpaved. The night sky was black velvet. The stars were great globes, low and luminous. Standing on the ramshackle porch while Sage slept inside, Daisy had talked to Jake, and she could swear she’d heard him talking back.

Detective LaRosa took more notes.

“She loves that spot,” Hathaway said thoughtfully, as if she was considering the possibility of Sage having run away to Maine. She had come to visit last summer, and the three of them had spent five wonderful days together.

“It’s so far,” Daisy said. “She couldn’t get there by herself—”

“Do you really mean that?” Hathaway asked kindly, and Daisy’s eyes filled with tears, to think of how resourceful her daughter was. Sage had been a Girl Scout for ten years. She could start a fire with two sticks, locate north without a compass, find her way home on an unmarked trail.

“Mount Katahdin,” Detective LaRosa said. “What town’s that near?”

“Millinocket.”

“Tell me more about her.” The detective sounded like someone who really cared, who really wanted to know.

“She worries about her weight,” Daisy said. “That she doesn’t look ‘perfect.’ She hated her braces when she had them. I made her a necklace when she was four, and she never takes it off. She has a birthmark on the top of her right thigh that her father said looks just like a mustang. She was thrilled. She used to say she wanted to be a cowgirl when she grew up.”

“So did you,” Hathaway said, smiling. Then, to the detective: “Daisy won a Nestlé’s Quik contest when she was little—she got a red cowgirl outfit.”

“What does her necklace look like?” the detective asked, ignoring the part about Daisy, writing down everything about Sage. Daisy liked that.

“It’s long, down to here.” Daisy touched her own breastbone. “It’s a circle of bone set in white gold, with four gold nuggets dangling below on a white gold chain. I carved the bone on both sides, a two-sided face. The only one I’ve ever done.”

“What’s it called?” the detective asked, looking up.

“‘The Twins,’ ” Daisy answered.

She could hear the detective’s pencil scratching on the paper, along with branches moving in the wind. The windows were open. The sun was down, and the birds had stopped calling. Daisy could picture Sage touching her necklace. She always kept the boy’s face, her brother, turned to face her heart.

“Tell me about her boyfriend,” Detective LaRosa said.

“His name is Ben Davis,” Daisy told her. “They’ve been friends since Sage got to high school. He’s a good kid—” Nothing like James, she was thinking. Not at all dangerous. Not a quiet cowboy with stormy eyes and a rock-hard stomach. Just a nice suburban kid who excels in science and plays the trumpet in band; no threat whatsoever to the future Daisy had in mind for Sage.

“A good kid,” the detective repeated, writing.

“They’re
both
good kids,” Daisy continued, starting to feel better as she talked about them. “They went canoeing last night and lost track of the time. They were having an adventure! I lost my temper, pushed her too far. It’s my fault. I’ve always been overprotective. That’s all—she’s . . .”

But Detective LaRosa was staring into the jewelry box. She pushed some rings and the pine ghost bracelet aside, the gold and silver jingling lightly. Daisy felt like shouting at her. There were no drugs to be found in there. Frowning, the detective removed something from under Sage’s jewelry that looked like a white plastic Popsicle stick. At one end was a small square window, colored blue.