The Story Keeper (31 page)

“It doesn’t matter what they think!” My voice reverberated through the cabin, startling Friday. He stood and crossed the floor, then jumped onto the couch to monitor the goings-on.

“That’s easy enough for you to say, Jennia Beth, but I’m nothin’ like you. I don’t want some big life someplace else. I want a good life here.”

“You’re seventeen years old, Lily Clarette. It’s too soon to really know what you want. Being seventeen is about seeing what’s out there in the world so you can decide from all your options. Craig isn’t the only option you have. There are so many more.”

“I shouldn’t’ve come here. You’re just confusin’ me. I told Craig I wanna wait till I’m out of high school, maybe even see about community college or somethin’. He didn’t like it much. He thinks I don’t believe he can make us a good livin’.”

“Is
that
what the fight was about?”

“It wasn’t a fight . . .” But I could see it in her face even though she was trying to hide it. “He just got his pride hurt, and he took me outta his truck and said if I thought I was too good for him, maybe I oughta walk back home and think on it till I got my mind right.”

“With a
storm
coming in?”

“I walked to town instead. I was afraid he’d went to the house to tell Daddy what I said. After givin’ his blessin’ at the party, Daddy’d be mad as a scalded cat. I was afraid he’d take me to the elder council so they could fix my thinkin’.”

“You were close enough to walk to
town
when Craig left you on the side of the road?” I was livid. My father’s farm was twelve miles from Towash. Craig had left my sister on the side of the road, alone, that far from home to . . . teach her a lesson?

“Don’t get riled, okay? You’ll make it worse than it is already. Thanks for comin’ and gettin’ me, but I’ve gotta sort it out my own self.” Closing her eyes, she rested against the sofa. “I’m just real tired right now. I can’t think what to do.”

I stood, smoothed a hand over my sister’s hair, remembered swaddling her in a quilt as the midwife handed her over and she took her first breaths. “I’ll get a blanket and some dry clothes for you.”

“Just a blanket,” she whispered. “I don’t wanna be any trouble.”

Chapter 26

T
he drumbeat of a startled pulse followed me to the front window. High-beam lights bounced across the yard as a vehicle worked its way down the slushy, snow-covered driveway. I grabbed the fireplace poker I’d set near the door
 
—the only thing in the cabin that could remotely serve as a weapon, other than the knives in the kitchen, and I couldn’t make my mind go there. But who could say what a man who would drag a seventeen-year-old girl from his truck, leave bruises on her, and abandon her on the side of the road was capable of? All of this to someone he supposedly loved. What could he be driven to do if he thought he was really losing her?

I prepared myself for confrontation, thinking,
If you touch either one of us, I will make sure you rot in jail, no matter what it takes.

The words sounded bold in my mind, but amid them were evening-news horror stories of domestic violence incidents with
terrible, sad endings. People who thought they could handle it . . . until the situation spun wildly out of control. There were plenty of men who had not changed much since Jep and his cronies put Brown Drigger’s hounds on Sarra’s trail. Among the Brethren Saints, this sort of thing was a matter of pride, reputation, and survival. When one person left, there was always the threat that others would follow. When one person questioned, there was always the danger that others would question.

The vehicle rambled to a stop, sliding in the muck. Squinting against the headlights, I made out the silhouette of a Jeep. Black, shiny, four-wheel drive with large, knobby tires. Not at all the sort of thing Craig could afford. Or anyone in my family. Maybe they’d enlisted more help?

I glanced toward the loft. No sign that Lily Clarette had been awakened by the noise. If someone was here looking for her, I’d start by insisting that I hadn’t seen her and threatening to call the sheriff. Hopefully things wouldn’t go beyond that. Slipping into my jacket and shoes, I drew myself up straight, then stepped onto the porch, clutching my cell phone in one hand and hiding the fireplace iron behind my back.

The driver, dressed in a camo coat and hunting coveralls, approached in a rush. I squeezed the iron more tightly, kept my thumb poised on the cell phone panic app. How long would it take the police to get here if I called for help?

“What do you want?” I confronted him first, taking a cue from a long-ago city dwellers’ self-defense course.
Don’t wait for something to happen. Seize control of the situation and be the aggressor. Confront your attacker before he’s ready.

He stopped at the top of the steps, surprised, and my confidence surged. Above the hills across the lake, the faintest hint of gray had begun to highlight the sky. It would be morning soon,
and Lily Clarette and I could escape. I squinted at the man, trying to make out the face inside the hood. My fingers tightened, loosened, tightened again.

The visitor pushed back his hood.

Every muscle in my body relaxed, then just as quickly crackled with new anxiety. “Evan?”

Urgency radiated from him. “Have you seen Hannah? Is she here? I noticed two sets of tracks in the snow by your car.
Is Hannah here
?
” A fleeting hope lit in his face, an expression that begged me to say yes. A terrible, painful vulnerability followed it.

“No, of course not.” My mind was still struggling to catch up, the events of the night rushing through at random. “Why would Hannah be here?”

He came closer, stretched out his hand as if to grab me, his blue eyes almost wild. I stepped back against the cabin wall, revealing the fireplace poker out of reflex.

He glanced at the weapon, then at me, confused. “Listen, if she’s been here, you have to tell me. We think she might’ve run away.”

“Run away?” Surely this wasn’t real. Surely this was some strange dream. A nightmare. “Why in the world would she do that?”

“I had to tell her dad to get sober or get out. Jake ran his truck off into a ditch yesterday. Drunk. He had some woman with him from that bar down by the river, and she took a pretty good knock on the head. They’re lucky they’re not both dead. Hannah might’ve heard us arguing after I brought him home. I don’t know. I went to town to talk to my lawyer, to see what I could do about Hannah, because of course, that was the first thing Jake threatened
 
—that he’d take her if he moved out.”

Scrubbing his fingers across his forehead, he closed worry-lined
eyes. “When I came home, my foreman said Jake had left by himself in one of the trucks, but I couldn’t find Hannah anywhere. The little horse she likes, Blackberry, was missing too. I don’t know if she meant to take off, or if she just went out riding and . . . got lost, but Hannah
knows
these mountains and so does that old horse. He’s mountain-bred, not the type to do anything stupid. A night like this, with the weather coming in, all she’d have to do is give him his head and he’d find his way home. But we’ve had people out looking everywhere. Then I thought about the cabin, and how interested Hannah is in you, and when I drove by, I saw the car parked up there and the two sets of tracks. I was sure . . .”

More than anything, I wanted to tell him Hannah was safe and warm inside. “I have my sister here. She had a fight with her boyfriend, and he got rough with her. I drove over to Towash to pick her up. I haven’t seen Hannah since we watched movies at your place, the day before yesterday.”

I looked toward the lake. “What about your uncle Clive? The day I caught her on the highway, you said she might’ve been headed to his cabin. Could she have ended up there?”

Evan shook his head. “I already checked. The dog food dishes are gone, which means he headed off to one of his hunting camps. Sometimes he disappears for a week or two at a time.”

“Evan . . . he wouldn’t . . .” Maybe it was just my suspicious nature, but my one meeting with Uncle Clive hadn’t left the best impression, and then there were the things Jake had said
 
—indications that Uncle Clive might not be mentally stable. “He wouldn’t take Hannah without telling you . . . would he?”

Evan’s reaction was quick and decisive. “No. No, Uncle Clive wouldn’t do that. He’s crazy about Hannah.”

That’s what I’m afraid of,
I thought, but I didn’t say it. Evan seemed so sure.

I let the thought die, reached for other suggestions, but I had none.

Evan glanced toward the cabin, then nodded at the iron stick in my hand. “Is everything okay? Does your sister’s boyfriend know where to find you?”

“No. We’re fine. I’m just a little paranoid. I plan to call the family and let them know where she is after we’re out of here in the morning.”

“You’re leaving?” His gaze captured mine again. I wondered at the meaning behind that look.

“Well, I . . . Not now, no. Let me wake up Lily Clarette and tell her what’s happened. I can help look for Hannah.” My mind careened down a terrible trail of possibilities. I thought about the mishap with the trucker. Surely Hannah wouldn’t get into a car with someone. After our talk about the horse incident, surely she understood the dangers.

Evan shook his head. “You haven’t got the gear for it, and we don’t need anyone else lost in the storm.”

“I grew up here, remember? I know how to find my way around. I can help. I’m not just going to sit here waiting.”

He followed me as far as the door, catching my shoulder and turning me around so that the distance between us suddenly felt intimate. “Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t get on top of things when you talked to me about Hannah the other day. I really thought I could force Jake to step up the way he needs to, but you were right. If I would’ve taken it in hand . . .”

“Let’s just find her.” I slid my hand up and covered his, felt the leather glove cool between us. “Where should Lily Clarette and I go when we’re ready? I mean, where have you already looked for her?” I stepped inside to grab a notepad. “Give me your cell number, in case.” The typed manuscript pages and envelope lay
in a clutter on the coffee table. Evan never even noticed as he stood in the doorway. Instead, he gazed at Helen’s painting of the lake in autumn as if he were hoping to spot Hannah coming up the path.

“Start looking from here. Around the lake and along the old timber road up the mountain. Anyone you can find, ask them if they’ve seen signs of Hannah or the horse.” He pulled a business card from his pocket and gave it to me. “Maybe someone saw her pass by here yesterday. The sheriff’s department and the forest service are launching a grid search, and they’re calling in help. The thing is, we don’t even know exactly how long she’s been gone or which way she went. The driveway gates at the ranch have surveillance cameras on them, but the pasture gates and water gaps don’t. She could’ve left through any one of those. I was tied up with the lawyer quite a while yesterday, and then when I got home, Granny Vi was in bed. There was a video playing in the theater room, and it was almost dark before I realized Hannah wasn’t down there. The sheriff says a lot of the Time Shifters folks made a mass exodus ahead of the snow. There are some weed-smoking wack jobs in that group. I just hope she didn’t run into one of them somewhere.”

“She’d never abandon Blackberry. Wherever she’s at, they’re together.” It was the only reassuring thing I could come up with.

“Let’s hope,” he said softly, and then he disappeared through the cabin doorway. A moment later, the Jeep roared off, sloshing through the inch of snow and up the driveway. A shiver slid over me as I closed the door, but it had nothing to do with the weather. I couldn’t help thinking about that little girl, alone somewhere in the dark.

I woke Lily Clarette, and we did our best to garb up in what clothes I had. Lily Clarette layered her dress over the top of the
sweats, hiding what would have been forbidden garments at home.

“We’re not gonna be able to stay out too long without some coveralls and coats and boots,” she pointed out. “Not when it’s like this.”

“I know. But we have to do something. We can at least check around the lake and knock on doors, see if anyone had noticed Hannah passing by yesterday. If they haven’t found her soon, we’ll go into town and get some better gear.”

Wrapping blankets over our heads, we set out along the lakeshore. The wet wind effortlessly cut through the layers of jeans and sweats from my suitcase, proving that it was by far the stronger force.

Beside me, Lily Clarette pulled her blanket tighter. “You want this jacket?” she asked as the walking trail around the lake divided, one branch traveling uphill toward cabins on the slope, and the other leading to older waterside homes. We paused at the fork, looking both ways and checking the ground for anything but the tiny pinpoint tracks of deer. Unfortunately, with so much Warrior Week activity, the indentations of tracks and hoofprints lay everywhere beneath the dusting of snow.

“No, I’m fine. You keep it.”

“We’d do best to split up,” Lily Clarette suggested. “I can hike on up the timber road, and you head down to the lake. If she was here, no tellin’ which way she’d a gone. You know how little girls wander off sometimes.”

I looked at my sister, realized she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a young woman. All the same, I didn’t want to let her go. Only a few hours before, I’d been worried about her boyfriend finding us. Now I was sending her to walk a dimly lit path by herself and knock on strangers’ doors. I couldn’t help thinking
about what Evan had said.
There are some weed-smoking wack jobs in that group. . . .
Who might be staying in these cabins right now? Who might be wandering the woods?

“Maybe we should keep together.”

“We’ll get a bunch more done if we don’t.” Lily Clarette’s breath swirled on the air as she looked up the hill. “If I’m gonna go stay in the big city with you, I’ve gotta learn to do things for my own self, right?” It was the first indication she’d given of her thinking this morning.

The determined, upward tilt of her chin was a mirror of Mama’s on the good days when no one was around to temper her. The spunk that had helped her survive a horrible upbringing showed when my father and my grandparents weren’t watching.

I gave in, even though I didn’t want to. “Okay, here. Take my cell phone, at least. If you have any problems or you find anything, call 911. I’ll keep going along the shore, and I’ll be back here in thirty minutes. By then, at least someplace in town will be open, and we can get heavy clothes before we check the other side of the lake . . . if they haven’t found Hannah yet.” It seemed important to keep saying it, to assume the best.

Lily Clarette gave the phone an uncertain look, then nodded and tucked it into her pocket, and we parted ways. I watched her disappear up the hill before I took the other path, circling the ice-crusted lakeshore as loons and year-round geese dozed in the shelter of frost-covered docks, their heads still tucked beneath their wings. Deer, nibbling in the leeward spaces beside trees, paused to look up from their morning fodder, disturbed by my passing. I knocked on cabin doors, awoke sleepy vacationers, spoke to a photographer who’d braved the early-morning chill. No signs of Hannah.

I had nothing to report when I returned to the fork to meet Lily Clarette again, but somehow I’d managed to fan the hope that a call had already come in on the cell
 
—that Lily Clarette would tell me the whole thing was over, Hannah was safe and warm. My sister and I would pack the car, grab some breakfast in Looking Glass Gap, leave for a hotel in Charlotte where Craig and the family couldn’t find us.

Up the hill, Lily Clarette melted from the fog, her dress whipping around her legs as she came my way. The forlorn look told me she’d had no luck, phone call or otherwise. “Nothin’,” she reported as we met. “I found a couple folks who said they been around their cabins yesterday evenin’. They woulda noticed her goin’ by. I don’t think she was here.”

She handed me the cell phone, and I checked it. No sign of contact from Evan.

“She could’ve gone the other way around the lake.” There were cabins on the opposite shore, but Lily Clarette’s teeth were chattering, and I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. “Let’s run into town and get what we need, and then we’ll drive over there and knock on doors. If Hannah hasn’t been found by then, I mean.”