Chapter Twenty-Four

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

It can't be a coincidence.

Someone tried to frighten Tina. Now they may be switching me in as a replacement character in some macabre sequel.

If it wasn't a neighbor who called 9–1–1 to report a woman screaming for help in my house, then who did it?

I plan to file a request for information about the 9–1–1 call, but it could take as long as thirty days for me to receive the report—and even then, it might not have any helpful information. Whoever placed the calls would likely have covered their tracks.

She's brilliant, Gina Markman had said of Rose. Savvy, despite her innocent affect. Rose was able to obtain weapons despite her parents' Herculean efforts to keep them out of her grasp. She got her hands on a book I know her parents wouldn't allow her to read. I need to determine whether she has access to a phone or iPad—potentially one her parents don't know about, too.

I can't completely dismiss Rose, much as I want to. I can't underestimate her.

A chilling thought strikes me: Tina believed someone was in her space, messing with her things.

The other day when I came home, my stereo was turned off.

Electronics malfunction all the time, I remind myself firmly. It was a glitch.

I'm not a naive twenty-six-year-old who is easily spooked. I don't fear ghostly voices or creaks in the night.

Still, I plan to begin regularly checking the locks on my windows—and on my replacement front door, which won't be installed until tomorrow.

I thank Ashley and step out of the party room, into the chaos of a hundred children tearing through the play space. Excited yells ricochet off the walls; high-pitched voices screech shrilly.

It's a universe away from my experience as a child.

Silence was my pain when I was young. Silence was also my punishment.

My aunt believed my muteness was a choice, and her preferred mode of illustrating her dissatisfaction with me was giving me a taste of what she believed was my own medicine.

One afternoon I came home from school on a rainy day and tracked two muddy footsteps onto her freshly mopped kitchen floor before I took off my shoes.

I hurried to the sink to get paper towels to clean them up, but my aunt saw. Two footprints meant she didn't look at me or talk to me for two days.

I was eight years old.

It wasn't the punishment that shook me. It was the satisfied gleam in my aunt's eye when she saw my misdeed. Now she had an excuse to shun me. To show a bit of her hatred for me.

My aunt had no children, but she was married to a quiet, docile man. He wasn't a bad guy. He never touched me in the night or raised a hand to me, but he was cowed by my aunt. Perhaps that was why he took a job as a salesman that required him to travel every week.

To him, I probably seemed like a stray cat she'd brought home. I kept to myself. I flew under the radar. If I cried at first, it was into my pillow. After a while, I stopped crying at all.

I adapted. Learned how to survive in that barren environment.

A few months after my mother's death, my voice came back to me, as swiftly and fluidly as if it had never disappeared at all. I was in a park near my aunt's house, sitting on a curved plastic swing, my hands gripping the chain-links that tethered it to the pole above, when a chocolate Lab dragging his leash ran into the park and stopped directly in front of me, his bubblegum-pink tongue lolling out.

"Hey there," I said instinctively.

It was like a spell had been broken, as if the dog were a magician in disguise. I'd tried to speak so many times before, and I couldn't. Now, with no effort at all, my voice was back. It didn't even sound rusty.

"Huck! Huck, you rascal!" A young woman in jean shorts and a polka-dot shirt ran toward us, sounding out of breath.

I stepped on Huck's leash so he couldn't escape again.

"Thank you so much!" She reached down and scooped up the loop handle.

I opened my mouth, wondering if the spell would hold. It did. The words emerged: "You're welcome."

The woman and Huck left, never knowing how profound our brief interaction was to me.

Even when I could speak again, school didn't get easier.

Kids sense differences and weed out those of us who are different or vulnerable with the calculating cruelty of predators culling the weakest animals from the herd.

I endured that, too. Muscled through with gritted teeth. They never saw me cry.

My tormenters were my training ground.

At some of the bleakest times, I felt as if a guardian angel was watching over me, sending me bright bits of hope. Shortly after my mother's death, I was nominated by one of my old neighbors for a scholarship to attend a two-week-long camp for grieving children, and I was selected to go. The kindness of the counselors didn't fix my pain, especially because I couldn't speak to any of them, but it was a balm to my jagged wounds. And for the rest of elementary school, the school counselor asked me to stay after school on my birthdays. She always had a little cake for me along with a gift—a generous gift certificate to a bookstore, a pretty bracelet, a CD player and a stack of CDs. I kept the CD player hidden in my room and snuck on the headphones at night when I couldn't sleep, finding comfort in music. Those moments felt like buoys, tangible things I could cling to for rest before I pushed off and kept swimming through the dark, turbulent ocean of my young life.

I was let down again and again as a child. But I won't let down Rose—no matter if her family lies and battles me every step of the way.

If Rose is in danger, I will protect her.

If Rose is confused and acting out, I will help steady her.

And if Rose is deeply disturbed—dangerous, even—I will get her help.

My plan for the rest of the day is to go to the grocery store, then take a catnap before I pick up Rose for our waffle dinner so I can begin to see her for who she truly is.

But none of that happens.

The call comes in as I'm driving home from seeing Ashley at the party venue.

"Rose is missing!" Beth's voice is pure panic.

"What happened?" I pull into the far left-hand lane, preparing to make a turn to head toward the Barclay estate.

"Did you pick her up early?" Beth blurts.

"No, I'd never do that without telling you. When did you last see her?"

"She finished her piano lesson with Phillip an hour ago, then went to read in her room. She knows not to run off—"

The Thin Man was at the house before Rose disappeared. Did he say or do something to make her run away?

There's a break in the oncoming traffic. I yank my wheel to the left and speed across the empty lanes.

"Could she be with Harriet? Have you checked to see if she's with the horses?" I ask.

"No, Harriet's here with us. And Rose isn't with the horses; that's the first place we looked."

A mute child has disappeared on the premises where a possible murder occurred.

"Call the police." The words shoot out of me, direct and instinctual.

For the first time, Beth hesitates. Her voice evens out. The modulated Beth is back in control now.

"You see, the police have been here so much recently. If Rose just curled up somewhere and fell asleep…"

She's prioritizing appearances over her child's safety. I feel my face burning as I hang up and press harder on the gas pedal.

If I don't hit traffic, I'll be there in less than ten minutes.

I make it in eight and a half.

I don't bother parking in my usual spot by the garage; I pull as close to the house as possible and leap out. I'm in old jeans and a hoodie, and my hair is a little wild from air-drying after my morning run.

But unlike Beth, I'm not at all concerned with appearances right now.

I run toward the house and bang on the front door. Ian yanks it open a moment later, his face anxious.

"I'm here to help look." I don't give him a chance to object. I push past him into the house.

"Did you check Tina's room?"

Ian nods. "She isn't there. I yelled her name loudly just in case she'd fallen asleep. I told her to bang on anything she could see if she was stuck somewhere. I don't know—"

I interrupt him.

"Does Rose have a cell phone?"

"No." He pats his pants pocket. "She borrows mine to play games, but I've got it here."

"Do you have bales of hay in the barn? Places she could tuck into and hide? Any trees she could climb?"

Ian's body slumps. "All of her coats are here. We figured she had to be indoors."

It's about forty-five degrees out, but if Rose has on a few layers and found a cozy spot out of the wind, she'd be comfortable enough.

Ian is already reaching into the closet for a jacket. The sound of Harriet's cane tapping on the floorboards alerts me to her arrival. Harriet glances at me, but her only greeting is a crisp nod.

"She isn't downstairs," Harriet reports. "I looked everywhere again, even behind my shower curtain."

"Stella thinks she may be outside after all." Ian is already walking toward the arched kitchen doorway. "Under a bush, or in a tree. Maybe she made a little spot in the stables."

By now Beth has joined us.

"Stella—thank you for coming."

I don't know how to respond to that, so I don't. We hurry out the back, Harriet bringing up the rear of our group.

The new patio hasn't been laid yet, but the footers have been poured and the earth is level and smooth. There aren't any workers around right now, and I didn't see the housekeeper when I came in. Perhaps she has the day off.

Just as when Tina fell to her death, the house is mostly empty save for the Barclay family.

The sun is sinking lower in the sky. It'll be dusk soon. There are dozens of places for a little girl to hide on the grounds. Every bush and shrub and tree and dark corner offers a possibility.

Ian breaks into a jog, heading toward the stables.

Beth calls out Rose's name again and again, her thin, high voice carrying on the air. She veers off toward the side yard.

I'm trying to catch up with Ian when I feel it again. The skin-prickling sense I'm being watched.

I spin around, expecting to catch Harriet's gaze. But she is following Beth. She isn't looking in my direction.

Then something compels me to glance up, my eyes traveling past the kitchen doors and second-floor hall window.

On the third floor, there's a small figure in the window Tina crashed through. Even though I can't make out her features, I know exactly who it is.

The light is gleaming on her curly red hair.