“Better tell me the rest of it, son.”
“Mom was crying every night and praying to just let
him be found. I couldn’t take it any longer. I heard
some girls in my biology class say they were going to
go look for ferns down at the fishing hole on Apple
Creek the next day. I thought if I could move him
down there . . . but I couldn’t, so then I thought if
they found his hand . . . like they found that other
hand . . . but . . .” He broke off and took several long
deep breaths. “I had to use my knife. I kept telling my-
self he couldn’t feel anything . . . but . . .”
He looked at Bo helplessly. “You going to tell my
mom?”
“Somebody needs to,” Bo said. “Don’t you think?”
Ennis nodded, misery etched in every line of his face.
“Am I in trouble with the law, too?”
Bo thought about the man-hours spent searching.
The helicopter. The dogs.
“We’ll see,” he said.
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C H A P T E R
32
Deborah Knott
Wednesday Evening, March 8
% We were a couple of miles out of Dobbs, each of
us immersed in our own thoughts, when I sud-
denly remembered that I’d meant to pick up something
for supper.
“Tonight’s Wednesday,” Dwight said. “How ’bout
we go for barbecue?”
“Really?” As soon as he’d said it, my gloom started to
lift. A Wednesday night at Paulie’s Barbecue House was
exactly what I needed. “You won’t be bored?”
Dwight doesn’t play an instrument although he has a
good singing voice.
“Nope. You haven’t been since Cal came and I bet
he’d like it, too. Give him some more names to add to
that list he started this morning.”
I had to laugh. It was bad enough that I had eleven
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HARD ROW
brothers. Wait till he realized exactly how many aunts
