But this had been a tactical error. She’d underestimated Faye, who had also spent her childhood outdoors, albeit in safer places and supervised by an adult. Whenever the girl passed by on the bluff above her, Faye heard the soft footsteps and the rustle of disturbed underbrush. Even the faint splish of small feet stepping into running water was obvious to Faye.
After the girl disappeared downstream on the first day, Faye had listened for the barely audible splashes to fade. Then, certain the child was gone, Faye had climbed up the bluff and checked out her hiding place.
The little girl’s stash of treasures was eclectic. Faye found a neat pile of magazines that looked like a sampling of convenience store stock—three issues of Guns and Ammo, a real estate circular, two issues of Car and Driver, and a dog-eared copy of People so old that the cover featured Paris Hilton. She’d also found a cache of pretty-colored stones and a fistful of dried-up yellow water lilies.
There was lots of trash corralled in a plastic bag pinned down by a rock. Faye had admired this act of unchildlike tidiness. Then, because archaeologists are fascinated by trash, Faye had followed her instincts and peeked in the bag.
It was filled with food wrappers, which was no surprise, but Faye hadn’t expected the wrappers to lean more toward real food than toward candy and gum. The girl’s unkempt hair and too-small clothing had led Faye to assume that she was neglected, but somebody was making sure she ate granola bars, peanuts, and canned fruit. Why wasn’t she eating it at home instead of hiding from the July sun in the patchy shade of a copse of water oaks? Was she homeless? Did she live here, outside and alone?
No, that was impossible. There had barely been room in the gap in the trees to sit, much less to lie down and sleep, and there had been no possessions beyond the tattered magazines. This was not the hideout of someone with nowhere else to go.
This line of reasoning made Faye reasonably sure that the child had a home, but was there someone waiting there to take care of her? She studied the girl, far ahead of her in the creek. By her best guess, she was looking at two-days-since-somebody-fixed-it hair, which is a far cry from the hair of a ten-year-old living alone. Some of the braids were starting to fray, but most of the multicolored plastic barrettes still held. A lot of kids’ hair looked like that in the summertime.
Where was she going?
On the first day she laid eyes on the child, Faye had stayed at her work, digging with her trowel in the damp creekside sand and watching the girl trek downstream. Hours later, her spying had been rewarded with the sight of a wet, tired child sneaking back toward her cozy nest. Hours after that, she’d seen her stand and fade into the woods again, this time walking away from the water. Faye had presumed she was going to a home where she had a bed and someone to look after her, but she would have liked to be sure.
The second day had been just like the first day, with the girl spending part of the morning hiding in the woods, leaving for a while, then returning to lurk until late afternoon. The big difference was that Faye hadn’t been alone. She’d had a witness to help her watch the child skulk through the underbrush.
She’d wanted to follow her then, but her witness hadn’t hesitated to say, “You’re nuts.”
This was rather bold of him, since she was the one who’d be signing his paychecks. Faye had hired Jeremiah Hamilton as her assistant more for his local knowledge than for his decent-but-not-exceptional archaeological expertise.
Jeremiah was in his late twenties. He held a master’s in anthropology, and he was now a third-year doctoral student, but, more importantly, he had grown up in a house that stood less than a mile from their worksite in Sweetgum State Park.
Jeremiah’s local knowledge was inarguable. His archaeological knowledge wasn’t nearly as extensive, but he thought it was. Jeremiah was one of those people who really liked to explain things to his boss, and he liked to do it carefully and thoroughly. He was probably just trying to impress her, or maybe he just liked to hear himself talk, but it felt like he was doing it just in case she turned out to be stupid.
“Why are you worried about this particular little girl?” he’d asked as the girl in question traipsed out of sight. “Do you know how dangerous this neighborhood can be? And do you know how many little girls live in it? If she’s really been sitting up there eating snacks and reading all summer, she might be better off than most of them.”
No, Faye didn’t know how many little girls lived nearby. She also didn’t feel qualified to judge who was better off than whom, and she didn’t think Jeremiah was qualified, either. She did know she didn’t like Jeremiah’s suggestion that she shouldn’t worry about one little girl’s safety unless she was prepared to make sure all little girls were safe. Since it had been her first day as his boss, she hadn’t said, “That’s a logical fallacy,” out loud. She’d merely shot him an eye roll that said it for her.
Jeremiah might have been an annoying know-it-all, but he’d seen the eye roll and backed down. Nevertheless, Faye had known what he was thinking. It was as clear as if he’d spoken out loud.
You’re an outsider, Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth, and you should mind your own business.
Jeremiah was going to need recommendation letters for post-docs and faculty positions soon. It would help his case if he learned to be more diplomatic with the people who could write them for him. Faye had held her tongue and changed the subject.
On this, the third day of
