My comment had hung in the air, making the atmosphere awkward. The others focused hard on me, appearing surprised. “I suppose they are,” one detective eventually said. Before long, we wandered off to our desks.
As often as I scanned the news articles, watched the TV reports, I’d sought for but never found Alber mentioned. Standing across from him, I looked at Max and wondered what he could be talking about. “The feds came here?”
“Alber, too,” Max explained. “Arrests were made. The Barstows have lost much of their control over the town. Families left. Some of the men, fearing arrest, ran off, leaving the women and children to fend for themselves. Others have moved in. Apostates like you are returning. Lost boys like me. Outsiders not living the principle are buying up foreclosed houses cheap.”
The Barstows were Alber’s most powerful family. For generations, no one built a home or married without their permission. The principle, or the Divine Principle as it’s formally known, was the catchphrase for polygamy, the doctrine of plural marriage. For more than a century and a half, only those who believed in the sanctity of the Divine Principle were allowed to live in Alber. In my family, the practice of polygamy went back five generations.
I didn’t know what to think. I’d envisioned Alber as a constant. I changed, the world changed, but in this secluded mountain town inhabited by Elijah’s People, I thought nothing would ever change.
“The families we grew up with are gone?”
“Many are still here, most trying to live the old ways,” Max said. “But everything around them is shifting. Clara, we have a women’s shelter in town. Hannah runs it.”
“Hannah?” I said, and my lips edged up at the corners. “Hannah runs a shelter?”
“In the Barstow mansion, right in the center of town.”
I shook my head, disbelieving.
“I arranged for you to stay with her while you’re here,” Max said. “She’s excited to see you.”
“And my family? How have they fared?”
I thought Max might answer, but instead he said, “I really need to show you. Too much has happened to explain it all.”
That seemed reasonable, but first I wanted more information on the reason I’d come. “What about Delilah? Do you know anything more than when we talked on the phone? Are you certain that she’s missing?”
“That depends how you define certain. Officially, I have no concrete evidence,” Max admitted. “But my belief is that the note’s legit, that Delilah’s in trouble.”
“If you have no evidence, why do you think—”
“Call it gut instinct. Clara, you know how secretive Alber can be, how suspicious of anyone in authority from outside the community. Like I said, among the faithful, a lot hasn’t changed.”
“But surely, if Delilah were missing, my family would reach out for help,” I insisted.
“I’m not sure,” Max said. “You know what it’s like in Alber. It’s not unusual for no one to report a crime. All too often, the first we hear is when they have a dead body.”
I winced at that, and Max apologized. “Sorry to be so blunt, but—”
“No. No. I know you’re right.” For generations, when secular authorities showed up in Alber, doors closed and folks became mum. “I would just hope in this instance… when we’re talking about the welfare of a child, it would be different.”
“Let me get the note.” He grabbed a case folder off his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper protected by a plastic evidence sleeve. “The sheriff got this yesterday morning. After he did, like I told you on the phone, I went to talk to your family. Ardeth refused to open the door.”
“So Mother wouldn’t talk to you, but did you go to the mill and ask for Father?”
At that, Max appeared stunned. “I thought you knew,” he said.
“Knew what?”
Max hesitated, and I considered what he’d so dread telling me. Then I realized what it had to be. “When did it happen?”
“Clara, your father died of cancer a little more than a year ago. I can’t believe no one told you.”
I considered that, and I realized it could have been no other way. “There’s no reason they should have. When I left Alber, I abandoned the family.” I thought of Father, that I would never see him again, that I’d never have the opportunity to explain why I left. But then, I guessed he knew. After all, he wasn’t blameless. He may not have known everything, but he’d been involved in much of it.
“Max, I’m here to do whatever I can for Delilah, but remember that I’m even more of an outsider than you are,” I said. “You know what they’re like to folks who turn their backs on the faith and leave.”
Max stayed silent, perhaps thinking of his own situation. He wore a badge that said he was the law, but when he had a lead on a case, my mother, who he’d known all of his life, refused to talk to him.
“Let’s see that letter,” I said. “We need to figure out what’s happened to Delilah.”
Max handed me a single page of white paper with handwriting across it in a looping script. It looked like something a young girl might have written.
DELILAH JEFFERIES DISAPPEARED THURSDAY NIGHT.
SHE WAS THERE, AND THEN SHE WAS GONE. VANISHED.
I THINK A BAD MAN TOOK HER. PLEASE HELP!!!!
I held it close, and fought to keep my hands from trembling. I kept seeing the corpse of the boy in Dallas, the one who never returned from a bike ride.
Five
Delilah tried to guess how long she’d been there. A scratchy blindfold cinched across her eyes, she saw only a slender thread of light through a gap where it straddled her freckled nose. It had to have been days, but how many? Her tears and sweat soaked the blindfold, the salt making it stiff and coarse.
