“There’s more than that.” Hannah bowed her head. “Jayme and I had plans.”
“Plans?”
“Like you and I had plans a decade ago, Clara.”
“You were helping her escape,” I said.
Hannah nodded. “Based on my conversations with her, I became concerned that Jayme was being abused.”
“Why didn’t you move her into the shelter?”
“I did at one point, but her mother, Genevieve, came for her. Jayme gave in and went with her. Mrs. Coombs promised me she’d watch over Jayme. But things Jayme said suggested that the abuse had started again.”
“So you planned her escape.”
“Yes. Jayme wanted to go, and I believed she had no other choice,” Hannah said.
“So you…”
“I made arrangements. Jayme was supposed to leave May eleventh. We had everything worked out. A ride to Salt Lake and a family to take her in. But then she didn’t come to work at the shelter on the tenth. I went to their home and asked to talk to her. I was told that she’d run away.”
“But you don’t—”
“No, I don’t believe it,” Hannah said, sounding more sure than she had about Eliza Heaton. “Not when we had a plan to start her new life. It made no sense.”
“Did you tell Max all of this?” I asked.
“I did, and we had something of a difference of opinion,” Hannah said. “We actually had a rather heated conversation about it. Max appeared interested at first, but then he called me and said someone had talked to their mothers. Like they told me, the women said the girls had run off.”
“And he believed them?”
“Yes.”
I wondered about Max. Something seemed off. Hannah’s accounts were persuasive. It seemed that Max should have taken them seriously enough to pursue them, not immediately taken the word of their families. Why didn’t he? I looked at my phone again. No call. What was taking so long? “Do you know anything about Delilah?”
Hannah picked up the napkin again, this time opening the folds and smoothing it out as if trying to erase the creases. “No. But something strange happened last Friday afternoon.”
I turned to a clean page in my notebook. “What?”
“I was in the grocery store, at the back near the post office window, when Ardeth came in with Lily. They looked upset.”
“In what way?”
“Nervous,” Hannah explained. “Lily looked like she’d been crying. She had a fistful of mail, looked like bills and such, she put in the box. Ardeth stood back to wait for her.”
“No doubt watching her every move.”
“Of course,” Hannah said. “You know, your mother doesn’t like it when the children talk to me. She guards them when I’m around.”
As dark as the conversation had become, at this I smiled. “She thinks you’re a bad influence.”
Hannah reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. “She always blamed me for you.”
“I know,” I said. “Tell me what happened at the grocery store.”
“Not much,” Hannah admitted. “But I bought my stamps, and when I turned around, Lily was standing directly behind me. I thought she might say something.”
“Mother stopped her?”
The worry lines across Hannah’s forehead deepened. “All Ardeth had to do was give Lily one of her stone-cold stares, and the girl dutifully slunk back and took her hand.”
I grimaced, thinking yet again of my afternoon encounter with my mother. Then, too, she’d kept Lily from speaking. “Mother should trademark those. She’s exceptional at them.”
“I didn’t think much about it until Max stopped at the shelter this morning to tell me about Delilah, and to say that you were on your way from Dallas,” Hannah said. “I told him what happened in the grocery store. We weren’t sure what to make of it. There’s a lot of tension in the town. Things aren’t easy for the families. He seemed interested, but not convinced that it meant anything.”
Our conversation stopped, both of us lost to our thoughts. No longer thirsty for my wine, I glanced at my silent phone yet again, willing it to ring. The pot roast soured in my stomach.
Across the restaurant, the young mother collected her children to leave. The oldest, a girl with a long blond ponytail that bunched at her neck, grabbed the diaper bag to help. As they walked out, I heard the soft jabbering of a parent and children. I thought of my father and mothers, my brothers and sisters, of home. It had been years since I’d considered all I lost on the day I fled.
“The anonymous note said Delilah disappeared on Thursday. If it’s true, that could have been why Lily and Mother appeared upset on Friday afternoon,” I said. “You said Lily put a handful of mail in the box?”
“Yes.”
“One of those letters may have been the note, the tip that came to the sheriff’s office. Lily tried to talk to me today. It wouldn’t surprise me that she wrote to the sheriff. She could have slipped it in with the family bills.”
Hannah folded her arms across her chest, as if to ward off a sudden chill. “That may be.”
“But there’s no way to be sure.”
“Not unless Ardeth has a change of heart and talks to you, or lets Lily talk to you,” Hannah said.
I thought about Delilah, tried to decide what to do. I blinked, blocking the thin tears collecting in my eyes from falling. “Three days then,” I said.
“Three days?”
“According to the note, that’s how long my sister has been gone.”
Ten
I’d had little sleep the night before, and it had been a long day. During dinner, a headache had taken root, but the main problem: I had a hard time holding back a growing sense of panic. If Hannah was right, Jayme Coombs and Eliza Heaton were missing. My sister Delilah was gone.
And no one was looking for any of them.
At that moment, my phone rang. I turned away from Hannah and lowered my voice as I spoke into the mouthpiece. “What did the sheriff say?”
Max cleared his throat. He sounded upset. “Sheriff Holmes called Alber PD and talked to the police chief a little
