Shopping malls and grocery stores made me nervous. I had a hard time with big buildings and crammed aisles. Too many options and I felt paralyzed. Maybe because I’d grown up in a world where I was never allowed to choose anything for myself.
I’d taken four steps from my chair on my way to the elevator when my desk phone rang. I stopped and looked at it. The phone kept ringing. For once, I considered not answering.
“Detective Jefferies here,” I said into the receiver a moment later.
Silence.
“This is Detective Jefferies, Dallas PD. Who’s calling?”
On the other end, someone cleared his throat. In a low, deep voice, he said, “Clara, it’s Max.”
“Max?”
“Max Anderson. From Alber.”
“Alber…” It felt like a lifetime ago. It felt like someone else’s life.
“Clara, it’s me,” the man said. “Max, from home. I need your help.”
Two
“Clara. A detective. Working homicides, no less. I’ve seen your name in the newspapers. You’ve handled some big cases.” Max had recounted the condensed version of his own story: how he’d been a cop, worked his way up to major crimes in Salt Lake City, before he hired on as chief deputy at the sheriff’s department in Smith County, Utah, where we grew up. I remembered his soft laugh from when we were kids. “Heck of a coincidence, both of us in law enforcement. Don’t you think?”
At first, I did. But then I reconsidered.
“With the way we grew up, maybe we just want to bring a little sanity to the world,” I said, conjuring up an image of him from long ago, a shy, lanky teenager with a thatch of hair the light brown of hay, hazel eyes that nip down in the corners.
Silent at first, as if mulling over my theory, he said, “Could be.”
Our shared history aside, this wasn’t a social call, and Max quickly got to the point. “Clara, I need you in Alber for a day or two.”
The strength of my reaction surprised me. I reared back, and said louder than I’d intended, “No. I can’t.”
I blamed it on work. I had obligations. Yet I sensed that Max understood the real reason. The prospect of returning to Alber flooded me with dread. I’d left a life behind there, painful memories that haunted me. A decade ago, I promised myself that I’d never return. And the day I left, I knew that I’d never be welcomed back.
“Let me tell you about the case,” he said. In that morning’s mail, Max’s boss, Sheriff Virgil Holmes, had received an anonymous note that claimed a young girl had disappeared two nights earlier. “I tried to talk to the family. They refused to cooperate. The Alber police chief gave it a shot after I did and he got the same result. We’re making no ground.”
The day ended without a lead, without any confirmation that the note was genuine. “I need someone the family will talk to, Clara. To find out the truth. That’s you. You’re the only one.”
“Me? Why would they talk to me?”
“Clara, because—”
“I’m not part of that world anymore. I’m an outsider,” I pointed out, my voice high and strained. “Max, I’m sorry. I’d like to help you, but…” I lowered my voice and tried to regain control. “You can’t ask me to go back there. You just can’t.”
For a moment, he was silent. Then Max said, “Clara, the missing girl is Delilah.”
In a whirl, my memory played a reel from my past, snippets of little girls in prairie dresses running through the fields. One had red-gold hair and a smile that tugged at my heart. “Delilah?”
“Yes.”
I pictured her, little more than a toddler when I’d left Alber, jumping on still-bowed legs when she tried to play hopscotch with the older children, her bulky skirt bunching around her knees when she barreled head-first down the slide. The family Max had gone to see, the one that turned him away, was my own.
Delilah Jefferies was my half-sister, the oldest daughter of Sariah, my father’s fourth wife.
“Delilah must be a teenager now.”
“Almost. She’s twelve,” Max said.
“You think she’s been taken?”
“No one has filed a missing person report,” Max admitted. “But yes, I do.”
I didn’t ask any more questions. “I’m on my way.”
Three
Max stared at his cell phone for a moment before he placed it on his desk. He leaned back in his chair and looked out the window. His small corner office overlooked the field behind the courthouse, the mountains in the distance. It was dusk, and the sun’s last rays painted the sky rose gold as it dipped in the west.
Clara’s coming, he thought.
He pictured the girl he’d known. Tall, slender, the blackest hair, thick brows like her mother’s that arched up when surprised or annoyed. As a teenager, Clara had worn her feelings on her sleeve, as the old saying went, and he wondered if she was still so easily read. Then he shrugged off the thought. Time had passed. Clara was a different person. She was a detective, a cop, not the girl he knew.
We all change. Life chews us up and spits us out. Stuff happens in an instant, and nothing’s ever the same.
He wondered why Clara fled Alber.
The teenage girl he remembered appeared content in their world. While many struggled under the tight constraints, she’d flourished. Something bad must have happened. Maybe, when we have time to really talk, I’ll ask. But then he shook his head. Too personal. We don’t really know each other anymore. It’s been too long.
When he told her that he’d moved back to their hometown, Clara had sounded shocked. He wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t anything he could have predicted he’d do. Those like him, shunned and forced out, those like Clara who turned their
