Her arms thrust down at her sides, ending in fists so tight that veins bulged on the backs of her hands, Lily broke away from Aaron and stood in the center of the room. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her face had turned a faint, blood-spatter red around the eyes from rubbing. As if no one else existed, she stared at our mother. Her voice softening, Lily begged, “Mother, please tell Clara what happened to Delilah. Please.”
Aaron tried to again grab Lily by the shoulders, but this time she swiveled her body and wrestled away. “Mother Sariah, how can you not tell Clara, so she can help us find your daughter? Find my sister? Please, we need to find Delilah!”
Sariah cried harder, her chest quaking.
“Tell Lily, Mother,” I demanded. “Explain to her why you’re not helping me find our sister.”
“It is being handled,” Mother said, her voice breaking with emotion but stern. “But not by you. You can’t help us.”
At this, Sariah stood, her face a mask of rage and trepidation. I’d never remembered any of the sister-wives defying my mother. No one dared. Glancing from Mother to me, Sariah focused across the room on Lily, whose sobs shook her like tremors.
At that moment, something changed.
Sariah stared down at Mother, who still had her hands folded on her lap, refusing to look up at us. “Lily,” Sariah said, her words measured. “You and I will go outside with Clara, where the small children can’t hear us. And we’re going to tell Clara everything we know about the night Delilah disappeared.”
Mother looked up at Sariah, as if she’d been betrayed.
Lily’s tortured face pulled tight, as she attempted to harness her tears. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, we will.”
“You didn’t see anything or anyone? Nothing unusual that night?”
Lily, Sariah and I sat on faded metal chairs at the back of the lot. Behind us, the cornfield loomed, empty far off into the distance until it ended at those final rows still standing. It was now a crime scene, the harvest abandoned after the finding of the body. I had the folder with the photos on my lap. I thought about asking them to look at the dead girl’s dress, but I decided it served no purpose. I knew the body wasn’t Delilah’s.
I reached over and held Lily’s hand. “Let’s go through it one more time. Make sure I know everything.”
Lily described the prior Thursday’s evening prayers and following Delilah down the steps to the outhouse with the little ones. “She kept saying someone watched her from the field, but we shined our flashlights in and we couldn’t see anyone.”
The cornfield, I thought yet again. What did it have to do with the cornfield?
“I didn’t believe Delilah. I thought she was being silly,” Lily said. She teared up again, and covered her face with her hands. “Why didn’t I believe her? If I had…”
Sariah wrapped her arms around Lily and held her, whispering, “I thought Delilah silly, too. We didn’t know. Lily, we couldn’t have known what would happen.”
“I shouldn’t have left her out there alone. I should have stayed to protect her,” Lily said. “Why did Kaylynn take so long in the outhouse? That girl always dilly-dallies. If she’d—”
“Shush,” Sariah ordered. “Don’t ever say that. This isn’t Kaylynn’s fault any more than it’s yours. If anyone is to blame, I am. I should have listened to my daughter.”
“None of you are to blame,” I said. “The person to blame is the one who took Delilah.”
Sariah looked at me as if my words had given her the first solace she’d had in days. “Clara, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry Ardeth didn’t trust you. We should have—”
“Please, let’s just talk about Delilah.” I had a notebook out, one I filled with the details. “Describe to me what Delilah wore that evening.”
“She had on a blue dress with a white collar, a white sash belt around the waist. I remember thinking how pretty it looked with her red hair,” Sariah said. “Her sandals and white socks.”
“And she had a white ribbon in her hair holding it up at the top,” Lily said. “A thin one tied in a bow.”
“Anything else she said to you that could help me? Any description of anyone you saw around that time hanging out around the trailer, watching Delilah or any of the other girls?”
“Nothing,” Sariah said.
“If someone watched us, he did it hidden in the cornfield, as Delilah said. I didn’t see anyone,” Lily said.
I thought again about Jim Daniels.
“Is Karyn still inside?” I asked.
Sariah looked concerned. “We heard you went to her house today, that you talked to Jim and Rebecca.”
“I need to talk to Karyn,” I said. “Please ask her to come out.”
“I’ll do it,” Lily said, jumping up. As she rushed off, she turned back to me. “Clara?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You won’t let him hurt Delilah, whoever took her, right?”
That was a tough one. “I’ll do my best, Lily. And you are doing your best, I know. Keep thinking about that night. Anything you remember, whether it seems important or not, tell me. Let me decide if it is something that can help find our sister.”
“I will,” she said.
Lily disappeared inside the trailer, and Sariah put her hand on my arm. “Clara, Jim’s not a bad man. He’s not. I know you suspect him, but—”
“If he didn’t do it, I need to rule him out,” I said, leaving no room for argument. “Right now, I’m wondering about him. I need to find out more.”
“Okay.” Sariah looked satisfied.
“Maybe you should go inside, too,” I said. “So I can talk to Karyn alone.”
Sariah appeared reluctant. “Clara, I need to help.”
I took the hand that moments earlier Lily held. “Sariah, you have helped. You’ve told the truth. Now let me do my job.”
Moments after Sariah left, Karyn walked down the concrete steps toward me. “It’s been so long, Clara. I’ve wondered about you often. Did you think about us when you were so far away?”
I
