“Lots of folks around here have natural teeth, Claire!” she remembered her dad shouting at her mom. “We come from good Appalachian stock,” he’d said more than once, “not those fancy folks starting to buy land over by Lake Azure who get their teeth fixed and face-lifts!”
Strange that the little Tess recalled of her father he was always shouting. She figured that bottled-up anger—his blaming Mom for not taking his “terrific, terrible Teresa” with her the day she was kidnapped—was the reason he’d left them. Several months after Tess came back home, he’d moved to Oregon, had remarried and hadn’t seen his three Midwest daughters since. Char and Kate said he wasn’t worth so much as a free weekend cell phone call or a Tweet, but Tess wasn’t so sure.
Before she could keep a lid on the past from starting to spill out like worms from a can, she remembered another voice shouting. “You darn little, crazy tomboy, get out of that corn, or you’ll get lost!” That’s what Gabe McCord had bellowed at her that awful day. And then, even standing there, staring out at the field, her memories stopped, just like someone slamming the lid back on. Thank God, she thought. Because if her thoughts got loose, they turned to nightmares filled with monsters, turned to terror....
Tess strode from the back door to the front one, checking the locks again, then tested all the windows to be sure they were bolted. Her mom had had the locks installed to protect Char and Kate after Tess was taken, though nothing bad ever happened to them. Tess nearly stumbled over her suitcase, then remembered her food sacks and the cooler she and Gracie had carried in. She’d better unpack for her short stay.
She jumped as headlights slashed across the dining room windows from the driveway. Was Gracie back already?
Her heart thudding to match the thunder outside, Tess peered out the dining room window. It was very dark for not being that late yet. A black car, not Gracie’s, killed its lights. She certainly wasn’t going to answer the door, but the man who got out had seen all the lights on, so she could hardly hide.
She gasped as she saw light catch the silver and gold printing on the car door as it opened. A man, broad-shouldered and tall with a brimmed black hat, got out. She heard the car door slam. She realized it must be the last man on earth she wanted to see.
The badge on the man’s jacket glinted silver in the outside floodlight as he approached the back door and knocked. The sound rattled Tess. But she stepped forward to unlock it, then opened only the inside door so the glass storm door was still fastened between them.
“Sheriff Gabe McCord, Tess. Just wanted to welcome you back,” he said in a loud, deep voice that carried well over the rain and through the glass barrier between them. His big-brimmed hat shadowed his face, and his jacket was slick with rain.
She knew she should ask him in. But she had the feeling that if she opened the door, she’d be opening up so much more. No, she had to be sensible, stay sane. This was the here and now, not two decades ago. She unlatched and opened the storm door.
“I appreciate that,” she told him, relieved her voice sounded steady. “Do you want to step in?”
“Thanks. Just for a sec. Grace mentioned you’d be here today. Sorry to lose them as neighbors,” he said, sweeping his hat off his head as he entered the kitchen, making it seem so much smaller. “I see you’ve got a sign up in the front yard already.”
“Yes, I brought it with me. I put it up when Gracie and I were unloading my car.”
She took two steps back. Gabriel McCord was so much taller and sturdier than the skinny kid she remembered. Unlike most people of Appalachian descent, Gabe was black-haired, although he was blue-eyed. She could see the young boy in his features but barely. He seemed all hard lines and tense angles—the slash of his dark eyebrows; the sharp slant of his shadowed, clean-shaven cheekbones, his square chin with a scar, his broad nose, even his solidly built body. His hands, which held his hat, were big with blunt fingers. He had a deep, commanding voice that, even when he spoke quietly, reverberated through her.
She tried not to stare, to say something light and polite. As he quickly assessed her, she felt frozen, yet she turned hot under his steady, probing gaze. He probably saw her as exhibit number one, the girl who came back alive and yet could remember nothing of her ordeal.
“I heard you’d be fixing to sell this place,” he said.
“Yes, I really need to. I need the money to open a day care center for preschoolers back in Michigan. That’s home now.”
“A day care center sounds great. That’s something folks around here could use, both those whose kids need a head start, besides what the government provides, and the Lake Azure folks.”
“They’re not all retirees in that community?”
“There are some well-to-do younger people who want to escape city stress, get back to nature, raise their kids away from crime and all that, though we have our share. Well, besides what happened to you, I mean. Meth labs, marijuana plots up in the hills, domestic disputes, drunks busting things up or shooting off guns. Especially this time of year, we get outsiders trespassing on the grounds of the old mental health asylum, vandalizing and worse. But I didn’t mean to unload on you. I just wanted to say if you need anything while you’re here, I’m just across the cornfield, at least at night. Don’t hesitate to call the station or my phone next door. Grace said she’d leave the numbers for you on the fridge.”
“Yes. Yes, she did,” Tess said, glancing at the piece of paper under the magnet that advertised Gabe McCoy for Sheriff. “Thank you,” she added. “So, how is your mother? Gracie said your father died.”
“Yeah, at age seventy-two. A heart attack, though they had some good years living in Florida after they left here. She’s still there. Sorry to hear your mother passed away so young.”
“She had a hard life, working to take care of her three girls—me especially, after everything. That’s why she left this house to me. Kate and Char have more...high-powered careers than I do. Kate’s a university professor in anthropology, and Char’s a social worker. They both travel a lot, so I’m here on my own for this besides the fact that it’s my house now.” She hesitated. “Listen, Gabe,” she continued, unclasping her hands, which she didn’t realize she was gripping so hard. “I’m sure you know a lot of people here and I don’t. Will you let me know if you can think of anyone who might want to buy an old house to fix up?”
“Sure. If you don’t mind people knowing you’re back, I can ask around, have them contact you. If you put up any signs around town, better give your phone number, but maybe not your name, not say you’ll be here for a while.”
She could tell he’d tried to word that carefully, but it scared her. Actually she’d planned her for-sale posters that way. But was he thinking that since her abductor had never been found and she was an eyewitness—maybe people didn’t believe she couldn’t recall a thing about her eight months away. Was she still in danger?
“Thanks,” she repeated. “I’ll remember that.”
He said goodbye, put his hat back on and went out into the rain. As she locked both doors behind him, she recalled that her mother had said some people blamed Gabe for not watching her better that day. There were whispers that her being taken was his fault, that he’d disobeyed orders to keep an eye on them. Tess had never told anyone but the truth was she was the one who had disobeyed him that dreadful day.
“Get back here, you crazy tomboy!” he’d shouted at her when she stuck out her tongue and darted back into the cornfield where she was hiding from him. She’d always liked Gabe, liked to get attention from him.
And