Authors: Susan Lewis
She and Sallie Jo had already answered dozens of questions. Did they have any idea where the girls might have gone? Had they checked their phones for messages? Was there a friend they might have visited? Had anyone been to Sallie Jo’s to find out if they were there? Had they ever been out alone at night before? What were they wearing? Could Justine check to see if anything was missing from Lula’s room, such as warm coats, boots—anything that might suggest they’d planned to go out?
As the news spread about town the festival arrangements were abandoned, cafés and restaurants emptied, as did the VFW hall on East Washington. They were all here, swelling the numbers of searchers, waiting to be told what to do.
Justine heard someone mention an Amber Alert, and the world seemed to spin off its axis.
Too many nightmares were coming back to her; she couldn’t cope with this. She had to make it stop.
“That doesn’t mean anyone thinks they’ve been abducted,” Sallie Jo assured her, clearly trying to bolster herself as well. “It’s standard procedure in these situations. Isn’t that right, Toby?”
“Correct,” the town’s chief marshal confirmed, his face glowing blue, falling into darkness, and glowing blue again. “The alert isn’t only about abduction. If they’ve wandered off…”
Justine wasn’t listening. She knew in her heart that they hadn’t wandered off, that someone had taken them. Surely the police had worked that out for themselves. The window in Lula’s room was open; crime scene investigators were already there, carrying out their work. For Tallulah’s sake she had to show Toby the email she’d received, even if it meant telling them who she really was, why she was here…
There was a sudden commotion in the lane. Something had happened.
Please, God, they’ve been found.
It turned out that two small bicycles had been discovered on an overgrown track in the woods. There were tire marks from a truck nearby.
David took hold of Sallie Jo as she started to break down.
Justine’s eyes were wide and raw as she watched a police officer duck under the tape and come toward them. He spoke briefly with Toby and listened as Toby turned to Justine and Sallie Jo, saying as gently as he could, “We’re going to need up-to-date photos and a full description of what the girls were wearing.”
With trembling hands Sallie Jo clicked open her phone. Seconds later a recent shot of Hazel was being sent on for processing.
“Justine?” he prompted.
Justine looked down at her phone, hardly knowing what to do.
“Let me,” David said, and taking the phone he transmitted a shot of Lula sitting on the porch with Daisy.
The one I’d wanted to send to Matt.
“K9 unit’s about ten minutes away,” someone announced over Toby’s radio. “Helicopters are up.”
Justine thought she was going mad.
“…you to identify the bicycles,” she heard Toby saying.
She tried to grasp the lifeline—the bicycles might not belong to Hazel and Lula—but it slipped away and she was drowning again.
She and Sallie Jo followed Toby through the crowd. Other officers escorted them, instructing everyone to be patient or to stand back.
Minutes later they were in a glaring pool of light deep in the woods staring past ribbons of police tape to where Hazel’s and Lula’s bikes were lying abandoned on the brambly trail.
Justine sank to her knees.
Toby came down with her. “It’s OK,” he murmured. “You’re going to be fine. We’ll find them.”
“Yes, it’s their bicycles,” she heard Sallie Jo whispering raggedly to another officer.
Justine’s head was spinning. How was she going to break this to Matt? How would she even begin to explain that Lula had gone?
There was the sound of someone shouting farther down the trail. A flurry of torchlight lit up the woods fifty yards ahead as Toby and others started running in the direction of the disturbance.
Without thinking Justine went after them. “Lula,” she sobbed wretchedly, “Lula, I’m here.”
With no warning a gunshot boomed through the night.
Justine reeled as if she’d been hit. Her ears were ringing; there was no breath to take.
Suddenly she started to run, panicked, desperate to find her baby, but she was grabbed by an officer and pressed against a tree.
Someone was shouting. “Billy, put down the gun.”
“You’re on my land,” Billy Jakes shouted back.
“Just put the gun down before someone gets hurt.”
“Get off my land.”
“No one’s going anywhere till you put down the gun.”
“Come any closer and you’ll be sorry.”
“Billy, two girls have gone missing. Do you know anything about that?”
“I said
get off my land
.”
“We need to search the area, Billy. If you don’t let us, we’ll have to arrest you.”
A sudden silence fell. All that could be heard was the rustle of night creatures, birds, people moving stealthily, officers with firearms aloft sliding between trees.
Justine was still being held back. Sweat, tears, mucus poured down her face. She was shaking so hard she could hardly see or hear.
An officer up ahead shouted, “OK, step away from the gun, Billy. That’s right. Keep moving. I’m coming in now.”
“You’re on my land,” Billy growled.
“We need to find the girls. Can you tell us where they are?”
“I don’t know nothing about no girls.”
“Their bicycles are back there in the woods. Are you sure you haven’t seen them?”
“ ’Course I’m sure. Do you think I’m blind? Ain’t no girls here.”
“Have you seen anyone else hanging around? Anyone come calling you weren’t expecting?”
“Ain’t seen no one all the day long, but I can tell you this, someone’s been around here and when I find ’em I’m going to shoot their butts right out.”
“When you say someone’s been here…”
“That’s what I said.”
“How do you know if you didn’t see them?”
“I always know.”
The woods fell silent again and Justine became aware of Sallie Jo standing beside her. She could feel her penetrating stare.
“You know something, don’t you?” Sallie Jo muttered.
Justine flinched.
“You’ve got to tell us,” Sallie Jo hissed. “Whatever it is…”
“I don’t. I…”
“Is it true you’re in witness protection? That’s what people are saying.”
“No, no, I…”
“Has someone found you? Is that what’s going on?”
As Justine tried to answer, a message squawked over a nearby radio.
“K9’s arrived.”
“We’ll find them,” she mumbled to Sallie Jo.
“We’d better,” Sallie Jo retorted, leaving Justine in no doubt that she’d hold her responsible if they didn’t.
Moments later a burly officer with a close-cropped beard and wide, jutting face took a spaniel past the police tape to the bicycles, where it began sniffing around. Within seconds it was heading down the trail toward Billy Jakes’s trailer.
“If Billy has them,” Sallie Jo whispered, “he won’t hurt them. He’s never hurt anyone.”
Billy’s voice boomed through the night. “See, that’s how I know someone’s been here,” he yelled furiously.
What did he mean?
Suddenly David was with them. “The Amber Alert’s gone out,” he said quietly. “I’ve already had calls from Chicago and Indianapolis.”
Realizing the calls would be from news organizations, Justine’s heart wrenched with hope and dismay. If it helped find Tallulah, she’d welcome every camera, reporter, and satellite truck in the nation. If it didn’t…
Another voice on the radio. “Are Sallie Jo and Justine with you?”
“Affirmative,” the officer answered.
“OK. Someone’s coming to get them.”
Why? What’s happened?
Justine was already running forward, as was Sallie Jo.
The sheriff and two men came through the trees to meet them, and escorted them past Billy’s dilapidated trailer and a tangle of uniformed officers toward a decaying old barn.
The doors were open, and from the cavernous interior Toby and another officer emerged into the light. In their arms were two small girls, looking terrified and bewildered and in very bad need of their mothers.
“Lula!” Justine sobbed, stumbling toward her.
“Mummy!” Lula cried, reaching for her.
Taking her, Justine held her so tight that neither of them could breathe.
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
she whispered feverishly.
Oh, dear God, thank you.
“Mummy, I was scared,” Lula whimpered, still clinging hard.
“I know,” Justine murmured, “but it’s all right now. You’re safe and I’m going to take you home.”
“I want paying for them rabbits,” Billy Jakes growled from the darkness.
Toby whispered to Sallie Jo, “They set them all free. Every last one of the cages is empty.”
Justine’s heart buckled. They’d come here to rescue the rabbits. No one had taken the girls after all.
As she turned away she could feel Sallie Jo watching her, and knew that in spite of the happy outcome this wasn’t over yet.
—
While Lula slept that night, safe in Justine’s bed with Daisy snuggled in beside her, Justine lay staring helplessly into the darkness, not knowing what she should do or where she could go next.
She’d truly believed when she’d come to Culver that her grandma was trying to reach her, to bring her to a safe place where she could put down roots and begin again, but that belief felt empty, even delusional now. The events of tonight, the simple mission to free a few dozen rabbits, had turned itself into a brutal reminder that she was never going to escape the horror she’d left behind, because it lived inside her, would always be wherever she went.
The rabbit story was already making the news: two missing children, with the cutest twist of heroism at the end. The girls’ photographs had been flashed up on screens for everyone to see; the sheriff had commented for the cameras, as had Toby Henshaw; someone had even interviewed Billy Jakes, who’d demanded compensation for his livestock loss and the damage done to his land.
Sallie Jo, holding Hazel in her arms, had expressed her relief at finding the children safe, though the girls were a little shaken up, she’d informed the reporters, by the man with the gun whom they’d hidden from behind the banks of hutches.
Justine had kept her head down as she’d mumbled an apology to the police for all the bother the children had caused.
The following day, because she had to, she took her little heroine to the Fall Fest in town, watching and somehow smiling as everyone made a fuss of her and admired the mermaid scarecrow she presented with Hazel. More photographs were taken of the girls to end up heaven only knew where, but it was certain they wouldn’t stop at the Culver Facebook page and local paper.
She saw Sallie Jo and David several times throughout the day, on the café’s street terrace, heading toward the history hayride, judging the scarecrows, helping to relocate the puppet show to inside the library. She felt sure they were keeping their distance, or perhaps she was avoiding them. She barely engaged with anyone, apart from on the most superficial of levels.
“Mommy! Mommy!” Lula cried, rushing up to her with Daisy. “We won second prize!”
Mommy
. Was this the first time Lula had called her that? She couldn’t be sure. Did she mind? She had no idea.
What prize?
“For the pet costume,” Lula reminded her.
Of course—Daisy was dressed as Tinker Bell.
Even before they got home Lula was asleep in the back of the car. She’d had a wonderful day riding ponies, leaping about the bounce house, taking part in all sorts of contests, and having her face painted like a cat’s. She was as excitable and sociable as any child could be; the trauma of hiding in a barn from an angry man with a gun was clearly forgotten.
Days passed. Lula went to day care, Justine continued to assist Sallie Jo with the realty business, but didn’t meet up with her. The requests to detail properties or update the website came by email, and Justine responded the same way. Their continued working arrangement suggested that Sallie Jo wasn’t cutting her off altogether, but there were no phone calls or texts to invite her to the café, or to a girls’ night, or to say she was coming over, unless it was to drop off Hazel for the children to share some playtime.
Since Justine didn’t have a Realtor’s license she couldn’t take prospective buyers to view properties, so until Lula came home at three she spent each day with only Daisy and her computer for company.
More than anything else in the world she wanted to be in touch with Matt, to tell him what had happened and how she was feeling, to ask him what she should do. Though she’d missed him before, every single minute of every day, the need for him now was growing to a pitch where she could barely stand it. She wrote him dozens of emails and letters that she never sent. She spoke to him constantly in her mind, listened for his answers, and sometimes felt sure she heard them.
Halloween came round, and she and David took the girls trick-or-treating while Sallie Jo worked at the café. Justine wondered if her friend was deliberately avoiding her, but didn’t ask. She didn’t want to seem paranoid—or to learn that Sallie Jo
was
staying away. Hazel came out as a truly scary witch, while Lula was a dashing Jack Sparrow in an almost identical costume to the one Ben had refused to take off for days just after the first
Pirates of the Caribbean
movie had come out.
That very film was currently Lula’s favorite.
Though David was friendly throughout the evening, humorous even, Justine was sure she sensed a distance that hadn’t been there before. They were all, she, David and Sallie Jo, tiptoeing around the night of the rabbits and Sallie’s Jo’s accusations as though they were something too explosive to touch. They were, for her, but why was it so difficult for them? Why weren’t they asking the questions Sallie Jo had thrown at her that night? What was holding them back?
As yet no one from the past had contacted her to say they knew where she was, but she was expecting it every day. Sooner or later it was bound to get back to those who were interested that she was living happily—they would probably say happily—in Culver, Indiana, with her daughter Tallulah. Though Rob and Maggie regularly assured her that they’d neither seen nor heard any reports of the rabbit story on the news in Britain, they couldn’t possibly know what might be happening online, and neither could she.