Amy never told Dr. Massie that the beatings were the basis for her fear of confronting him, and the reason why she always did as she was told without question. She didn’t want to be hit anymore.
Amy wasn’t sure why she withheld that bit of back-story from her psychiatrist. Maybe because she didn’t want to think about it herself. The memories were too painful. Or maybe because it put her father further into a negative light, affirming her grandparent’s accusations that he had a hand in her mother’s murder. She didn’t want them trying to connect him to the Nightmare Man.
Amy pushed those thoughts aside. She didn’t want to spend any more time on them. Not today.
Today was going to be a good day. Besides, her father promised he’d never hit her again. He promised he changed. He promised her a lot of things.
But why should she trust him now?
Stop it, Amy! Don’t dwell on it anymore.
Hank turned to tend to the kettle bellowing steam on the stove. “Grits’re done,” he said. “Want coffee?”
“Yeah, sure.” Amy reached for The Azalea County Herald lying unfolded on the table and scanned the headlines.
Below the fold, she found a story about a teenage girl reported missing in the county. That made the third in the last month. Amy glanced at her father and tightened her lips.
She knew the paranoia she would face from him because of this little development. Surreptitiously, she slid the paper aside and hoped she was wrong.
Hank turned and set a plate of scrambled eggs, grits, bacon and toast before her. Amy searched for the section of the paper with the comics, picked up a crispy strip of bacon and nibbled on it.
Setting a steamy mug of coffee next to Amy’s plate, Hank asked, “got anythin’ planned after school?”
Skimming the comics, Amy shrugged. “No, not really. I may do something with Cat and Layne later tonight.” She glanced at her father. “If that’s okay.”
Hank set his plate and coffee mug on the table and eased into his seat. “Don’t see why not.” He took a sip of coffee. “Where do you want to go for your birthday dinner?”
Amy speared a forkful of eggs. “I don’t know. Olive Garden again, I guess.”
“Mm, almost forgot. I got a present here for ya.”
Amy watched Hank pull a silver chain-linked necklace from a pocket of his jeans. It had a heart-shaped locket dangling from the end of it
“It was your mother’s,” he said. “Got her initials engraved in it.” He leaned over the table to fasten the chain around her neck.
Amy studied the tiny silver heart and smiled. “You do this every year; give me something of Mom’s. Do you have a box of her jewelry in your room somewhere?”
“It was among the things of hers I got from the old house.”
Amy carefully opened the locket and found a picture of the late Ellen Barrett Snow. She swallowed the hard lump of sadness in her throat, admiring the blond woman with the bright white smile and expressive brown eyes. “She’s beautiful.”
“You look more and more like her every year, too,” Hank said somberly.
Amy looked up to see her father’s deep hazel eyes grow cold and distant as he stared at his breakfast with a brooding frown. A dark cloud passed over his face, signaling to her the subject of her mother was closed, just like the investigation into her death. Her father had seemingly given up on that, too.
She wished she could ask him why. She wished she could talk to him about difficult topics without fear of his reaction. She wished their relationship weren’t so conflicted, so love-hate.
He was the only parent she had left. She needed a closer bond with him. She only hoped that, as last time, it wouldn’t take a tragedy for things to improve. Amy glanced back at the picture of her mother.
Please, God, no more tragedies.
In her room after breakfast, Amy slipped into a purple hooded-sweater, snatched her black backpack from the floor, and faced the dresser mirror. “Let’s have a good day.”
She repeated that mantra every morning since slitting her wrist two years ago. It was a therapeutic technique Dr. Massie taught. “Lets have a good day.”
Just as she spoke, a horn blasted outside.
With tension gathered in her shoulders, she hurried to the kitchen, popped an anti-depressant, and swallowed it down with a handful of water from the sink. She then grabbed the paper lunch sack from the counter by the fridge and exited the house before her father blasted the horn again.
She found him underneath the carport smoking a cigarette next to his red, clay-encrusted Ford pickup truck. He wore a brown leather jacket, red flannel shirt, and sunglasses with fiery lenses that made him look like the devil.
Amy shivered, as he watched her descend the steps. A thick haze of smoke drifted eerily around his hairy face.
Hank licked his upper lip and sneered. “About damn time. Don’t have all mornin’ waitin’ for you to get all prettied up. Gotta open the shop at eight sharp. Got cars to fix.”
“Sorry.” Feeling his anger bearing down, Amy walked timidly around the passenger side of the truck and climbed in.
She heard him mumble something derisive about the length of her skirt as his snuffed out his cigarette with the scuffed toe of his boot and eased behind the steering wheel.
“Click it,” Hank muttered, buckling his seatbelt and starting the engine. Amy obeyed him as he pulled down the gravel driveway and backed onto Tatum Avenue.
Peering out the passenger window, she admired the work she did yesterday in the front yard. Trees and bushes obscured their modest red brick house from the street, but she could still make out her accomplishments in decorating.
The flimsy cobwebs in the azalea bushes, the plastic skeleton hanging from the living room window, the plump orange pumpkin on the front porch, the sheeted ghosts swaying in the breeze from low-hanging magnolia branches made the thinly wooded yard looked nice and spooky. She loved decorating for holidays, especially Halloween, the night when spirits walked the earth.
Amy believed in ghosts. Her mother— who had grown up in an old plantation house that was supposedly haunted— did, too, and had told Amy plenty of spooky stories.
Ghosts were everywhere, her mother used to say, and sometimes they made their presence known when you least expected.
They do this because they either had unfinished business or an important message to send a loved one— a warning, perhaps. There were many different reasons.
Hank dug his hand into her hair and gently massaged the back of her neck. “You’re my pride and joy, peanut.”
Amy leaned against the headrest and closed her eyes. Thoughts of her mother dissipated like fog.
“I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you.”
She knew exactly where this was coming from. She remembered the newspaper article about the missing teenage girl. She wished this wasn’t happening. She wished her father would let it go.
“Lost so much already. If I ended up losing you—” His voice trailed off.
Amy wanted to tell him not to worry so much, that nothing was going to happen. But she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Once he had some paranoid notion in his head, there was no getting it out. Her mother used to tell her that and Amy learned over the years just how right she was.
“I worry about you a lot.” Hank removed his hand from her neck, reached over and turned on the radio. Classic rock music filled the silence the rest of the drive to Pine Run High.
Amy propped her elbow against the door and leaned her head against the palm of her hand. She stared out the bug-splattered windshield thinking about communication and relationships.
Dr. Massie told her once the key to a good relationship was meaningful communication. She had that with her mother. She didn’t with her father. Not at the rate they were going.
Amy wished she could talk to Dr. Massie again. Talking to her was almost as pleasant as talking to her mother. She had good insights into her problems as well.
But evidence of progress was lacking, at least in her father’s eyes, which was why he pulled her out of therapy. He claimed it was a waste of money.
Amy thought that was bunk. She wasn’t there long enough to make real progress. All she received from therapy were insights, probabilities.
No truth. Amy needed truth.
She feared she’d never get it from her father.
Chapter 4
Hank pulled up to the curb, reached over, and hugged his daughter tight. He didn’t want to let her go and didn’t want to let her out of his sight. But he knew he couldn’t keep her from school.
“Love you, peanut.” He ran his fingers through her soft blond hair and kissed her freckled cheek. “Have a good day, hear?”
“Yeah. Love you, too.” Amy climbed out of the truck. “Bye.” She shut the door and vanished within the crowd of teenagers shuffling toward the school building.
Vanished.
Thinking about the recent disappearances reported in the news, Hank wondered who would be the next to vanish. He felt a sharp twinge of dread in his stomach, inflaming his ulcer.
He didn’t want to think what he’d do if he lost his little peanut, his pride and joy, the lone blossom in the gutter of his life. He
couldn’t
lose her.
It was time to shorten the leash on her freedom. After Ellen died, he had promised himself— and his daughter— that he’d be less strict and less heavy-handed. But he had to break that promise to ensure Amy’s safety and protect her from whoever was out there hunting these girls down. He was sure there was someone, too.
This wasn’t a case of runaways. He felt it in his gut, and his gut seldom lied. Gut feelings were what made him such a good investigator when he had a career in law enforcement.
Shaking his head, Hank gripped the steering wheel and drove on, leaving the high school in his rearview mirror. He didn’t want to think about his decision to quit his job with the Sheriff’s Office, nor did he want to spend much time on his past as a shitty father.
He always regretted how he treated Ellen and Amy. He loved his girls but just had a horrible way of showing it.
I blame the booze.
But he started drinking again, shortly after his mother died last year.
Some demons you just can’t shake.
He didn’t want to think about his past. Nothing good came of it. But this sudden rash of cases involving missing teenage girls had him thinking about worse case scenarios. He had suspicions and they disturbed him. He felt he knew who is be behind these disappearances and why.
He couldn’t keep this to himself, either. Hank was supposed to open his auto shop at eight but decided it could wait. This was more important.
Driving into a vacant space in the parking lot in front of the Azalea County Sheriff’s Office substation, Hank killed the engine and climbed out of his truck. Anxiously clenching and unclenching fists, he stormed into the lobby and approached the redhead at the receptionist’s desk. “Here to see Joe MacCallum,” he said.
“Can I ask what it’s regarding?” the startled woman asked as she reached for the phone.
“Tell him it’s Hank, and I might have information on a case he’s investigating.”
Chapter 5
Amy felt a hand fall on her shoulder as she walked among the throng of students scuffling over the floor tiles. “Happy Birthday.”
“Thanks,” Amy said, glancing over her shoulder to see green-eyed Catherine Adair who was wearing the standard white blouse and gray skirt which all girls at Pine Run High were forced by the dress code to wear.
“So what did Big Papa give you this year?”
Amy cringed. The last time she heard that name was when her mother’s killer— the Nightmare Man— spoke it in her dream. “Please stop calling my dad that,” she said, untucking her locket from her shirt to present to her friend. “The name’s dirty.”
“Pretty,” Catherine said, flipping her dark hair back. Her face scrunched in thought. “He’s never complained.”
Amy slipped the locket back into hiding. “Actually, he has.”
“That hurts my feelings.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” Amy stepped into Room 130 and slid into her desk. Her seat was at the end of the front row, by the window looking out onto an enclosed courtyard. After unzipping her backpack, she pulled out a pen, a three-subject notebook, and a dog-eared copy of
Robert Frost’s Poems.
Catherine took the seat next to Amy. “So you’re positive you don’t want to go to the Homecoming dance? This year is your last chance to go.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Oh, come on. Just go with Layne. You do almost everything together. It’s like ya’ll are dating.”
Before Amy could respond, the final bell clamored and their English teacher, Mr. Jameson, wearing a tweed sports coat covered in a layer of chalk dust, stepped in as if on cue.
“All right everyone,” Jameson said, slamming the door behind him. “Sit down, shut up, get out last night’s assignment and pass it to the front.”