"Vernell, my God, did you let her buy all those things?" I asked.

Vernell seemed as puzzled as me. "No, I guess Jolene must've done it. You know how she likes shopping." He peered deeper into the closet. He sighed. "Women. I don't recall you ever having that many outfits. Jolene says we gotta look the part. She says image is everything."

I could just hear those words dripping off her lips.

"Vernell," I said, "it don't matter if you paint the barn black or white, it's still a barn. Now let's get to it."

"To what, Maggie? She ain't here. Let's start calling her friends."

"Vernell, unless you've been spending a lot of time around her new school and know some things I don't, we don't know any of her friends. And think about it, Vernell, if your best friend ran off, would you tell where he was?"

Vernell spent too long pondering his answer, and I couldn't wait. I pulled open the drawer of her nightstand, looking for her phone book or anything that could help us.

"What about her boyfriend?" he asked. "Keith."

"I don't know his phone number," I said, tugging at Sheila's crammed bedside drawer. "We'll have to ride by, but I doubt she's there. He lives with his parents."

Sheila's drawer was full of letters and photographs, some of which spilled over and fell onto the floor as I wrestled to get the drawer all the way open. It was stuck on something, and I couldn't quite reach it with my fingers.

"Well, least we can do is ride by," Vernell huffed. "Let me get that." He pushed me aside, reached for the drawer, and gave it a mighty tug. The crystal lamp began to topple, the pink princess phone slid, and the drawer came flying open. Papers rained everywhere and a small clothbound book fell out onto the floor, its cover scuffed and bent from its tussle with Vernell.

"There it is," he said.

"This isn't her phone book," I said, picking the small journal up and flipping through the pages. "This is her diary."

I sank down onto her bed and started leafing through the purple ink-covered pages, looking for the last entry. I'd never gone through Sheila's things before and I felt slightly guilty for doing it now, but a crisis was a crisis.

I will carry flowers on the beach, she wrote in large loopy script. My heart froze. Red ones. And Keith says he knows a guy ordained by that mailorder Universalist Church of Higher Love that's gonna do the ceremony.

I read the words aloud as Vernell sank down beside me. "No," he moaned softly. "No."

It won't be that church wedding my mama wants. Sheila wrote, but at least we'll have the beach. Keith says our lives will be bonded together forever. We will share our future. What's his will be mine, and what's mine will be his. We won't ever get like Mama and Daddy did. Our love will last. True love forever.

Tears rolled down my cheeks, dripping onto the purple ink and leaving blotches of pale purple tears. Vernell, reading over my shoulder, reached out and put an arm around me.

"I'm sorry, honey," he said softly. "I really am sorry."

"We can't get into all that right now," I said, looking up and folding the book shut. "We've got to stop them."

"You wanna ride by Keith's place?"

I stood up and pulled a pale pink tissue from the box on Sheila's nightstand.

"Yeah, just to make sure," I said, "but then we'd better get a move on."

Vernell looked puzzled, and still sad. "Get a move on?"

"Vernell, don't you realize where they've gone?"

"To the beach?" he said. "Maggie, they could be anywhere. Hell, they could be in Daytona with all them bikers and-"

I cut him off. "Vernell, they're at your parents' place. That's the only beach house Sheila knows. That's where she'd go. She knows nobody'd be there this time of year."

Vernell just stared at me for a moment, as if reading my lips and hoping to make sense out of what he saw and heard. His little girl, marrying a skinhead on the beach outside of his parents' beach house. It was all more than he could imagine. Then something else happened. Vernell returned. Not the Vernell I'd seen drunk and out of control, but Vernell the self-made man, Vernell the survivor, Vernell the man who wasn't about to let a boy ruin his daughter's life.

"All right," he said, his voice strong and filling the frilly bedroom, "let's ride." He moved past me, down the hallway, down the stairs, and over to the hat rack by the front door where he grabbed his white straw cowboy hat. He stopped by the front hall table, scooped up a set of keys and his cell phone. We were outside in the cold morning air, heading for my car, before I remembered that it wouldn't run.

"Vernell," I said. "Wait. My car died in the driveway. Let's take Sheila's car."

Vernell stopped on a dime and looked over at me. "Can't," he said.

"Why not?"

"I don't got a key. Sheila has it."

"Well, where's your car?" We were taking too long. We needed to be leaving. For all I knew, the wedding could be taking place first thing in the morning. It would take four hours to reach Holden Beach, and we'd have to be flying to do that.

"Calm down, honey," he said. "My car's at the office. We gotta take the truck. Let's go!"

Vernell had opened the door, hopped up in the cab, and started the engine before I reached the passenger side. So much for keeping a low profile, I thought. The satellite dish groaned as it began to turn, and we were off, backing down Vernell's driveway, and out into the street "Rock of Ages" bellowed out into the silent cul-de-sac, and one by one lights began coming on. Vernell's neighbors had to hate him.

"Vernell, can't you cut that down?"

"Say what?" he yelled. "I can't hear you with the music on."

"Turn it off!" I screamed.

Vernell calmly reached up under the dash and hit a toggle switch. "You don't have to yell," he said.

"Just drive, Vernell." I sighed and looked out the side window. He was impossible.

"Where to?"

"Keith lives three doors down from my place. I suggest we ride by, see if his truck is there, and if it isn't, check my place. Maybe she came back after I left." But I knew it was pointless. Sheila was in Holden Beach.

Vernell drove the truck like a sports car, careening around corners, sliding up on curbs, and running the truck flat-out and wide-open. If our mission hadn't been so serious, we might've enjoyed ourselves. It was like the old days, in high school, when we rode around the Virginia countryside, whooping out the windows and feeling the air fresh in our faces. Back then, we were reckless and carefree. Back then we would've done anything on a dare. Now our daughter had replaced us, and it was up to us to save her from herself.

"He's not there," I said. We were running down my street at fifty miles an hour, narrowly squeezing past cars parked on either side of the street. Vernell was either one hundred percent sober, or a very skilled drunk driver.

"Stop in front of my place and I'll run in and check."

Vernell stood on the brakes and skidded to a stop. "Hurry it up!" he said.

We both knew it was pointless. I ran up the steps, slammed the side of my fist into the front door, and stepped inside my darkened house.

"Sheila?" I called, switching on the light and moving rapidly toward the back of the house. No answer. "Sheila?"

Of course she wasn't there. Her room was undisturbed, except for the slight rumpling of the quilt where she'd lain sleeping the last time I'd seen her. I moved on to my room and glanced at the answering machine. No blinking red light. No messages.

"I'm having a bad feeling," I said aloud to the empty room. I picked up the phone and dialed the number that had stuck in my head, unwanted, since the first and only time I'd called it. "A really bad feeling," I said again.

"This is Corporal Marshall J. Weathers of the Greensboro Police Department," a familiar deep bass voice said. I sucked in my breath, about to answer him, but he went on. "I am away from my desk or out of the office. Please leave me a brief, detailed message and I will get back to you as soon as possible." There was a pause and then the familiar beep.