“But I didn’t and even heaved a handful of sand your way.”

He nodded but a slight grin lifted the corner of his lips. “I’ll bet, even then, you were just trying to get my attention.”

“So then,” she said, wanting to tease him back but wishing even more to get this over with, “I started darting through the corn. I remember hitting the stalks to rock them, bounce them out of my way.”

“I yelled at you about being a tomboy, to get back out here.”

“A crazy tomboy,” she added.

“I yelled so loud that the other kids quit playing and turned around to look at me.”

“I think I went deeper in then, thinking you might come after me.”

“I should have,” he said, moving closer. “How about you go into the field, but I’ll go with you, right behind you?”

She nodded but hesitated. What had crushed the full-of-life girl in her? Whoever had done it made her angry. They had no right to ruin her life, hurt her family, torment Gabe. Had there been a “they” or just one person? And who? Who?

She shouldered her way into the corn, ripe and heavy with ears that bumped her shoulders and hips. It was still taller than her but not sky-high as it had seemed then. Gracie had said the same man, Aaron Kurtz, who lived down the road, still owned and farmed it. He’d been appalled, Tess remembered hearing, that she’d been snatched from his land. He’d sent Christmas gifts to them the year Dad deserted them. Oh, thank you, Lord, she prayed. Detailed memories were coming quicker, surer.

The rows of green leaves, some turning tan and dry, went straight away from the house at first, then curved to fit the contour of the distant, slight hill before leveling out again, reaching toward Dane Thompson’s property. She heard Gabe right behind, his size making rustling noises louder than hers.

So that day, had her abductor been waiting, standing still in the corn, and she ran toward him? Was he tracking her through the corn by where she moved the stalks? Should she have heard him as she heard Gabe now? Had someone driven past the house and heard or seen they were playing in the backyard and come into the field to take one of the girls—any one of them? Or had she been the target?

It had to be a random choice of victim, didn’t it? A crime of opportunity, as they called it? Or worse, had someone taken her because of something she’d done or who she was?

“Wait,” she said, turning back to Gabe. “I’m going to stoop down, like it would have looked to me then.”

“Missing, four-year-old Teresa Lockwood, blond hair in a single, long braid, wearing denim jeans and a yellow sweatshirt,” Gabe recited. “That was the wording on your missing-child posters. Pink plastic Princess Leia watch on left wrist. Blue-eyed, weight thirty-six pounds, height three and one-half feet.”

She shivered. This memory probe might be as important to him as it was to her. She crouched a bit, her back to Gabe, staring up through the corn at the vast sky....

She heard the monster sound from decades of dreams. A muted roar, this time, not so close—but real! She stood, turned and threw herself against Gabe, holding tight. His arms came hard around her.

“What?” he demanded. “Tell me!”

“That’s the sound. The monster!” she told him, blinking back tears. “Hear that?”

“Tess, it’s only Aaron Kurtz’s big harvester—his reaper. He’s in the field beyond my house. He won’t come roaring through here now, so—”

“No, I mean I heard that sound in this field that day!”

He held her tight. “And it scared you, and you ran farther from the house? Maybe toward Dane Thompson’s or the side road?”

“The reaper—in my dreams, I turned it into a dinosaur or some sort of monster. But the reaper cutting in this field that day was louder. I think he sat so high in the cab that I saw his head go past. Yes, I do recall that now.”

“My father questioned him, but he said he saw nothing unusual. You don’t mean that he took you?”

“No! I mean, I don’t think so. I must have ducked down, or got pulled down when he went past. When I screamed—more than the one time you mentioned—no one could hear me. Then I was too scared to scream at all. But I dreamed a warped memory of that for years, a big monster cutting and chopping me apart and taking me away.”

“Away to where? Which way?”

She pulled from his grasp and looked around. She turned in a circle, again, again, trying to figure it out, until she got dizzy and Gabe grabbed her elbows to hold her up. She slapped her hand to the side of her neck as if something had bitten her there.

“I...I just don’t know. Gabe, I still just don’t know!”

9

Tess had just closed the curtains over the window facing the cornfield when someone knocked on her front door. Dusk had fallen. Gabe couldn’t be back already. Besides, he used the back door.

Peeking out the front porch window, she saw a pretty, red-haired woman she did not recognize. Alone. She didn’t look like a reporter. Her blue-green sports car was parked far down the driveway. Maybe she was lost. Tess opened only the inside door and kept the storm door locked.

“May I help you?”

“If you’re Tess Lockwood, yes. I’m here to inquire about buying your house. I’m Erika Petersen, the social director at the Lake Azure Community Lodge. I drive back and forth to Chillicothe every day and I’d like a closer place.”

Tess’s stomach cartwheeled. To sell this place and be able to buy her own back in Michigan was just what she’d hoped for.

“Yes, won’t you come in?” She unlocked the outer door for the woman. Erika brought a waft of scented powder with her that made Tess want to sneeze. When Erika took off her suede jacket, her emerald-green cashmere sweater was stunning. Her knee-high boots were fringed, just as Marian Bell’s had been. This woman must be in her late forties, but her cosmetics were so carefully and subtly applied she looked years younger. She wore a big rock of a diamond ring next to her wedding band.

“Have you seen our Lake Azure area? So lovely there,” Erika said as her eyes scanned the room before she sat in the rocking chair Tess indicated.

“Just to drive through. It was barely begun when I left the area. I suppose you know why my family left?”

“Yes. As I’m a friend of Marian Bell’s, I can totally empathize and sympathize with what you and your family went through.”

Tess doubted that, but at least this woman seemed reasonable, not distraught like Marian. And she was interested in the house.

Erika went on, “I don’t mind the daily commute to Chillicothe when the weather’s nice, but now that it’s autumn again I’ve finally talked my husband into letting me get a place nearby just for the weekdays, when I’m here—social director at the lodge, great job, demanding...”

This was the woman, Tess thought, biting back a smile, Miss Etta didn’t like because she ran book clubs that competed with the Cold Creek Library. Clubs, as the longtime librarian put it, where people got their books “out of the air.”

“I’m sure that career keeps you busy and on your toes,” Tess said.

“Oh, it does. Even though I have an assistant, there are a lot of weekends I need to be here too. I’d fix this place up, of course, my country pied-à-terre....”

Tess noted that, for a woman who worked with people all the time, Erika didn’t look her directly in the eye. Her gaze darted around the room, but she probably wanted a tour of the house or was already imagining how she’d decorate it. Erika also had a habit of dropping her voice at the end of a sentence as if there were more to say, but it was a secret.

“May I give you a tour?” Tess asked.

“Oh, yes—but let’s schedule that for another time, and I’ll bring a friend with me. I need to head home. Promised I’d meet my husband for dinner at seven. There is something I need to tell you up front, a couple of things. I have a financial backer of sorts and it’s not my husband. If you sell this property to me—for a very healthy price, I promise, cash up front—you would need to meet in private and in confidence with my friend Marian Bell to help her find her daughter.”