Page 21 of The Witch's Orchard
She stands there, staring at me a moment, my card in her hand.
“Hold on,” she says. She turns and jogs out of the room. I hear her going up some stairs and then I hear her walking around above me. While I wait, I look at the old picture of Jessica. Of all Mandy’s children, Jessica is the one who most resembles her. It’s the same fair skin, the same pale blond hair, the same tiny nose. There’s an intelligence too, I think. A daring bright spark that shines through Jessica’s eyes the same way it shines through Mandy’s. That’s what I saw when I met her at the door, I realize. That keenness.
Jessica is the kind of kid who draws media attention. Maybe she would have. Maybe if she’d grown up in a neighborhood of cute brick ranch houses instead of this old, run-down holler. Maybe if her family hadn’t been broke and rowdy. Maybe if her daddy hadn’t been out of work, her mom exhausted, abused, and poverty-stricken, a sense of ruinous resilience permeating from her hungry blue eyes, the kind of woman who makes people uneasy, puts them off guard with her earnest need.
I turn my gaze to another set of photos and find what must be Mandy’sand Tommy’s relatives. In a wedding photo from fifty years back, a lanky red-haired man grips the waist of his plump, dark-eyed wife. There’s a framed photo of Mandy, Tommy, Jessica, and Tommy Junior—Tam,I think. Mandy’s hair is ten-years-ago stylish and Tommy looks less haggard and restless, almost happy. Then there’s another senior photo, this one of a young woman I don’t recognize. She has bright eyes and her pale, strawberry-blond hair hangs in long, shimmery waves around her bare shoulders.
“Odette,” Mandy says as she reenters the room.
“Who?”
“Odette. Tommy’s little sister. She died. Eleven years ago now.” Mandy smiles wistfully at the photo. “She was a good girl. So sweet. She used to keep Tam and Jessica for us. But, she had a real sad streak. She drank too often and too much. Never around the kids, of course. But she’d have spells, you know. Anyway, she had a spell, drank too much. Passed out and didn’t wake up. Poor thing. What a waste.”
I find myself frowning at the photo. At the tragedy heaped on tragedy around me.
I don’t have the time or inclination to dwell on it, though, and I’m about to leave when Mandy holds her fist out toward me and says, “I want you to have this.”
She opens her hand like a flower. There’s a wad of tightly rolled bills inside.
“I’ve been saving up,” she says. “Wherever I can.”
“Mrs. Hoyle—”
“I want you to find Jessica too,” she says. “Please.”
“Mrs. Hoyle, I’m already looking for Jessica. Because I’m looking for Molly. Max Andrews is paying me to look for a week. You don’t need to pay me.” I close her hand around the money and gently push it back toward her. She bites her lips together and tears come to her eyes again. Her eye makeup still stays put. It’s got a lot of practice, I think with a sad, sick feeling in my stomach.
“I will look for Jessica too,” I say around the lump in my throat. “While I’m looking for Molly, I will look for Jessica.”
“You promise?” she asks, barely a whisper.
“Yes,” I say. “I’ll be here for a week. I will look all day, every day. I promise I will look, but I can’t promise I will find her.”
She nods, sniffs, closes her fist tight around the money.
“I’ve been… I’ve been hoping to leave,” she says, waving her arm to take in the room, the house, the holler, this whole life. “I could never afford it. Not with the kids. This is Tommy’s house, Tommy’s family’s house and land and everything. I’d like to take the kids to my cousin’s in Virginia. Start over. She could get me a job at the place where she works, I think. There’re benefits. Good pay. But I always thought”—her voice goes tight and tremulous—“what if she came back?”
The sick sadness spreads out of my belly and up through my chest. My heart is hot and angry inside my ribs and I feel my cheeks flush. It’s a familiar feeling. An aching pity mixed with rage and helplessness. Something I haven’t felt since I was a kid. Since I was home, standing in front of my own mother, the waves of her throbbing need crashing over me.
“Jessica,” I say. My voice, higher and thinner than it should be, surprises me. I clear my throat but it still feels thick.
Mandy nods. She says, “What if Jessica came back and she couldn’t find me?”
“I’ll look,” I say. And then again, “I will look.”
A few seconds later I’m back in my car. The rain thrums the roof and I take long, slow breaths with my hands tight on the wheel as I watch Mandy Hoyle carry some scraps out to the dog and wave at me.
“Oh, Honey,” I breathe, turning the key. “I’m in over my head here.”
Honey rumbles sympathetically. I pull out. Roll back up the hill and out of this holler. I tell myself to think about something else. Anything else. But everything in sight reminds me of my home, my old life, and all those old memories are stirred to life.
SEVEN
“YOU GOTTA TALK TOthe cops, Annie,” Dr. Horton had said.
This was years ago.
I can’t help thinking about it. Driving out of that muddy holler and back toward Quartz Creek, there is a sick heat in my belly at the remembered scene, and I can’t stop it from coming.
