Page 24 of The Witch's Orchard
“Max was quiet,” Shiloh says. “Like he still is.”
She frowns, looks away from me and down at the dough and says, “Molly was rambunctious. Good-natured, though, super sweet. She had aton of energy but she was very eager to please. I remember she drew me a picture one day and, when I got there, she was running with it to show me. She was so excited. She tripped over a toy in the living room and smashed her face against the leg of a chair. She had to get stitches where she’d split her chin open, and I feltsobad. But the family was really good-natured about it. Mrs. Andrews just iced it right up and I watched Max while Mr. and Mrs. Andrews took Molly to the doctor instead of going out to dinner.”
“You weren’t there the day the kidnapping happened, right?”
“No, I mostly only babysat when Mrs. Andrews went to PTA or church meetings or when she and Mr. Andrews went out. She didn’t really need a babysitter that often. Honestly, Max could’ve been left alone. He was eight and never got into trouble but, like I said, Molly was a bundle of energy and had a touch of wanderlust. A scary combination in a four-year-old. Anyway, I knew them from church and I’d just turned sixteen and I wanted spending money so it worked out.”
“And the day Molly was taken they were…”
“Mrs. Andrews was working in the garden, as far as I know. That’s what Max said. And he was in a piano lesson.”
“With”—I roll through my memory—“a… Deena Drake?”
“That’s right. Have you talked to her yet?”
“No, but she’s on my list.”
I take another bite.
“How is it?” Shiloh asks.
“This is the best pumpkin bread I’ve ever had in my life. I could eat it every day forever.”
She giggles. It’s a bubbly laugh for such a big woman, and I can’t help but smile at the sound of it.
“I went to culinary school,” she says. “I actually worked in an upscale bakery down in Asheville for a couple years, but I always wanted to come back home. You know?”
I shrug. Idon’tknow. I never wanted to go home. And my visit to the Hoyles reminded me why. I shove another warm hunk of bread in my mouth, try to forget about the cold in my bones.
“When my grandmother died, she left me some money. Not a ton but, combined with what I’d managed to save, I came back home and started up the business.”
“Looks like it’s going well,” I say.
“So far, so good,” she says, and then flops the dough into a wooden bowl, covers it with a towel, wipes her hands and the work surface before pulling an iced cake from a rack behind her. I watch as she fills a bag with orange buttercream and then twists it closed.
I ask, “Did you notice anything strange in the days or weeks leading up to when Molly was taken?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot over the years,” Shiloh says. She kneels over the cake, turns it on its stand, and begins piping orange roses onto the top. Bright orange petals swirl outward from their center, their sugary smell wafting toward me.
“But things just seemed so normal at the time. Max and Molly were the same as ever. I didn’t see Mr. Andrews much, except at school.”
“Max said he was the biology teacher.”
“Yeah. I had him junior and then senior year, which was the last year before he quit and started trucking. He was pretty haunted after Molly disappeared, but not like Mrs. Andrews.”
I think about Max’s mom. The picture of her in his casebook was actually one of the whole family, everyone dressed up, standing in front of the farmhouse. In this picture, Janice Andrews is wearing a blue floral A-line dress with her long ponytail pulled over her shoulder. She’d been a sporty-looking woman with a golden-brown tan, wide-set hazel eyes above freckled cheeks, and a straight-toothed smile. Hard to imagine that kind of woman doing what she did.
I catch myself, pause, ask myself what kind of woman it’s easy to picture locking the bedroom door behind her and sitting down on the bed to end her life. I stop before I go too far down that road.
Instead, I ask Shiloh, “Did you notice anything about her beforehand?”
Shiloh shrugs. “Mrs. Andrews seemed kind of stressed out thatsummer. She was doing a lot of community work. The toy plant closed down that year, and it put most of the town out of work. She was involved with fundraising and food bank stuff with the church.”
“The church?”
“Yeah. First Baptist out on Laurel. We went there too. Mrs. Andrews was on some… committee? She did outreach work, organized bake sales, Vacation Bible School, that kind of thing.”
“Do you remember when the first girl was taken? Jessica?”
