Page 46 of The Witch's Orchard
“Do you remember anything else from that day?”
“I remember feeling very bad for Mandy Hoyle. But that’s all. When it seemed clear there was no more use searching, I went home. I think we all thought she’d turn up within a few hours, probably wandered into some corner of the church we couldn’t get to and fell asleep. That’s what we thought. Things like that happen all the time, don’t they?”
It’s not really a question and so I don’t answer. Instead I say, “Were you at the church picnic the day Olivia was taken?”
“Yes,” she says. “But only to drop off some hors d’oeuvres.”
My mouth breaks into a smile and I barely suppress a snort. I’ve never in my life heard of someone bringing grub to a church picnic and having the audacity to refer to it as “hors d’oeuvres.”
I manage to recover enough to say, “So you weren’t there long?”
“Probably not more than twenty minutes. I wasn’t there when Olivia was taken or else I’d have helped look for her. I didn’t hear about it until the next day.”
“Thank you,” I say. And I draw a line through her name the same as everyone else’s.
Janice Andrews’s name is on this list. Kathleen Jacobs’s is not.
I call one more name.
A very elderly woman answers and talks to me for fifteen minutes about the church and the committees in general and how lovely Rebecca and Bob were when her Earl passed and how she wishes she could get her grandkids to go but you know how young people are, think they have all the time in the world.
As she talks, I watch the descending fog swirl around the playground and picture Jessica sitting there on the swing set. There one minute. Gone the next. I think, for a moment, that I can hear the chains on the swingcreak and squeak, but no, it’s only a crow, perched on top of the slide. His head tilts as he watches me, the setting sun casting an orange hue on the tips of his wings.
“Are you saved?” the woman asks.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “But that’s between me and Jesus.”
I hang up, let my head fall back against the headrest, and groan as the mess of information I’ve just received sorts itself into piles inside my head. After a while, I sit forward and grip Honey’s steering wheel.
“I think it’s time to pay another visit to Olivia’s mom,” I say to Honey. “She’s gonna be thrilled to see me again.”
SIXTEEN
“OLIVIA’S NOT GOING TOtalk to you,” Kathleen says when she opens the door. She’s packing up her purse, putting on a sweater. She has a Marley County Hospital name tag clipped to her scrubs and her hair is pulled back into a cute little ponytail with the ends all curled together. “And I have to go to work.”
“Okay,” I say. “That’s okay. I can come back tomorrow.”
“You shouldn’t come back at all.”
“You heard about Molly,” I say. “You must’ve.”
She pushes her way through the door now, shooing me in front of her like a goose. She says in a whisper, “Yes. Yes, of course I did. Yes. I feel awful. Jesus. Jesus Christ, of course, I do. But I’ve already told you everything I can.”
She huffs and then opens the kitchen door again, leans her head in, and shouts, “Bye, girls! Be good, okay?”
I hear, “Bye, Mom!”
“Jessica Hoyle is still out there,” I whisper. “She could be next. She could turn up just like Molly if we don’t find her.”
She shuts the door again, then pauses with her handful of keys halfway to her purse and blinks at me.
“Please,” she says. “I can’t help you.”
“Well, your brother-in-law tried to make that clear, but—”
“Cole? Did he talk to you?”
“I assume you sicced him on me.”
